All Of My Heart

All Of My Heart (2015) – By Bovine #2

It has taken me some time to find the right movie to do my first entry on, but I think all my waiting paid off because All of My Heart struck a chord with me within the first 10 minutes. Nothing is super special about the story line or the characters as most lovey dovey Hallmark movies fall into one of the following categories:

1.     Country meets city or visa versa – the typical fish out of water scenario

2.     Secret prince or princess is revealed – the Cinderella effect

3.     Someone has lost a loved one and thinks they’ll never love again, but unexpectedly falls in love

4.     A dog brings two people or two families together

All of My Heart basically falls into category #1, the country/city scenario. The IMDb movie description could not be any less detailed:

“After inheriting half of a house, a young woman develops an unexpected friendship with her co-owner.”

As lack luster as the description is, you can pretty much figure out what is going to happen in the movie if you’ve ever watched any Hallmark movie. They’re all about the same. Which is why I love them! They’re predicable and easy watching. No thinking or note taking required. Well that is, if you’re not going to write a blog about them. I took 4 pages of notes for this one.

So let’s get into it….

Super cute actress Lacey Chabert is the main female lead and she plays the role of Jenny Fintley who is a chef working for some other head chef guy who likes to put his fingers in the the food. You’ll see what I mean in the opening credit scene. That’s what infuriated me right from the get-go. Jenny has dreams of being her own boss and opening a restaurant someday. She is dating a guy named Daryl (Greyston Holt) who looks like a dumb hockey player to me, but were supposed to somehow believe that he’s a successful business man type. He’s got a mullet for crikeys sake! So unprofessional! Anyhow, they’ve apparently been dating for a while and just when she thinks he’s about to propose to her, he drops a bombshell that he got an even better job that’s going to allow him to travel the world. Heartbroken, embarrassed and dismayed she breaks up with him and orders lobster.

            Of course here is where the silver lining comes in, Jenny gets a call from some lawyer who says she and some Wall Street guy named Brain Howell (Brennan Elliot) have both inherited some house. This is where I lost my mind. The lawyer explains that the house is located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania! What makes that so exciting you say? Well that’s where I’ve lived my entire life. So naturally I got super excited that maybe they’d actually show places where I live. But then I thought to myself, “ I don’t recall hearing about any film shooting around here”. But I still held out hope.

            So naturally as you can probably figure out, Jenny and Brian go see the house. She wants to live there, he wants to sell it and get back to his fast paced city life. So they compromise and she lives there and says she’ll open a B&B and eventually buy him out. And as it would be of course some turn of events happen and Brian loses his Wall Street gig and needs a place to live so he goes to the house and they become roommates. You know what happens from there. Smootchy smootchy, lovey dovey, they unexpectedly fall in love. Shocking, right?!?!

            The movie is actually filled with some really funny scenes and the cast is male dominated and that’s where all the funny comes from. Brennan Elliot has great comedic timing and honestly is not too shabby to look at. He and Lacey Chabert have good chemistry and have played these roles before in Christmas Melody, a mildly amusing flick with Maria Carey who plays an over bearing PTO mom. That’s a whole other blog entry right there. Anyhow, the rest of the cast is rounded out by the local General Store owner named Tommy (Daniel Cudmore) who is literally a “large” part in the development of Brian’s character and who exchanges puns about Brian back and forth with Vern, the boilerplate old man who sits outside the General Store doing crosswords (played by Ed Anser). The first “duck” pun was ok, but by the end of the movie you just want to shake your head at them. They really stretched those references a little too far.  See if you can count how many of those witty puns they come up with. I counted six. Five too many if you ask me.

            Back to my original reason for why I wanted to write about this movie… the location. Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Bucks County is a bucolic and country-esqe place, but by no means is as folksy as they made it out to be in the movie. Let me drop some facts on you:

1.     Bucks County is 622 square miles

2.     It has a population of over 600k people

3.     It is the 4^th most populous county in PA

4.     It is the 98^th most populous county in the US

So with that, I want to know why they picked Bucks as the “location” for this film because they made it out to be some hole in the wall, dirt road, everyone knows everyone kind of place. Plus Bucks is a county, not a town. Granted there are some super cute little tiny towns along the Delaware River that have a General Store and are surrounded by farms, but most of the time those farms are owned by super wealthy people who moved here from NYC. I have driven around pretty much the entire 622 square miles of this county myself and there are plenty of places where they could have shot these scenes and actually incorporated the real Bucks County into this movie, but NO where did they film it???? VANCOUVER, CANADA!!!!  From what I’ve learned, Canada has a big movie industry. The coffee shop that they use as one of the local locations is a real place in Vancouver. They couldn’t find some B-Roll of an actual place here in PA to incorporate? Lazy filmmaking, that’s what that is.  Shame on you Peter DeLuise (director and yes the son of Dom DeLuise). SHAME! And you Karen Berger (writer), well I don’t know where you got the idea to use Bucks County in your script, but maybe come visit sometime and see if it lives up to your expectations of a one stop sign kind of place. I’m going to guess no since there are more Mercedes, BMWs, Maseratis and Porches here than I can shake a crooked billet at.

I really did like this movie, don’t get me wrong. I just really only wanted to vent about the “location” setting of the film. It really bugs me that we (Bucks County-ians) were “used” is this movie without our true consent or knowing. So if you haven’t already seen this flick, go find it. Its cute and fun and good for the whole family. There are some super cute and funny moments with goats. And who doesn’t like goats?

All Of My Heart, you got most of my heart, the rest of it is in the REAL Bucks County.

POST ENTRY NOTES:

Since this is my first entry on the blog, I wanted to explain what this next section is. During any movie I watch I tend to find editing goofs, things that leave me scratching my head (poor writing) or general observations that I have to point out. So here is my list for you to ponder when you go to watch this movie.

1.     Why is the chef guy so obsessed with tarragon?

2.     When Jenny and Brian first get to the house they inherted, why is it sooooo dusty? And why are there so many bottles in the kitchen?

3.     Who do you think that portrait of Emily is in real life? It looks like one of those portrait sessions you get taken for the church directory.

4.     More on Emily’s portrait… either that picture was way old or she died young. She only looks about 50-60 in the picture, right?

5.     When Jenny comes down the stairs in the middle of the night when she thinks someone is breaking in, why is she carrying a wooden spoon? Who keeps a wooden spoon in bed with them?

6.     Why do they always cast a mechanic as a bumbling idiot? And take note of his accent. He doesn’t have an accent when he’s looking at the truck, but later in the general store he suddenly has a southern accent. Is that a blatant “dumb-ass” stereo type?

7.     When Brian is fixing the water and is outside doing something with the pipe, take note of where the water squirts out of. It’s not coming from the pipe that he was just working on but it comes from somewhere around the corner behind the house. So basically there was some guy hired to stand there with a hose and squirt the poor goat.

8.     The paint war scene annoys me. Just a general gripe of mine.

9.     The name of Jenny’s company is dumb.

10.  At some point in the movie Jenny has PA license plates on her car (changed from Connecticut). I guess the prop guy didn’t know that we don’t put plates on the front of our cars here in PA.

11.  Jenny mentions the name of the town that her B&B is in (Danfield) when she’s out trying to peddle her baked goods. There is no town in the entire state of PA called Danfield. Just sayin’.

12.  Brian’s happy dance is uncomfortable to watch

13.  Who cuts the leg of a table to fix a wobble?

14.  Who brings a truffle cutter as an ice breaker?

15.  When Brian and Jenny are out looking for Gabby the goat, why do they have gas lit old school lanterns? Who just has those hanging around? I guess in honkey-tonk Bucks County PA flashlights don’t exist yet.

16.  The idea to call Jenny’s B&B a B&B&D is all too close to the reference of EBDB B&B from FXX’s The League. Don’t know what that is? Google it. Its not Hallmark appropriate.

17.  Them calling the baby goats “the kids” is a little obnoxious. No?

18.  Brian’s friend Harry is a douche. I came to this conclusion when he refers to Jenny as “The girl who came with the house.” And he has terrible eyebrows.

19.  The use of Bluetooth headsets is so douche. Again, just sayin’.

20.  Almost the entire cast is from Canada. All but Lacey Chabert and Ed Anser are Canadians.

21.  Did you recognize Tommy? He’s from the Twilight and the X-Men movies. He’s pretty damn hot under that beard.

Under The Mistletoe

Under the Mistletoe was embarrassing to watch. Like, more embarrassing to watch than when I walked in on my grandparents and just stood there staring for about 20 minutes because I was too paralyzed with disgust and humiliation to flee.

The assholes who made this film, amazingly enough, made me feel like an asshole for watching it. Props to the actors though - they valiantly did what they could with this fetid schlock the writer(s) call a script.

Spoilers abound in this review.

Let’s start with the positives in this “compliment sandwich” review. (I always review by way of the compliment sandwich to placate Amazon reviewers in hopes that they keep their ire firmly shoved in their pie holes. The internet never turns as ugly as it does when a critic pans a wholesome “family” movie that Amazon-ite housewives and pastors bafflingly endorse with heated passion.)

So, the positive? Well, Under the Mistletoe…was, um, Christmassy! And I was in the mood for a Christmas movie, so good for the producers and creative team on that one! As a side note, it may seem odd that I’m praising a Christmas movie for being Christmassy, but I was recently tricked into Amazon-ing Christmas Lodge when trying to get into the Christmas mood. Not only was it horrible, schlocky, and preachy, it had nearly nothing to do with Christmas. I felt cheated and used after that one.

Anyway - back to Under the Mistletoe. The second thing I didn’t mind too much about this film was that although the plot is well-trod fare, it is still a very touching story: A tragic accident rips apart a devoted couple, and the dead spouse wants to make sure his family is okay before moving on. Touching, no? In fact I may have gotten misty eyed when the wife, Susan (Jaime Ray Newman), can finally see and say goodbye to her ghost spouse, Tom (Conan Graham). As a side note, Conan Graham looks like an unholy effigy of John Henson, made more bizarre with an overly prominent, unnatural set of glowing white teeth.

I’m no sentimental fool, but stories about the death of a good and devoted partner/spouse hit me right in the feels.

The negatives?

First of all, this dismal attempt at entertainment is an amazingly bad rip-off of Sleepless in Seattle. In Mistletoe, son Jonathan (Burkely Duffield ) wants to set up his parent with a new partner via a radio-call in show after his other parent dies. Like I said, Sleepless in Seattle.

To be fair, I understand that creating and writing an original story is really, really hard. Trust me – I’ve tried. Consequently I understand when I encounter a re-hashed story – there’s only so many plots out there, ya know? But, for all that is holy, if you must lift a plot, don’t rework a really popular, well-known and well-made movie. And if you’re an idiot and decide to anyway, please, make damn sure your masterwork is better than the original. Or, at least, make it tolerable. Mistletoe is neither.

This straight-from-Sleepless plot brings me to the second gripe: Sweet Louise, was it creepy how into his mother's love life Jonathan was? Seriously, there are some issues there. His involvement bordered on Oedipal. For instance, when Jonathan is drafting a letter in the guise of a suitor in order to woo his mother, ghost Tom tells him to “Check your notes. You had some great ideas.” You took notes?

But, it gets worse. Jonathan continually peeks out windows and around corners to spy on his mom making out, and when he confirms that she is sucking face, an unnerving smile slithers onto his. An “Oooooh yeah!” type of head nodding is also often involved. Blech.

This kid loves parental PDA more than most kids love dinosaur-shaped food. For example, to establish that Tom and Susan are, in fact, a devoted couple for the three seconds that Tom is alive in the film, viewers are treated to a solid two minutes of Tom fondling Susan while the family decorates the Christmas tree. *Shudder.* While Jonathan rejoices in this wholly unnecessary and nauseating display of parental affection, I busied myself with concocting seven different ways to skewer out my eyeballs

However, the most heinous display of Jonathan being a little too invested in his mother’s carnal pleasures serves as the emotional finale of the film. While Susan and her new beau kiss on an ice hockey rink and the world inexplicably rejoices, Jonathan constructs a mistletoe-hanging device out of nowhere. Seriously, he’s in the middle of a skating rink and can’t fight the urge to hang the romantic botanical above his mother’s head. Makes sense…? The camera lingers on Jonathan’s pervy and excited look as he delights in the make-out session for way too long, holding aloft the hockey stick. Once the awkward shot is finally over and the camera, blessedly, moves on, it inexplicably and surprisingly pans back to Jonathan’s creeper face once more after I had just thanked the almighty that it was over.

To make this scene even worse than a splinter wedged deep under a fingernail, this unnerving display is preceded by a confusing and ill-fitting shot of Jonathan’s teammate chomping on gum. I was confused by it at the time, but after the whole thing was over and I, to my chagrin, found myself thinking about it, it made more sense. Turns out the creative team really wanted the audience to understand from whence the sticky substance holding the mistletoe to the hockey stick originated. Listen, Hallmark, at this point in the film logic is so far gone I don’t think anyone would question how the random mistletoe is attached to the hockey stick. I would imagine the audience is more concerned with where the hell did the mistletoe come from, or possibly what in Sweet Jebus’ name is Jonathan’s motivation here? I can only guess he was motivated to furnish mistletoe at some point because of the film’s title?

Speaking of boundless leaps of logic, let’s move on to this film’s inane radio show/contest plot device. How in holy holly did Susan’s contest entry, which was penned by Jonathan, get picked as the winner for this contest? The radio DJ gushes over Susan’s entry, praising it for being unique, daring…media gold! Um, the entire entry was something to the effect of “I’m a lady who likes skiing and being outdoors.” Ghost Tom comes up with the completely original idea to add that Susan enjoys tennis as well. That there’s a one-in-a-million woman who blazes her own path. Brilliant!  Also, Susan’s boss, a newspaper editor, insists that she continue in the radio’s match-making contest because he thinks it makes for a good news story and thinks her dry-as-geriatric-sex interviews are feature-story gold. Huh?

Secondly, that radio show host seems like a very hot serial killer, no? Firstly, people that attractive don't work in radio. Secondly, why was she trying to sound so sexy on a talk radio station? Listeners don’t want to hear porn voice after Rush Limbagh wraps up, ya know? And the DJ, although sequestered in a booth and not seen by her listeners, sports webcam-starlet looks, complete with sultry eyes and puckered lips while interviewing Susan. I wasn’t sure whether I should be turned on or laugh out loud. Yes, Radio Host sure did bring some much needed levity to the movie, although I’m not sure that was the director’s intent. 

But the comedic gold mined from the radio contest doesn’t end there. Let’s next ponder how the hell Susan was so smitten with that Neanderthal contest date when he showed up at the restaurant? Greg (Russell Porter) was terrifying to look at. That 80’s heartthrob hair? Those sunken-in eyes? Gollum’s a catch compared to this dude. Greg’s brains didn’t seem to compensate for his lousy looks either. Entering a radio dating show was the best plan he could come up with to pay back a loan shark? After that shocking plot twist, my brain just halted and I ceased understanding anything at all about the world around me. And the scene with near-lingerie-clad Susan and Neanderthal Greg dancing in the living room? Please bleach my brain.

And finally, during the big finale when Susan has to pick a radio contest finalist on air, she backs out of the contest and forfeits her share of the $50,000. Whhhat? I think the writers were going for “romance” with this twist: Susan decides she really likes Jonathan’s school counselor (!!) Kevin (Michael Shanks) instead of any of the radio show contestants. So, she ditches the contest. It’s dumbfounding. Susan could have chosen one of the contestants, – any of them - received the cash prize, and have been on her merry way, while picking up Kevin’s school counselor (!!) for some boot knockin’ in a new, more modest dress she bought with the extra cash now stuffed in her pocket. It's not like she had to marry or even continue to date any of the contestant she chose. There were, literally, no consequences, stakes or drama to this “contest.”

As a side note, and as casually mentioned earlier, Susan chose Jonathan’s school counselor to…love? Date? I don’t know. This is the same counselor who went shopping with Jonathan, gave him a star spot on his ice hockey team without Jonathan ever doing any work to contribute to the team, and let Jonathan sleep on his couch. We all know that counselors should not get that involved in their students’ lives. Right? Like, I feel like I’m pointing out the obvious, but this movie has me doubting myself. And finally, Kevin and Susan never really spent any getting-to-know you time together, did they? Susan shows up at his office a few times harried and aloof, and Kevin basically adopts Jonathan and babysits him constantly while Susan dates, so where did this over-the-top love for him come from?

Now that we’ve parsed the two main categories of horrors found in Under the Mistletoe, I’m still left with some miscellaneous tidbits I’m compelled to discuss. Firstly, how clueless was Susan determinedly assuming that Kevin (Michael Shanks) was married? Continually and pig-headedly? That doesn't make sense? I knew wifey was dead from the get-go. Like, Susan lets her kid go off shopping with his counselor (!!) without checking up on things to discover that wife wasn’t there? I don't understand.

Oh! I also loved the one-dimensional sassy best friend who was just in Susan’s house all the time and took care of all Susan’s responsibilities, and whom Susan never acknowledges or thanks. I sort of want one of those. Oh! And when did this turn into a sports movie? The film didn’t show Jonathan practice or play the whole movie, so why would we be so invested about whether he makes a goal in this random game? And why the hell were all the hockey moms at the game wooing at the kiss? Why would they care? I certainly didn’t. I don't get it.  

One more! The editing! What the fudge? This was film was edited as if a cat had stepped all over the editing controls, and then the real editor was like "Brilliant!" Man, this was a train wreck. For example, there was an extended scene of Kevin and Jonathan getting out of a car that lasted about five minutes without any dialogue to justify the scene. The “montage” of Susan’s dating adventures was way too choppy. And finally, the WORST OF THE WORST – was a supposedly emotional scene where Susan realizes Jonathan has run away and is desperate to find him. To get the audience to well up, the editors created a scene in which Susan repeatedly screams “Jonathan” while searching the house, shops, the streets, the school. Seriously, it’s just five minutes of her screaming “Jonathan” in different locales. I attribute this vomit-inducing clunker of a scene half to Newman’s horrific acting and half to terrible editing.

And finally, here’s my biggest gripe of all: Husband Tom goes to heaven. Yay! We all get closure – Mom, Son, audience. Touching. Sniff. Sniff. And then he comes back to play hockey. What the hell. So Tom can just come back at any time then? And everyone can see him? So he's not really dead…. And there goes any emotional “oomph” the movie managed to muster.

Why did this movie get such great Amazon reviews again?

P.S.

Here’s a final “positive” to make you forget all about the crap you just watched: Michael Shanks sure is easy on the eyes, no? (ETA! OH NO!! I just had to go to IMDB to find out the actor’s name, and dammit! Michael Shanks was that bozo in that infernal Christmas Lodge movie too!)

Oh, and one more final thought: Never name a character "Lester." NEVER.