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Hallmark Movies: Small Town Royalty Magically Celebrating Rekindled Love! - General Discussion - Pag

I have a long weekend, so I watched a couple of movies I had on DVR, plus there are two first-runs I wanted to watch. My results so far:

  • "Unleashing Mr. Darcy"--HATED it. I could barely make it through to the end. Of course, I could have been prejudiced because I didn't even bother to finish the book, but I guess I hoped somewhere along the line they'd salvage something in the film version. No such luck.
  • "Valentine Ever After"--I liked it! The guy was kind of a block of wood, the best friend annoyed me, and the fiance was a real ass, but it had Autumn Reeser, who always seems to make everything better. It was a perfect movie for a frigid Saturday night snuggled under a blanket on the couch. Although I did happen to notice on IMDB (which has an extremely sketchy description that doesn't even list everyone) that one of the writers was listed as Alana Smithee. I know that Alan Smithee is the pseudonym writers use when they're unhappy with the direction of a project and don't want their names associated with it, so I wonder what the story is behind that. 
  • "Anything for Love"--This won't be on until tonight, but even if I don't end up liking the movie it has Antonio Cupo (who I hope doesn't play a jilted something-or-other) and Paul Greene, so that makes it a win in my book. If worse comes to worst, I can fast-forward through it and just watch the parts with them.
  • And then my biggest find: "Love on the Air"--I've seen this talked about much on here, and I finally watched it. I LOVED it! I knew right away that the annoying co-worker Jonathan Scarfe talked about at the black moment wasn't Alison Sweeney, that it was the lifestyle girl, but that was really the only thing that stood out to me as a flaw. I just loved the two of them together; they had so much chemistry, and when my husband came up to talk to me during the last half hour of the movie I shooed him away--even though I could have stopped the DVR to talk to him--because I couldn't wait to get to the end where they got together. I think this is right up there with "Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade" as an all-time favorite.

    • One thing these movies made me realize: I like the movies with the slightly older hero and heroine (which includes "Love in Paradise" with Emanuelle Vaugier and Luke Perry a few weeks ago. I enjoyed that one, too). The female leads are so much less generic, for the most part, than Hallmark's new crop of I-can't-tell-them-apart heroines. And so many of the new-crop guys are just bland and not very good actors. I'm sure it's my age (let's just say I'm old), but most of the movies with the twenty-somethings just don't do it for me.

    Okay, off to see what else I can find for the rest of the day. It's Valentine's Day, so there are bound to be at least one or two on Hallmark I might want to check out this afternoon. Happy Valentine's Day!

    A few things immediately popped into my mind when reading your post:

    1.  I think that the only people who didn't like Unleashing Mr. Darcy (the few of us that exist) are in this thread!  I've read so many comments in a variety of places, indicating that not only was this a popular movie but also one that people want to get on DVD -- sooner rather than later.  I don't know what it is about that movie, but I just didn't care about what was happening.   I didn't think it was funny enough to be considered a romantic comedy, nor serious enough to be a romantic drama.  All of the actors would probably be better in other projects but I just didn't care about any of them in that specific story

    2.  Another Love On the Air fan!   I'm glad I'm not the only one who was late to the party on that one.   It took me a long time to finally get around to seeing it (several months after it premiered) and I really wasn't sure I would like it because the promos and synopses didn't do it justice, but it was well worth the wait.  It's so good.  I just watched it a second time a week or two ago.

    3.  I like Paul Greene and Antonio Cupo as well, so I'm with you -- even if Anything for Love ends up being a bust, at least it has them in it.  I think Antonio plays someone that Erika Christensen is dating before she inevitably gets together with Paul Greene.

    Now, as for Valentine Ever After -- I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it.  I thought it was just kind of...there.  I really like Autumn Reeser in general, so she is always a saving grace in any movie she does... even if I don't like the movie that much.  I thought the scenery was lovely -- lots of snow (and real snow in some cases).  I noticed that the cast of this movie was like a Who's Who of Hallmark movies.  Everyone has been in something else for Hallmark at some point -- even Autumn's character's dad, if I am not mistaken.  Her fiance was in One Starry Christmas and Mistletoe Over Manhattan, to name just a couple.  Her friend, Sidney (or is it Sydney?) was in Charming Christmas and something else that escapes me (was it maybe Christmas With Holly??)  The other ranch dude with the dark hair has been in some things.   Of course, Eric Johnson has been in a couple of other Hallmark movies too.

    I didn't think there was much romantic chemistry between the 2 leads in Valentine Ever After, for some reason.  The guy was very wooden, while still being handsome -- I think he was better in Fir Crazy.  (He is, I think, possibly going to be in the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey sequel.) I wondered if a different actor might have clicked better with Autumn in the movie.

    So far, I think my favorite of the new Valentine movies is still All Things Valentine -- but it's not up there among my all-time Hallmark favorites.  Then, after that I'd probably pick Dater's Handbook, and then Appetite for Love.  Valentine Ever After would probably be at the bottom -- but, really, they were all pleasant and enjoyable in certain ways, so nothing has a huge lead over anything else in my rankings, and nothing else would be way, way below anything else.  They are all pretty close, and it's possible that Valentine Ever After might move up in the ranks over time.

    Today, Hallmark seems to just be airing October Kiss again (it was on within the last couple of weeks), and then doing a short marathon of the 4 new Valentine movies, leading up to the premiere of the 5th one tonight. 

    I .really don't know what they were doing with the Countdown to Valentine's Day this year.  It was handled in a very strange way.   Not only did Hallmark skip doing an all day/all night event for 2 weeks (or even for one week), unlike last year, but they didn't even do a marathon to the degree of, for example, what they do with Christmas in July -- which usually entails 4 movies each weekday and then a more extended weekend schedule.  This year's Countdown to Valentine's Day had the lightest schedule of any of their movie "marathons" (not counting a weekend-only event like Winterfest and Fall Harvest), and it makes me wonder why they even bothered running one movie each weeknight at 8 p.m. -- when they didn't promote the nightly movies.  All they did was promote the brand new movies on weekends, and they never mentioned "one movie every night."  Not only that, but the weeknight movies were mostly just repeats of things they had already shown on weekends -- when there were actually more movies they could have added in to the mix to fit the "love" theme.  I have no problem with multiple repeats during a 2-month event, because they are necessary for that long of a marathon.   But in a very limited 2-week event that only involves one movie each weeknight, and 6 movies on most weekend days, I don't see why it's necessary to show one specific movie 3 or 4 times when there are other movies they could throw into the mix for variety.  Very odd.

    The commercial Hallmark is running -- this is the one that used to have the Best Day of My Life song playing in the background, but now has a different song -- which shows Countdown to Valentine's Day, Spring Fling, June Weddings and Countdown to Christmas, is still missing the Fall Harvest title, although some of last year's Fall Harvest movies are shown in clips during the montage.    I am still assuming that it is just an editing/timing issue, and maybe they thought the ad would be too cluttered to leave in Fall Harvest too.  But now that the Countdown to Valentine's Day is ending, I will be interested to see if Fall Harvest returns to the montage when Spring Fling starts up in April.  If not, then I have to imagine that Hallmark is either skipping Fall Harvest this year (which seems unlikely), or they have some other plan for it.

    Edited February 14, 2016 by Sherry67

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