Watched: 01/25/2025
Format: Hallmark
Viewing: First
Director: Peter Benson
Location of story: North Carolina
new skill: parenting
Job of Man: basketball coach/ horsebarn attendant
Goes to/ Returns to: Returns to
Event: funeral? bake sale? middle school dance?
Food: Baked goods - especially scones
My first foray into a full Hallmark tragedy/ drama! Also, I note Chabert co-wrote this one, so good for you, Lacey!
If I tipped my hat to Lacey Chabert milking Hallmark for nice vacations when discussing the Hawaii movie, I must also salute Hallmark for using the same Canadian locations and insisting they're various parts of the US with about ten seconds of establishing shots purchased from some establishing shot clearing house. And then going hard with the movie's branding around the supposed location while remaining very non-specific about how this is, say, North Carolina and why it matters.
But, yeah, this same high school was used for Three Wiser Men and a Boy released this Christmas. Kimberley Sustad and Lacey Chabert are like ships in the night, passing through the halls of this school.
In Sweet Carolina (2021), Chabert is a successful marketing exec from New Hope, North Carolina (the titular sweet Carolina, so suck it South Carolina. You salty.). After introducing her family in Canada North Carolina, the film immediately kills off her sister and brother-in-law, and during Chabert's trip home, she learns her sister named her, a career-driven-city-gal, as the guardian for her children.
Chabert decides to take on the challenge, moving into her sister's house and trying to take care of the kids with the help of her parents and brother. Meanwhile, her high school boyfriend (Hallmark staple Tyler Hynes) has moved back to town already and is her niece's basketball coach/ a horse guy. Her niece is a nice, maybe-12-year-old-kid (I don't know anything about children*), and her nephew is curiously a 14-year-old who is dressed and coiffed to look like he's 55. It is the weirdest thing. He's also just mad about everything. But, realistically, annoyingly plays his guitar to tune everyone out.
So, yeah, this is a movie less about a meet-cute and romantic foibles than it is about a family angrily working through grief and transition to a new phase. I mean, there's no good way to work through grief. But for some reason everyone in Chabert's family is like "get out, Lacey. Go back to New York. You're out of your depth here!" like she's some stranger moving in on the family. It posits that a 30-something woman can't push down the little lever on a toaster without disaster. And, look, parenting is so hard, I don't do it (I don't have kids, I don't ignore my non-existent kids. I'm the Funcle who drops in, goofs around for two hours, and then leaves.). But this is a portrait of a family that seems like it has a lot of cracks exposed by the tragedy, and the movie kinda nerfs the whole thing - because Hallmark, I guess.**
While watching this, did I have a small panic attack at the thought of having to tap in and raise my niece and nephew? Yes.
For a movie about a family working through a post-tragedy world, Hallmark did okay-ish. Chabert manages to get to actually act a bit. For example - when we see her learning her sister died. You actually get a sense of the grieving process and are reminded more can be asked of these actors than just standing there and smiling at Man.
While I'm glad all of these actors get paid for their craft, I do wonder sometimes how Hallmark stars feel about not getting pushed creatively as Hallmark's demographic prefers their narratives are not, shall we say, challenging. So to see actual moments, like we're watching a regular ol' film, and not someone assuring you that Christmas is magic or stopping to bake, is really something else. All of this paragraph is a very long way of saying, this viewer is not shocked Lacey Chabert wrote some scenes for herself to show some humanity and range. And did well by them.
Unfortunately, this is Hallmark and the movie can't help itself. The boy's rage at Chabert feels unfounded and then evaporates with just as little motivation. Chabert's dad, played by 1980's TV staple Gregory Harrison, refuses to just sit down and talk through logistics and his concerns, and instead just snipes at her - like, he is mean. Weirdly, maybe unforgivably mean.
People in this movie say the kind of stuff that if someone you loved said it, it would haunt you that they said something like this so casually. And maybe people really do this? But it just feels like her whole family decides to just dump on our hero for no reason for stepping up.
The brother has a goofy storyline about wanting to secretly drop his tech career to be a baker, which almost feels like a coming out sequence which made me wonder what happened here. But, also, he's afraid his dad won't like him working in food, when his dad literally owns a family restaurant. I did not understand.
The romance is Hallmark perfunctory, and barely there. But does provide the movie's one bit of wackiness and Tyler Hynes in a Keith Urban inspired hair-don't. And he's doing some growly southern accent that is kinda there. He's fine. I'm being mean.
But I'm not really clear on what happened at the end of the movie. Chabert commits to staying but seems jobless? Not that it matters... but usually there's some "oh, I will now go do X that somehow uses my skillz" at the end. Here, Chabert uses her marketing powers of rebranding to walk around saying "with a little twist, everything is hunky dory", which is kind of nice, but also... doesn't pay. So I missed something.
Ironically, there's a scene wherein Chabert is Zooming into a work meeting and has to leave to pick-up her kids from school, and it being a major deal. And I can tell you by 2021, with COVID and everything else going on, we all learned to let that @#$% go. If your meeting is running long and someone needs to get their kid, you don't throw a fit. But maybe this was filmed prior to lockdown?
And, they have a whole sequence about not plugging too many appliances into "this old house", but the house is clearly new build and you can see outlets everywhere. But this is a pretty SOP issue with Hallmark, where they just don't bother to change the script even when the actual location doesn't match the words coming out of people's mouths describing, like someone just shrugs and says "we did our best".
I have also now seen poor Peter Benson in two Hallmark movies where he plays the unsympathetic boyfriend who must be dumped so the woman can move on to her real romance. And this guy sure nails "Please Dump Me". So either he's a good actor, or this poor man IRL.
It is hard to have a happy ending to a movie about people dealing with loss. Lacey's PR gift is to re-brand things, and she manages to rebrand loss and pain as happy memories. Which, you know, not the worst thing. But that tag line on the poster of "a family's loss becomes an unexpected gift" is sure a weird way to put "Chabert finds she's happier back home after her sister dies and she's forced to give up the world of marketing".
I think it may be pointless to talk about these movies without discussing what these movies are for. And most of the time, I'd say "it's a light romance to put on while someone does knitting or plays with their cat". You can see attractive people walking around in simple-to-understand and non-challenging locations. It is very, very simple. They have certain ideas about romance/ marriage being THE goal in life (which is fine but debatable). They are desperate for an uncomplicated life, and that is why they often side-eye city living. After all, the city is complex and your family may not be there to dole out sage advice in the third act. But the jobs in the city are not elevated versions of stuff you do already, like cooking or baking.
We'll delve more into these factors as we progress throughout the year.
*or anyone, really
**Reddit tells me that there's a prior attempt at a drama with similarly weepy features from a year before that goes hard on tragedy, and online people seemed kind of freaked out by it
No comments:
Post a Comment