Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Journey (2023)

the sixth of six of these.  I deserve a cookie for finishing.

Watched:  03/18/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ron Oliver

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art and Rarities Auction House Exec

new skill:  empathy for other humans

Man: Victor Webster

Job of Man:  Restaurateur and Chef

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Greece

Event:  None, really

Food:  Greek cuisine

First, I finally figured out where I knew Alison Sweeney from - she was on Days of Our Lives when that was the go-to soap opera to watch in the 1990's thanks to Sweeney's character, Sami (who was batshit) and Deidre Hall's Marlena was possessed by a demon.  Weird, wild stuff.

On to the show:

With our couple established in the third Wedding Veil installment, we get the direct sequel here in the 6th and (mercifully) final installment, entitled The Wedding Veil Journey (2023).  

In this movie Alison Sweeney and Man are realizing their schedules as an art auctioneer and restaurateur are incompatible, and they never see each other.  In fact, they never managed a honeymoon in what we're told is three years later, meaning the movies are actually supposed to span something like 6+ years.  

Sweeney and Man head off for Greece, but their plan is bad.  They will stay only one night in a hotel and then wing it from there.  Because of flight delays, they wind up arriving late, have nowhere to stay, and wind up in a struggling but lovely resort that seems honestly super nice.  And clearly the production had the run of the place, likely due to COVID.

Chabert Watch: The Wedding Veil Inspiration (2023)

okay, I guess the hat is fine.

Watched:  03/14/2025

Format:  Hallmark 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art professor

new skill:  Social media phenom

Man: Paolo Bernardini

Job of Man: Lace mogul

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Chicago

Event:  Lace store opening

Food:  we're back on Mac n' Cheese

The Wedding Veil Inspiration (2023) is part 5 (of 6) of The Wedding Veil series, and direct sequel to The Wedding Veil Unveiled.  The longer this veil nonsense goes on, the more they've piled in continuity, but like the driest of fan-fiction, it's all just rehashing the original concept while shoving our leads through some standard life-experience.  And, of course, now suggesting that the veil is not just for romance but ensuring its victims procreate.  

It *does* have a pretty good bit of insight at the end that just about had me flabbergasted for a Hallmark movie.  But it also brings in Man #2 and Not-Sarah Sherman as secondary romance victims of the veil, suggesting that its not just women who will be forced into romance by possessing the veil.

Italian Handsome Man Paolo is opening his lace store in Chicago (I think the suggestion is its on the Magnificent Mile) and Autumn Reeser is teaching Art History for Non-Art Majors.  She's also in line to become Department Chair of the Art History Department.  Like all movies, no one involved has bothered to speak to anyone in Academia to ask "hey, how does one become Department Chair?", which is something one could find out.  And if the usual processes are in place here, it is not at all obvious as Reeser is being mentored by a faculty near retirement age.  I won't keep complaining that's not how this works, because sometimes it is.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Expectations (2023)

Watched:  03/13/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:   First

Director:  Peter Benson

Job:  Curator at an Art Museum

new skill:  interior decorating

Man: Kevin McGarry

Job of Man: art teacher

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Boston

Event:  Museum gala

Food:  Pineapple pizza (her pregnancy craving)

If one concept needed absolutely no sequels, it was The Wedding Veil, but here we are.  

Because we're doing all of this for science, I looked up the book that these movies are all supposedly based on, and it has nothing to do with anything in the movie.  I have no idea why they keep crediting the author.  The only thing the movies have in common with the book is that there's a wedding veil.  The plot and characters seem totally different.

The author is a Texas romance writer, and seems to pen hot and heavy romances about cowboys that take place here in the Lone Star State.  At some point, she renamed the book to make it more Texas themed.  Anyway, the series is well reviewed by romance fans, so get on that, if that's your jam. 

Back to our film!  

It's an indeterminate amount of time since we last checked in with Chabert and Man.  And as we have already been told in the first installment, and mentioned in two other films - they're happily -ever-aftering.   So, as we enter this film, we must put together a movie that both has some sort of conflict and doesn't disrupt the Hallmark promise of life being great after marriage.  Thus, we have a film with multiple plot threads and issues that rise up, and then fizzle away like water on a hot plate.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022)

Reeser really went all-in on the hat

Watched:  03/05/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing;  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art and Rarities Auction House Exec

new skill:  cooking Italian food

Man: Victor Webster

Job of Man:  Restaurateur and Chef

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in NYC

Event:  Auction House gala

Food:  a bunch of Italian food, esp. cannoli, and sloppy joes?

I don't think I understood The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022).  I mean, I got what happened in it, but I didn't get it.  But I do hope these movies are increasingly titled like Jason Bourne movies.

Our skeptic (Alison Sweeney) of the veil's awesome powers goes through a long-projected, but fairly painless breakup with her boyfriend of a few years.  He's a classical trumpet player and has a chance to play for the LA Symphony, so with him leaving NYC, they hang it up.

In the two prior movies, we got the foreshadowing that maybe this was a relationship of convenience, and, indeed, it seems that way as the two don't even try to do long-distance and see if they'll miss each other - they just break up when he takes the job.  She is a native New Yorker, and can't imagine living elsewhere (fair) and is also working her dream job at an art auction house (also, you go girl.  Live your auction life).  So, yeah, she's kinda set.  Sweeney sheds no tears, just settles into a malaise.

Of course, Sweeney is now in possession of the reality-bending wedding veil which insists that people hook-up, and no sooner has she taken it to the tailor to get a snag fixed than she meets Man, who is there getting fitted for a tux.  

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil - Unveiled (2022)

Watched:  03/03/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art Prof

new skill:  I'd say researching art, but that is literally her job.  So, I guess, making lace?

Man: Paolo Bernardini

Job of Man:  Sales and Marketing for a lace company?

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Venice

Event:  None?

Food:  I am sure they ate Italian food and talked about it

Budgets on Hallmark films make no sense to me.  

We're making our way through the Wedding Veil series, I guess.  It's a five movie (to date) series about a magical wedding veil that forces people to fall in love.  Frankly - its power is terrifying.  

Three Hallmark stars (Chabert, Autumn Reeser and Allison Sweeney) buy the veil together, as their "something borrowed" item they'll all wear.  And the first movie sees Lacey Chabert fall in love with a terrible, terrible human who looks like a Bad Boy version of Mikey Day.  

This is the best the veil can do?

Regarding budgets - the first movie ostensibly took place in San Francisco and Boston, but that was clearly Canada.  Nice locales, but nothing you don't see in many-a-mid-budget Hallmark flick.  

But the sequel, The Wedding Veil Unveiled (2022) - starring Autumn Reeser - takes place all over Venice, Italy.  They left the continent and went somewhere awesome.  You even see the library from Last Crusade.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil (2022)

Watched:  03/01/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:   First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Job:  Assistant Curator at an Art Museum

new skill:  walking in 6" heels on grass

Man: Kevin McGarry

Job of Man: philanthropist

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Boston

Event:  Museum Gala

Food:  mac n' cheese

So...   apparently - despite starting as recently as 2022 with this movie, The Wedding Veil, there are already 5 movies in the Wedding Veil series, and likely more on the way.  I kind of knew this series existed, and was avoiding starting the series so we didn't need to sprint through five movies on the same topic.  But we're running out of other Chabert options here on Hallmark as we speedrace our way through her non-Christmas filmography in a way I did not anticipate when I was like "you know what would entertain Randy...".  But 2025 has been 2025, so here we are.

Basically, the idea of The Wedding Veil series is something like The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (which I've never seen).  It's about how possession of this 19th century wedding veil will lead to true love.  Three friends, who just happen to be played by Lacey Chabert, Autumn Reeser and Alison Sweeney - three of the top Hallmark stars - find and purchase a wedding veil together, all agreeing to share the veil when they find it in an antiques shop in San Francisco.

I call shenanigans that three people would agree to look the same at their weddings in a spur-of-the-moment decision, but here we are.  And we *will* get three movies of our heroes getting married, I guess.

This movie has to do the heavy lifting for the series as it has to establish (a) the magical power of the veil, (b) who each of the three leads in the series are, and (c) what their particular deal is with romance.  Fortunately, we all know Chabert is up to this task.

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!

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.

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.  

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.

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 fiancé, other possible suspects pop up, like a librarian, a faculty member, an antiquarian and an ex who is a surgeon.

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

Watched: 01/15/2025 

Format: Hallmark 

Viewing: First 

Director: Mel Damski

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.

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.

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

Director:  *unlisted at time of this writing*

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.  

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.

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.

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.   

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.  

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.

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

Watched:  01/06/2025

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director(s):  Ian Bonhôte & 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.