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 4th most populous county in
PA
4.
It is the 98th 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.
