"A bad thing can take you to a good place."
Hello everyone!
Gotta get into the spirit, right?
Right!
But I will admit we've basically had an Indian summer over here right now for some time, so it's been a little bit difficult to try and see how this is going to suddenly turn into the usual, rainy, grey-ish and misty land that we know.
However, weather report does say temperatures seem to be dropping after the official first day of fall, so we'll see!
And thus my first fall movie blog can actually make an appearance without the need to feel silly about it, even if I probably COULD have watched one of the remaining summer ones.
But Roadhouse Romance wanted to be seen, so here we are!
I'm fairly sure that I have at least one or two from the same Fall Harvest lineup somewhere on the blog, so I'm going to check and link them down below, as per usual, if there are any. If not, well, welcome to the new lineup!
Roadhouse Romance stars Lauren Alaina and Tyler Hynes in the main roles of Callie and Luke, respectively, with a bunch of other pretty known faces in the supporting cast that actually make a bit of a better mark than usual when the support is just there as ... background, really.
Okay, let's start!
Callie (Alaina) returns home after two years away on deployment, and finds that a heck of a lot of things have changed while she was away, most importantly, the guy supposedly her boyfriend found himself another girl, and her grandfather's BBQ sauce has ran out, and no one can find the recipe even though he promised to write it down.
So she goes to shed some tears about the boyfriend, backing out of a parking slot when a vintage car smacks into the side of her truck.
Luke (Hynes) is behind the wheel of this one, a birthday present for his girlfriend (who is an actress, mind, and he's a television director who wants to make a break into feature films), and ironically it should be noted the truck isn't even really scratched up other than the wheel, while the vintage car doesn't do so well, and forces Luke and his agent Dan to stay some time at the roadside BBQ house.
Well, setting complete then!
Callie throws herself into helping at home before she starts her new job as a doctor for veterans next month, and because Luke is stranded without a car the two of them sort of bond while she chauffeurs him around left and right for a while.
Also, there's the family dog, who seems to love stealing things and bringing them to people they don't belong, but that's beside the point.
Luke is currently fighting off the idea of going to Hawaii with his girlfriend to shoot this would-be blockbuster, whose script he's read and disliked immensely, while Callie is fighting for the fall harvest festival which has been a staple in her life for too long to let it go now, even if her mom and her aunt say that they may need to cancel as the number of sold tickets is dangerously low.
Oh yeah, also, the family is a little bit in trouble money-wise, not that Callie learns about it until the very end of the movie since no one feels like breaking her heart.
So she spends time with Luke, finding out he has no clue about country music (actually, he asks if there's any with a happy ending, and I can totally understand him if I'm being honest ... three quarters of country is broken heart, and one quarter is line dancing!), and can't do the cowboy cha-cha (basically line dancing, with a partner), so she sets out to teach him about all these things.
In return, he decides she needs educating in the basic hits of sci-fi movies, though to be fair he could have just expanded her education a little since she has no idea about The Godfather either, but that's besides the point.
The two slowly discover a friendship under the initial irritation, and Luke finds Callie is a font of wisdoms she learned from her grandfather Tucker (which he keeps writing down, because filmmaker), and that she can sing REALLY well.
This is obviously tribute to the actress because, well, she's a singer first and actress second, and there's a few nice musical inserts throughout which definitely impress our man.
Definitely more than his girlfriend, pushing for this silly Hawaiian movie, however, which, after giving Callie the script to read, Luke definitely sees that it's a right mess ... but as his girlfriend then suddenly decides to surprise him at his pitstop, he can't exactly continue the argument, since he strikes me as a non-confrontational kind of guy, but it becomes clear even as they drive the vintage car (finally fixed!) that they've started to diverge, or maybe they've always kind of diverged, but Luke just didn't really see it like that.
Considering we learn he never really had a family unit like Callie does, it would make sense why he would hold on to a girlfriend like that if she gave him the feeling of stability, but he's found something else now by the roadside, and figured out that he can voice things like fame is less important than it seems.
Because he never seems like a conceited character, just reticent, which is definitely different.
Anyway, he goes out of his way to help Callie and her ex have another shot, which just teaches Callie that things HAVE changed, and it's okay, she can let them go. She also looks under her bed to the shoebox Luke teases her about ... and lo and behold, finds the BBQ sauce recipe in there, where her grandpa left it for her just like he promised.
Since she's spent all movie trying to recreate it, this is a MASSIVE plus, and helps with the emptiness after Luke leaves to return to California, though his agent definitely has plans of returning since he's been flirting with Callie's aunt all movie long.
They also try to figure out how to help with getting the fall harvest, since they don't want it to be cancelled either, and eventually Luke comes up with a plan that basically sells his soul to the devil as he makes a deal with his girlfriend: she does her social media thing for the festival, and he'll do the Hawaiian movie without complaint.
This is later revealed to Callie when she wonders about the sudden jump in ticket sales, and Dan admits what happened, which kind of horrifies her because she's a good person and doesn't want Luke to suffer.
Not that she should worry, because by the time she's done singing, he's there, explaining that he broke it off with his girlfriend, both personally and professionally, and is actually here chasing down something else - namely, her.
So they kiss and do the cowboy cha-cha, and all's well in the world!
This review probably seems a little bit less coherent or that it's missing a continuous plotline, but it's because it didn't really HAVE a major plotline to begin with - the movie, I mean. The story was a fairly simple, everyday kind of one, of a lost recipe and work problems, but it hid a whole lot more within it. The struggle we all face when things change, how we adapt to that, and how we comport ourselves with our given word.
It was honestly enjoyable to watch, for me at least. There were no real dramatics (the actress girlfriend notwithstanding), and there was a lot of just general fall feeling throughout.
I will say though, that the driving scenes were straight up of some of the older movies, because the green screen was SO obvious haha!
And also, for some reason people seem to be complaining that Hynes is too old to star opposite Alaina, but she was playing a character at least in her thirties, and Hynes is roughly thirty-five, if memory serves correctly. Even if she's only twenty-six or twenty-seven, that's really not a huge deal, so I'm not sure what people are complaining about.
It was easy, it was fun, it was funny - and my personal favourite scene has to be the one that felt completely unscripted, which is when Callie calls to Luke after he's already off-camera, and he answers with a 'Yah?' then pops back out. It feels so completely ... like Hynes just did it again and again until he was tired, and didn't answer completely by script, and I love it.
Overall, a solid performance, maybe not the best of the Hallmark movies, but definitely a good, strong run of it.
xx
*images and video not mine
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