It Was On Watch: His and Hers (2024)

Watched:  01/03/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Linda Lisa Hayter

Jamie had this on while I was working on my End-of-Year posts, and it is a movie.  And I guess I watched it.

I wasn't going to write up His & Hers (2024), because it kind of broke my rule for "I was engaged with the movie" rather than "I was on my laptop", but it was designed to be semi-watched, so semi-watch it I did.  Plus, Jamie told me to write it up.  So.

This is a sort of legal romantic dramedy that is deeply untethered from reality, and the whole time you're watching it, you sort of think "this was not the original version of this script.  This has been hollowed out to be a Hallmark film".  

The basic concept is that Chabert plays a civil attorney who does *not* practice family law, but is married to a divorce attorney.  Two reality TV stars have a public break-up, and the husband winds up with Chabert's husband (Hallmark stalwart Brennan Elliot) as his attorney, and because of reasons, Chabert is asked to represent the reality TV wife.  Elliot has to do it because it's his ticket to becoming partner, and Chabert owes her boss for sentimental reasons.

While that set-up alone is a challenge for the audience, I *think* the point of the movie is that Chabert and Elliot are supposed to develop difficulties in their marriage because they're on opposite sides of the case.  But that doesn't happen (nor would it be particularly funny if it did happen).  Things crop up, and they disagree, and then they work through it.  Over and over.  It doesn't just deflate the tension of the film, it makes you wonder where the hell this is going, when (spoilers in rest of post) you figure out immediately all of this was staged by the clients because these are reality TV people.  

We're told in the finale that there were secret cameras everywhere, with the agreement of the law offices, and only our stars don't know they were being recorded.  

And...  my god, the lawsuits.  That's all I could think about was how this movie should have been about the legal fallout of the finale's pat little ending and two Manhattan attorneys on their way up finding out they'd been recorded for television without their consent in attorney/ client meetings.  And given the dirt they had on their clients, all the money they could have happily taken from everyone.

We rolled into the movie because I guess, after 20-odd movies of Christmas and Strudelfest, we were curious what Hallmark does when it's not doing Christmas movies or showing reruns of Golden Girls and The Waltons.  And the answer is - kinda iffy romcoms.

The thing is, I can see this as a big-screen option in the mid-90's with name actors playing the main roles and character actors in support roles.  Polish it up, provide some uncomfortable jokes that would age badly in there, and bring our attorneys to near divorce themselves, and then have the storybook ending.  And in this version, we never get there.  They just keep getting along.

What's odd is, small things poke out that made me wonder.  A couple of examples.  

Like - there's a sequence where the attorneys see background checks run on them, and find out Chabert was previously married - which her husband didn't know - and he was in jail, which she didn't know.  And those seem like... fairly big things one would disclose - and you can see that as the tipping point in a different movie, but here it's treated like finding out your spouse ate all the Oreos.

There's also a scene in which Chabert puts on a tight dress given to her by her client, and...  that should mean something?  Like - is she changing/ being changed by her client?  Does her husband want her to wear tight dresses?  Was he previously bothered by the fact they both only wear suits?  But, no.  It just happens.  

In the end, the highly-shady and mostly illegal "it's all okay if it's for Reality TV" ending makes everyone else into villains, and our characters only learn that they should open their own practice.  And have a baby.  Which seems like terrible timing.

So, yeah, I can't tell if this was half-done when it went before cameras, was cut up in editing, or was cut up to be a Hallmark movie.

Credit to the two people playing the Reality TV actors, who were both given free reign to play absolute asshats.