"You don't regret the things you do - you regret the things you don't do."
Hello everyone!
Sorry Men in Kilts!
BUT.
I did actually watch a movie not too long ago, another Hallmark production as a matter of fact, which I thought could be an interesting topic for discussion.
To be fair, however, Hallmark hasn't exactly vowed me this calendar year yet, which is kind of funny and sad at the same time since I usually find at least one or two movies up until this point which I genuinely enjoy and giggle over.
Alas, not in 2021, it seems.
It Was Always You promised a heck of a lot, but to me personally didn't deliver.
I will be linking some other Hallmark movies I've reviewed so far this year at the bottom of the page, just so you have something to fall back on - but to be fair I have a number of them up on the blog that don't have the 2021 stamp on them and I actually liked.
On with the show!
It Was Always You stars Erin Krakow and Tyler Hynes, who I love separately because both of them have proven their acting chops to me before, Erin in When Calls the Heart and other Hallmark productions, and Tyler specifically in the movie On the 12th Date of Christmas.
So you can imagine I was excited to see these two work together and prove that they have it.
Well, they do, I guess, but they also don't.
Elizabeth, Krakow's character, is right on the cusp of marrying George (Giles Panton), a fellow dentist from the practice the two of them work at (potentially also own, I'm not 100% sure on this one!), and they're travelling to visit his family for his mother's birthday over the weekend. His family lives on some sort of island, which is an important plot point later on in the story.
Once there, it becomes very clear that Elizabeth's super-planning tendencies can get her into a heap of trouble (aka she accidentally lets George's mother know there's a surprise party in the works when she's terrified EVERYONE ELSE will let her in on it), but the bigger surprise is that David, George's brother, is home.
David is a sort of vagabond and a little bit of a black sheep in that he never stays in one place for too long and goes wherever the wind takes him, literally.
He and Elizabeth also don't have the best history, it looks like, because they're at each other's throats right off the bat.
Well, okay, she's at his throat, he doesn't quite care enough to be honest. He's way more chill than she is; in fact, she comes off as more than a bit of a control freak throughout the movie, with everything needing to be just so.
Her fiancé has to rush back to the mainland because there are apparently no other dentists that can handle an emergency (which probably isn't even an emergency) and is then stuck on said mainland because of a storm that brings down the bridges or at the very least makes them impassable. This leaves Elizabeth alone to finalize their wedding which s fast approaching, though David does offer to help her, at least.
This is a step up from him being utterly annoying a la playing loud rock music at 2 am because he's on a weird timezone in comparison to everyone else.
Together, they then work their way through Elizabeth's list of chores, during which she reveals that George and she actually decided to get married more on a whim than anything else, as they figured they have so much in common. David, on the other hand, proceeds to show her that there's a whole lot more to life than trying to be a stick in the mud all the time, and this includes but is not limited to an oyster bar (which she and George visited at the start but George didn't really like), dancing, picking the right music for the wedding, and Elizabeth having a meltdown while filling out her registry because she wants a two slice toaster and not a four slice one.
I wish I was kidding.
Slowly, as the movie turns towards its latter half, both characters become marginally more likeable as Elizabeth unbends a little bit, and she realizes that trying to have everything just so and keeping it perfect for the sake of appearances just because it looked like her neighbours (George and David's family) looked so perfect when she was growing up might not be what she wants for herself.
In fact, she seems to yearn for travel and adventure, something she doesn't get with George who needs a plan to survive the timeslot between waking up and breakfast, so she ends up breaking off the engagement at the engagement party, and hightails it into the great unknown.
And David?
Well, David already left midway through the party anyway, so Elizabeth really has nothing holding her back, and the movie then fast-forwards to a year later when she finally returns back home after globe-hopping, to attend the wedding of George and David's sister, Sylvia. She has finally found happiness for herself (though what she lives off is a mystery at this point), and is happy George seems to be happy with his dental assistant.
David also makes an appearance, because obviously, and the two of them finally talk about the wish list she wrote about places she wants to visit in Italy, and the one he wrote in return and stuck in the book next to hers, hoping she'd find it - because he's been in love with her since he was 13.
Only took them forever.
In the end, they share a sweet dance and a kiss, agreeing to find their next adventure together, and the movie ends.
I wish I could say I was more impressed by it, but truth be told both characters annoyed me to no end when it started, and only marginally improved throughout. It wasn't until the last third of it that either one was actually likeable, because Elizabeth was just impossible to deal with, and David was annoying to the Nth degree, which immediately put me off him.
I did enjoy the fact that she went off on her own for a year before reconnecting with her flame, which is a new take on romance here. And I don't know if anyone else noticed, but DAYUM that kiss at the end looked like nothing out of the older Hallmark movies.
I do believe we call it a French kiss nowadays, but I digress.
The movie had a lot of potential, and ended up falling flat because the writing was absolutely miserable, which is a shame because both leads deserve so much better, as did the supporting cast who were all likeable, for once. Love Ever After sounds like a good part of Hallmark's programming, but the execution is a bit meh.
So all in all, not a fan so far.
Fingers crossed it improves soon! And can we use some other name besides Elizabeth???
xx
*images and video not mine
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