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.