Watched: 02/04/2025
Format: Hallmark
Viewing: First
Director: Jonathan Wright
new skill: making chocolate/ chatting too much with royalty
Man: Will Kemp
Job of Man: failing chocolatier
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Bruges, Belgium
Event: chocolate tasting at palace/ royal ball
Food: guys, you're not gonna believe it... chocolate
Firstly, salute to Chabert for getting to knock around Bruges for however long this took to film. Well done.
This is a movie about a woman who flies all the way to Bruges to tour of the city, and spends her whole trip working for free in a chocolate shop that has no customers.
The start of the movie does nothing to explain what Chabert does for a living, and we're well past the half-way mark when she tells someone she's a food stylist for advertising and the like. Magazine covers get brought up before I finally figured it out.
What we do know is that she starts the movie with the world's least interested boyfriend who - in a completely whackadoo scene in which he looks like he has a bomb strapped to him and must dump her in under a minute or the whole place explodes - ditches Chabert for a promotion and a quick move to Albany. This leaves her with airline tickets and a trip she's already booked, wherein she is to tour Bruges and all the chocolate shops.
First: I knew nothing about Bruges other than I one saw that Collin Farrell movie. Is it full of chocolate? Is Belgium? A quick trip to Google tells me: yes. They are coo-coo for cocoa in Bruges. I guess I'd heard of Belgian Chocolate, but as I am no foodie, if I hear the word's "Belgian Chocolate" I tend to think of it the way one might "French Fries". Ie: I don't think about it at all.
Second: While not a main character, there is a prince. And this was the first time I wondered if Belgium had bothered with a monarchy since WWII. The answer is: yes, they do have a Belgian Royal Family. They seem nice.
Chabert decamps to what she refers to once or twice as an "Inn" but this is clearly a large, fancy house converted to a hotel, but that is not how we script a Hallmark movie. Apparently the word "hotel" is not allowed. It is an Inn, Chalet, or something like that.
She meets the hotelier who will be her de facto friend/ sounding board/ and, as it turns out, maybe an absolute psychopath who is entirely too interested in her guest's love life.
Man is a local chocolatier, who runs a shop where Chabert shows up with her tour group. They are to make chocolate under his supervision. Things go off the rails when Chabert refuses to follow directions and does a thing no human has ever done, and that's mix vanilla with orange. Oh, wait. That's a Dreamsicle. Why Man cares, I don't know. But he does. And, of course, she basically dumps on three generations of his family's recipes by refusing to just do the thing. Why vanilla is there, I don't know. Rather than everyone being right here, I think everyone is wrong.
Chabert finds out that the assistant is very pregnant and needs to be on bed-rest, and so taps in for the duration of her stay.
Our plot kicks in as we learn The Prince of Belgium is getting married, and as part of his nuptials, he and his fiancé are gong to have a chocolate contest, and whomever wins will be named Royal Chocolatier.
Is this stupid? Maybe? Not really? It's goofy but isn't royalty in the 21st century goofy? It does provide us with stakes, and I have no idea what royal people actually do. But it also causes Man and Chabert to team up and begin researching how to make Belgium's best chocolate, so that they will earn the title.
Along the way, researching "love" so they know what to put in their chocolate (I don't write these, I report them), we find out Chabert doesn't want to be a food stylist, she wants to open a cupcake shop. And she likes to use Cherry Cola in her chocolate mix.
Guys... guys... guess what she puts in the final chocolate?
Also, there's always a point in these movies where our heroine silently makes the decision "I'm gonna @#$% this guy" and this one occurs on a river boat. Look for it.
We do find out that Man's shop is failing. After multiple generations, no one comes in this charming shop anymore - which we will see, because 50% of this movie happens in this store and we never see anyone shopping. This follows the Hallmark rule that the characters always live in a sort of near-Omega Man environment where there's few people, and all of the supporting characters know each other. But, yes, our Yin-Yang is that he won't change even in the face of disaster, and she refuses to stick to recipes.*
This movie has a twist in that there's a rival! Both for Chabert's affections (despite the fact the dude looks like a used brillo pad that smokes two packs a day) and for Chocolate supremacy.
The hotelier is absolutely nuts for making sure Chabert is going to hook up with Man. I'm surprised she's not in some scenes peeking through windows and giggling to herself whilst watching our leads. She is played by Canadian actor/ producer Brittany Bristow, who is in a ton of these and is making them her living (and it seems to be the family business).
Man is Will Kemp, a British guy who does not mess around trying to sound Belgian. He's actually an okay actor, I think. And has bonus points from me, because IMDB tells me he played The Wolf Man in Van Helsing.
Chabert's character's one oddball Hallmark quirk is that she's obsessed with how her grandparents met, and their romance, which is... a choice. She wanders around with a heart-shaped chocolate box stuffed with pictures and letters, and will just sit in public spaces - which Jamie wisely pointed out is her begging someone to ask her about the box of letters.
The movie ends with them winning (spoilers) and a bit of misunderstanding, which leads us to both (a) Chabert telling the rival-guy to take a hike and (b) a way to make sure we see Chabert at the Royal Ball at the same time as Man, revealing her in Final Gown Form. They then proceed to fully make-out in the middle of the Ball. I am not kidding. It's uncomfortable. But she does look smashing.
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| apparently the award for being best Chocolate Guy is part of a bird |
This movie never suffers from "but that's not how a normal thing works" that can plague these movies. It's a tighter script with flights of fancy. Adding an actual rival shouldn't feel this dynamic, but here we are.
Maybe the biggest nod to the fact that someone put in a little effort with this script is that the main love story, such as it is, as well as their joint approaches to flavor, intertwine with what we know about the royals, and that is what wins the day at the chocolate contest. Someone said "hey, maybe things we learn along the way should matter in the finale", and that feels like more thought than often gets put into these.
What kind of knocks the piers out from under that whole structure is that the secret flavor in their chocolate is Cherry Cola, which feels a wee bit odd for someone with a princely palette, but what do I know? Maybe he also loves Doing the Dew?
But, yeah, she throws away her lucrative Manhattan-based food stylist job to move to Bruges and work in a failing chocolate shop. Which will likely put Petra the Pregnant Chocolatier out of work. The End.
I think at this point it's fair to ask: is Chabert a good actor?
I expect we'll keep asking these questions as we go along. But I think the answer to the first question is: Yes, Chabert is actually a pretty good actor.
It's important to remember that most of these movies have maybe 2-3 week shoot schedules, and I expect production is brutal. From what I glean, the machine is built around the same schedule as shooting 2 episodes of hour-long TV. So, is Chabert getting rehearsal time? Probably not. She's wandering onto set with a script and full awareness of the expectations of the Hallmark audience and executives. Smile real big, no sudden movements.
So, working within those limitations, we see what happens with some actors, and maybe that's our real tell. Most of the main talent are... not great. Utterly forgettable faces who are doing their best to be pleasant. Chabert is one of a small group of current Hallmark stars who *feels* like a star when she's on screen, not like "interchangeable woman". Or even "oh, yikes, that one" when you're all in during the Yuletide 1/3rd of the year.
But mostly they can drop her into any scenario and it doesn't feel like a weird fit, and that's not nothing. Single mother moved back home? Sure. Food scientist who wants to run around New York? You bet. Sure, the scenarios are limited, but you need a utility player who can be buyable and actually play the scenes where maybe they aren't just smiling and nodding.
What would a Meryl Streep be like here? Well, I don't know that we'll ever know that. I would love to see that happen, but I think the last time we had Glenn Close in a Hallmark movie was in1991 on Hallmark Hall of Fame on national television doing Sarah, Plain and Tall.
I do think straying from Hallmark may be in order for us here at The Signal Watch to assess Chabert's acting chops, but we liked her in Black Christmas when we watched it this last holiday season - and she was playing someone very not-Hallmark.
*which is nonsense. You can improvise while cooking, but baking is more or less science. You have to really know what everything in a bake recipe does and what the consequences are for changing it before you start free-styling. Otherwise, you just get lousy baked goods.
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