Because you demanded it - the year of Chabert: Groundswell (2022)

Watched:  01/20/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lee Friedlander

Firstly - absolutely no one demanded this.  Maybe Chabert's manager would like it, but Randy pitched turning this into a Chabert fan-site and never one to turn down a challenge that is totally pointless, here we are.

We do our little experiments here at The Signal Watch, and we like a theme.

Now that I'm not watching Christmas movies, I've realized Lacey Chabert is not just getting paid to appear in movies in Canada, she's all over the planet.  There's a Safari movie that takes place in South Africa, we watched the Iceland and Ireland movies at Christmas, and last year a Scotland movie.  I don't know what Chabert pulls down per movie, but tacking on some fun travel seems like a great perk.

This one takes place in Hawaii.  So, big props to everyone involved who managed to be in a movie about Hawaii that is mostly about surfing and eating.  If this is a thing, sign me up.

Chabert plays a chef - keeping in line with Hallmark's insistence that heroines have careers that seem kind of arty - who gets mad at her boyfriend/ boss (a terrible combo) after he takes credit for her dishes.  Wisely, she dashes off to her Aunt's amazing place in Hawaii.  

There, we meet Chabert's soon-to-be love interest, played by 1% BMI fellow Ektor Rivera as "Ben".  Ben is a broody fellow who gave up surfing and now runs a surf shop and refuses to button his shirts.  Good for him.  

After a friction-ful first encounter, Chabert hires Ben to teach her to surf.  Meanwhile, she gets wrapped up with Ben's brother, a fellow chef, in a sort of Great British Bakeoff inspired contest.  It seems that the judges are actual people using their real names in the movie.  I don't know who they are*.  No one has ever accused me of knowing anything about food or Hawaii.

Weirdly, this is the last credit I can find for the guy who plays the brother, one Omar Bustamante, who is lightyears better than most of the rest of the cast.  He's fun, he has the storyline I was oddly invested in, and if the character weren't gay, would be the far more obvious choice for Chabert's romantic inclinations.

The love interest has a tragic back story that somehow informs why he doesn't surf anymore and allows him to be moody, but in an appealing way for the audience.  Dead wife.

This movie made me never want to try to surf, but it did make me want Puerto Rican food, which is odd for Hawaii.  But, yeah, the movie's male leads are Puerto Rican, and the movie informs us that Puerto Rico had a big impact on Hawaii, which I did not know. TIL, yadda yadda.  But that just left me wondering if this was supposed to be filmed in Puerto Rico, but wasn't for whatever reason.  Surely people surf somewhere around the beaches of Puerto Rico.

Anyway - I watch these while doing other things, so I do know it ended with everyone pretty happy and an unlikely scenario for all of the characters, but whatever.  

I am curious if Chabert just dropped a big "no" regarding wearing a regular ol' swimsuit for the surfing scenes, because she shows up in a light wetsuit and other fairly modest garb.  Possible this was just her character, but I don't think I would have thought about it except they make a big deal talking about it and that she was dumb for wearing it.  And then she keeps wearing similar things.

She does learn the zen of surfing, which is supposed to be her getting her groove back.  Also, she Crocodile Dundee's him before he can go walkabout.

I think I need a rubric if I'm going to start going all in on this.  If you have more categories, pitch them.

Job:  Chef

Location of story:  Hawaii

new skill:  surfing

Job of Man:  Surf instructor/ surfer/ surf shop proprietor

Goes to/ Returns to:   Goes to

Event:  Cooking show

*apparently one of them is a former spouse of Billy Joel, who was apparently marrying children based on their relative ages