Showing posts with label chabert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chabert. Show all posts

Friday, February 21, 2025

Chabert Watch! The Dancing Detective - a Deadly Tango (2023)





Watched:  02/20/2025
Format:  Hallmark/ Amazon
Viewing:  First
Director:  Stefan Scaini

Job:  Police detective
new skill:  ballroom dancing
Man: Will Kemp
Job of Man: dance instructor
Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Malta
Event:  Dance competition
Food:  cocktails

This movie is bonkers.  

You will never follow the premise, because it is baffling and exists to making the central conceit of the title happen - that a detective will dance!

For reasons, The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango (2023) is shot in Malta, a place of which I am mostly uninformed, but makes Malta seem lovely, and I'd love to see it.  It's modern, but retained its architecture, features old-world streets and buildings, and many pleasantly snoozing cats. But also because it's Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean, the sun is brutal and I pity the DP.

As a Maltese-shot film, a lot of the talent in the movie is local.  All the characters sport very Anglo-sounding names while the actors mostly wrestle down a range of accents from Maltese, to multi-lingual-kinda-Spanish to Slovenian.  

The film basically exists to exploit the fact that Will Kemp, one of the Hallmark A-Listers, has a background in dance.  Lacey Chabert, who is the co-star, does not.  Chabert and Kemp are both Executive Producers on this movie, and I cannot imagine what the business dealings at Hallmark are actually like, as this is also a Bristow produced movie, like the Safari movie we caught the other day.  Globetrotters, these Bristows.

The set-up:  a suave CEO dies suddenly - and while no one else sees it but us, the audience, we know he was poisoned by someone dressed as a ninja.  It turns out he's the CEO of a company like the Arthur Murray Dance Company, which is actually global (I didn't realize Arthur Murray still existed until last year when I noticed a studio next to a restaurant where I sometimes meet my folks).  So, this is high stakes!  Someone is bumping off CEOs!  Of dance!

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Chabert Watch! Love on Safari (2018)




Watched:  02/18/2025
Format:  DVD
Viewing:  First
Director:  Leif Bristow

Job: Web designer for corporations
new skill:  looking at giraffes, deus ex machina identification
Man: Jon Cor
Job of Man: Safari ranger
Goes to/ Returns to:  goes to South Africa
Event:  Birthday for Lacey
Food:  Cookies


First of all, Brad sucks.  

Brad is Chabert's City Man, and he prides himself on loving spreadsheets.  That's fine.  I love to spend time in Google Sheets, too.  But that and misogyny are his whole personality.  He's a gigantic tool, and we're supposed to dislike him, and, hey... mission accomplished.

Chabert plays a web developer from Chicago.  In the way that only seems to happen in movies, when a great-uncle she hasn't seen in 20 years dies, Chabert inherits a whole frikkin' animal reserve and lodge in South Africa and is now responsible for miles of bushland, the animals upon it, and the people employed by the reserve.  All without a letter or phone call from the uncle forewarning her of his plans.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent/ Riddle Me Dead (2021)




Watched:  02/14/2025
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Peter Benson/ David Winning

Job: Puzzle Maker and Police Investigation Meddler
new skill:  complete knowledge of plant scientific names/ riddle show participant
Man: Brennan Elliot
Job of Man: Detective
Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC
Event:  canceled puzzle contest w/ a computer, taping of a game show
Food:  Italian cooking made by supporting characters/ some diner food

I guess I should mention, Jamie was digging these movies a bit.  Her reason, and I agree, is that they're not structured like a Christmas film or romcom, and the two leads bounce off each other very well.  It's a refreshing change.

Anyway - we went ahead and knocked these two out.  You're welcome.  

I will note - the audio was pretty bad in these two movies.  I can't say what happened, but there were garbled lines, the echo of shooting on location mixed with ADR. Wind.  It was all over the place.  

With two years since our last movies, we have some new supporting cast, and we're given some lines about what happened to the former colleagues.  

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver (2019)

you'd think the prop would indicate this movie is more fun than it is



Watched 02/10/2025
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Jonathan Wright

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler
new skill:  close-up magic
Man: Brennan Elliot
Job of Man: Detective
Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC
Event:  Birthday at Magic Manor
Food:  I don't think there was any food


In a move that makes total sense from a cost-savings perspective, Lacey Chabert and Brennan Elliot (as Detective Man) return for a third installment in the Crossword Mysteries series - a series which was clearly shot all in one big sprint for these three installments.  Chabert has the same hair, and, occasionally, the same jacket.  The sets for the police office and the newspaper are the same, and the cast remains intact-ish.  

This time, the only tie to a crossword puzzle is that - in order to create a single day's crossword puzzle, Chabert has enrolled in weeks of magic classes at an approximation of LA's Magic Castle.  I do not know if New York has one of these.*  

It is a crazy reason for Chabert to be on site, but I guess it's weird Jessica Fletcher was always floating around when someone dropped dead 23x a year.

Monday, February 10, 2025

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Proposing Murder (2019)



Watched 02/08/2025
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Don McCutcheon

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler
new skill:  Escaping from enclosed spaces
Man: Brennan Elliot
Job of Man: Detective
Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC
Event:  None, really
Food: you know, I don't think they stop to eat in this movie


If I was concerned this was going to be a series of movies about crimes being hidden in crossword puzzles, I needn't have worried.  Instead, the crossword tie-in here is that the victim is a friend of Chabert who (prior to checking out involuntarily) asks Lacey to hide his marriage proposal in the Sunday puzzle.  A few days later (that very Sunday!), he manages to gets murdered.  

Rather than a crossword housing the mystery, there's a whole thing about cryptography, WWII codes and a hidden treasure.  It's not bad.  The idea here is that Chabert's character is naturally adept at solving puzzles and codes, as well as driven to do so, exploiting her interns along the way - in pursuit of justice!

Detective Man is assigned to the case, and immediately he and Chabert cross paths.  Flirty paths, with meaningful glances.

Our victim, Chabert's platonic college pal, had just received tenure at College University, and was getting engaged to a woman he met a year ago.  She's a chef with access to pointy knives.  In addition to the fiancĂ©, other possible suspects pop up, like a librarian, a faculty member, an antiquarian and an ex who is a surgeon.

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Chabert Watch/ Forgot to Mention It Watch: Moonlight in Vermont (2017)




Watched: 02/04/2025 
Format: Hallmark 
Viewing: First 
Director: Jonathan Wright 

Job: Manhattan-based Realtor
new skill: talking to peasants
Man: Carlo Marks
Job of Man: Chef at B'n'B
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Vermont
Event: MapleFest/ MapleFest ball or some nonsense
Food: Maple syrup


I watched this in January, before I committed to the Chabert-a-thon, and forgot about it immediately after watching it, but saw it pass by on Hallmark and was like "oh, right.  That one."

This movie was bad and I didn't like it.  There are two male leads, and both characters are terrible humans who suck.  The jury is out on what kind of human Chabert's character is, but she's dressed very smartly.

Chabert plays a born-and-raised Manhattanite who is dating a Manhattan guy who sucks.  They break up because she works too much/ is completely inconsiderate of her boyfriend over and over, apparently.

Mad that she's been dumped, she joins with best-pal Fiona Vroom, and they go to her father's BnB in Vermont at the height of MapleFest.  AND WHO AMONG US HASN'T FOUND LOVE AT MAPLEFEST?

Her father had been a big-deal real estate guy in NYC, but after Chabert's mother passed has slowed down and re-married to Rebecca Staab (who this viewer knows from her role as a seductress of older, but viable gents on Superman and Lois).  It turns out Chabert and her father have some tension about him selling the family apartment after her mother's passing, and leaving town to live in Vermont.  She's kind of mean about it to him, but they've saved any discussion of this gigantic topic for the movie instead of when it happened.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Chabert Valentine's Watch: Love, Romance and Chocolate (2019)




Watched:  02/04/2025
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Jonathan Wright

Job: Food Stylist for magazines shoots?
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.

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Valentine Chabert Watch: An Unexpected Valentine (2025)

I am profoundly upset by how this is not the color, make or model of the car in the movie


Watched:  02/01/2025
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First

Job: Chocolate scientist 
new skill: picking up Lyft drivers
Man: Robert Buckley
Job of Man: Lyft driver/ mediocre artistic photographer
Goes to/ Returns to: just drives in circles, really
Event: product reveal gala?/ gallery show
Food:  baked goods and peanut butter chocolate cookies


This is a movie about a woman who is so lonely on Valentine's Day, she sleeps with her Lyft driver.

I'm sorry, you can dress it up any way you want, but that's what this movie is about, and I'm okay with it.

We watched this movie on a slight delay during its broadcast premier as Hallmark pivots to a two week extravaganza hoping people can believe Valentine's Day, the worst holiday, is as big a deal to people as Christmas, which is a lie, Hallmark.  A terrible lie.

In this movie, which has a script that needed several more passes and major issues with what we like to call "pacing" in the movie-blogging biz, Chabert plays a New York City-based food science person who specializes in chocolate (please remember the chocolate detail).  

I feel like the script was written by AI or a MadLib, because it does follow some oddly specific Hallmark tropes but then refuses to make sense.

Chabert's chocolate scientist starts the movie, as happens A LOT in Hallmark movies, giving a speech to colleagues around a table about their corporation's widget of choice.  In all Hallmark movies, often in Chabert movies, people are blown over by the set-up of a lukewarm corporate presentation explaining the hero's job and that she is good at it.  Her colleagues and bosses will lose their minds and offer promises of better jobs.  A rich fantasy.

In this case, I would believe the script is written by AI as the product Chabert is showing off is: a chocolate purse.  

Friday, January 31, 2025

Chabert-a-Thon: My Secret Valentine (2018)

Chabert and Walker demo how much wine you'll wish you had on hand before you start the movie


Watched:  01/30/2025
Format:  Hallmark+
Viewing:  First
Director:  Bradley Walsh

Job: Restaurant Manager/ Winery heiress
Location of story: somewhere near Portland, Oregon
new skill: None?
Man: Andrew W. Walker
Job of Man:  Acquisitions for a wine distribution company
Goes to/ Returns to: Returns to
Event:  Valentine's Wine and Food Fest
Food:  wine


First of all, congrats to Lacey Chabert who just signed an exclusive deal with Hallmark which will include movies, more of her unscripted show 'Celebrations', and a product line in Hallmark stores.  We'll, of course, be delving into what this means and what products at Hallmark shops carry Ms. Chabert's stamp of approval.  

At the same time, she's also now the face of Purity skin cleanser. Which, yes, that makes sense. 

On to WineFest.

Look, this movie was maybe not very good.  It was the sort of movie where nothing works the way things work in real life, and it feels like no one involved could be bothered to learn how those things work despite the fact Google was about 18 years into its existence by the time this movie came out.

Chabert's father calls her to come home because he has news for her, and after luring her home and away from work, he chooses to refuse to tell her the news until he's at dinner with his full staff.  At which point- he springs the very personal information about his decisions to retire and maybe sell the family name, land, house, cabin, business, etc...  He does this without once speaking to his only child and heir to the family business.  

In any other movie, this would suggest a deeply broken relationship.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Chabert-a-Thon Trilogy Watch: "All of My Heart", "AoMH: Inn Love" and "AoMH: The Wedding" (2015, 2017, 2018)





Watched:  Finished the third one on 01/29/2025
Format:  Amazon
Viewing:  First for all three
Director:  Peter DeLuise, Terry Ingram x2

Job: BnB owner
Location of story: Pennsylvania?
new skill: running a BnB/ starting a bakery business
Man:  Brennan Elliot
Job of Man: Wall Street Deal Maker/ Goat Herd/ Handy Man
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes To
Event: None/ None/ Wedding
Food: Baked goods.  My God, so many baked goods


Well, this was roughly 4.5 hours spent on a very long walk.

The All of My Heart trilogy maybe doesn't need to exist, and, yet, it does.  Why?  I do not know.  Was the original so successful The People demanded more?  Internet sleuthing tells me that, yes, people loved the first one so much, Hallmark had to cook up sequels.

The series fulfills the fantasy (by someone, absolutely not me) of owning and operating a Bed and Breakfast in the country, where everyone tells you that you are good at baking.  This is clearly a dream of many.

It is also a Hallmark movie series that never says it out loud, but absolutely implies, our leads are living in sin for the equivalent of 2 out of 3 movies.  

As a bonus, it features TV luminary Ed Asner for absolutely no reason, but he's in all three movies as The Wise Old Man.

After finishing some other Chabert movie (I think the Hawaii movie), I was rolled into All of My Heart (2015).  In this one, Chabert plays a caterer who inherits *half* of a house, and sees the possibility to make her dream of opening a BnB in leaf-peeper country a reality.  Frequent Chabert collab Brennan Elliot shows up as the other inheritee, and plays a hard-nosed Wall Street guy who just wants to get half the proceeds of the house's sale.  If she can buy him out, great.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Chabert Watch: Sweet Carolina (2021)





Watched:  01/25/2025
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Peter Benson


Job: Marketing VP
Location of story:  North Carolina
new skill: parenting
Man:  Tyler Hynes
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 Canadian 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.   

Thursday, January 23, 2025

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.  

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Chabert Lifetime Noir Watch: Imaginary Friend (2012)




Watched:  01/19/2025
Format:  Amazon
Viewing:  First
Director:  Richard Gabai

After running through something like 10 Lacey Chabert movies during the holiday season, Amazon is now offering up additional Chabert content - which has not helped when I pondered "what if I drove everyone nuts by making 2025 the year I watch and discuss *every* Lacey Chabert movie?"  Because, friends, she has 183 credits already, and is, like, 42.  That's not 183 movies - she's voiced several cartoons (including Supergirl on Harley Quinn), and been on a few TV series.  A glance at her IMDB suggests she's doing like 10-12 projects every year - and a heap of those are 90 minute TV movies.

Anyway - I'm not going to cover all of that.  But I'm also not going to not do it.  Who else will be the chronicler of Lacey Chabert's career arc?

Imaginary Fried (2012) is about eight years after Mean Girls.  It's a Lifetime movie, and part of the "someone close to me is trying to kill me" fantasy that characterized a lot of Lifetime's programming at one point.  Lifetime is a weird bastion of noirish programming that gets overlooked, but if these movies were black and white and the characters spoke with Mid-Atlantic accents, we'd just shrug and include them in the category as maybe B's.

Monday, January 6, 2025

Doc Watch: Super/Man - The Christopher Reeve Story (2024)



Watched:  01/06/2025
Format:  Max
Viewing:  First
Director(s):  Ian BonhĂ´te & Peter Ettedgui

Well, I'd been avoiding this doc for a bit because I know more about Christopher and Dana Reeve than the average bear, and I knew it was gonna break me.  And, it did, but I think my certainty that I was going to be destroyed kind of helped prep me for the film.  (YMMV re: squirting real tears during this doc)

Look, one of my earliest memories is seeing Superman: The Movie in the theater.  And then seeing Superman II and III in the theater?  Yes.  I absolutely remember both.  

I'm not alone in being of a certain era and Christopher Reeve meaning a lot to us as our Clark Kent and Superman.  Eagle-eyed readers will note the name of this site is a Superman reference, and Superman is kind of a thing for me.  I take the Superman films starring Reeve very seriously and will be happy to bore you talking about them anytime.

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.

Friday, January 3, 2025

The Signal Watch Presents: Favorite Movies of 2024





This is part three of my yearly rundown of the movies of the prior year.  



Before you ask me "Did you watch (name of movie)?", you can check this handy spreadsheet for what I watched and when.

So, here's the ground rules (before y'all start complaining):

These are The Best movies *to me*.  Thus, they were my favorite movies in 2024.  These used to be The Krypto Awards, but I got tired of photoshopping pictures of Krypto.

I'm not going to pretend that liking movies isn't subjective and/ or that something is objectively "the best".  This is not a timed foot-race with precision cameras.  What you see below is just what I liked, and, pals, what I think doesn't matter to anyone but me, so cool your jets.

These are movies I saw for the first time in 2024.  It doesn't mean the movies were released in 2024.  Watching only new movies is for chumps and dilettantes.  New releases are good, but my FOMO for being part of a cultural moment around a movie is non-existent in 2024.

Now, this year's list is not going to be mind-boggling.  I went down a path of seeking out movies that are considered classics and remain well known and well-liked.  And I did this across a few genres.  So, if you saw me saying "I think this Orson Welles is onto something..." you may be right in guessing that I am not breaking new ground here.

Thursday, December 26, 2024

What Did I Just Do? A Holidays 2024 Viewing ReCap in Hallmark and Chabert

It was a Chabertmas


In 2024, Jamie and I just decided we were bailing on our usual annual viewing options and going to try to watch new-to-us movies, and - at some point - decided we were going to just watch the offerings that were the lightest, most-conflict-averse films we could dig up.

This didn't always work out.  We did watch Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, which was nothing but conflict.  And I watched the 2006 remake of Black Christmas.  

We started off watching an older Alicia Witt movie the weekend before Thanksgiving, and attending a screening of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever the next night. 

I will admit - I think there's probably two or three movies on here we could probably add, but I was kind of in and out of the movies, and so I'm not going to.  I'm sure you'll be fine.  But the grand total of what I want to claim is that we watched 24 Holiday movies in the Holiday Season, 2024.  

Hallmark Holiday Watch Bonus Round - 3 movies I kinda watched



Christmas at Castle Hart
Watched:  12/?/2024
Format:  Amazon?
Viewing:  First
Director:  Stefan Scaini

Some Hallmark movies I just put on, and they played and I didn't pay them much attention as I did other things.  In the past, I generally didn't even bother with mentioning them or doing a write-up with these, but I feel like I'm doing everyone a disservice if I do that to you good people here.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Chabertmas: Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe (2018)




Watched:  12/23/2024
Format:  Amazon/ Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Don McBrearty


I dunno.  Chabert is maybe an investment banker in NYC.  She comes home to help her mom run a Christmas charity event in the most persnickety version of charity events that seems way too high stakes for something like this - but I also know in real rich people land, there's probably some reality here.

Chabert's colleagues wait until she's gone to also try to poach all of her clients and run her out even though she's a partner, which means - yikes.  What a terrible place she's working.  

She runs into her old high school Debate Club sparring partner, who is now running a restaurant.

Anyway, it kind of writes itself.  

I have no idea what it had to do with Pride and Prejudice other than Chabert's character's name is "Darcy".



Saturday, December 21, 2024

Chabert Holiday Watch: A Wish For Christmas (2016)




Watched:  12/21/2024
Format:  Amazon streaming
Viewing:  At least second
Director:  Christie Will Wolf

In addition to riding into the sunset on Hallmark-type Christmas movies, I'm also trying to make my way through the Chabert Hallmark catalog.  I mean - why not?

So, apparently I'd seen this movie before about five years ago.  I'd forgotten because apparently I watched it when I had the flu after a work trip (I very much remember being sick).

In this movie, Santa uses his fantastical powers to bestow Lacey Chabert with her Christmas wish of courage.  This is coupled with a reckless sense of agency and a Zoom-In-Dolly-Out effect familiar to fans of the movie Jaws.  

I don't have much to add to the post I linked to above.  

I will mention that the lead is only two years younger than the woman playing his aunt, and I don't know why on earth Hallmark does this.  Surely they could have dug up an actress who didn't look right as a love interest for our lead.  I would guess the mom is less than a decade older that our lead as well.  

The film also co-stars the woman who played Eve Tessmacher on Supergirl.  

Chabert is Chabert, but they keep commenting on her earrings, which you absolutely cannot see under her hair.  I don't know what happened on this movie, but that's a fixable problem.  And it makes me wonder if they didn't have the earrings people keep describing as "Snowmen" or what happened.  Do not insert details into your movie if they just raise unanswerable questions.