Sweet but predictable.

savethewatchmaker

This movie feels like a textbook five out of ten---it's sweet and enjoyable, but also incredibly predictable and therefore bordering on boring.

Danica McKellar, who plays the protagonist Helen, is a Hallmark veteran, so viewers inevitably find themselves growing fond of her after the fifth or so movie that features her in a main role. However, she suffers from a case of eyebrow acting that never fails to be distracting---whenever possible, her expression is one of shyness, hesitance, apprehension, and almost woe, to the point where it is almost her default face, all thanks to her perpetually bent eyebrows. This is probably to make her characters more likable, less brash, more charmingly tentative, but after seeing it in the tenth movie, it feels less like an acting choice, and more like the only option Danica has for her face.

The story that then proceeds to unfold around her is unbelievably foreseeable. She meets a handsome masked man, Charles, at the masquerade ball her longtime friend Henry invites her to, and feels an instant attraction to him. However, even before this moment, pointed conversations with her Aunt Carol about Henry make it clear who she's going to ultimately end up with in the film. Henry is a kind, caring friend who she's known since college, and both of them are hiding (seemingly) covert feelings for each other. Especially hard to believe is Henry's grand selflessness, which is so far off the charts he's hardly even playing a believable human anymore---it begins simply enough, with him bringing Charles to Helen after unexpectedly finding him on the street, but stretches onward to him planning dates for them, buying Helen meaningful gifts that he then gives to Charles to present her with, and even dropping off sweet notes and coffee at Helen's workplace that seem as if they're from Charles. Although shooting for extremely nice (and possibly saint-like), I found that Hallmark greatly overshot this trait and circled straight around to deceptive, as ultimately, Henry is presenting a false version of Charles that does not actually exist to Helen, giving her an impression of him that is highly inaccurate.

The audience knows, however, that Charles poses no threat to the actual love story. He's working for a company intending to turn the botanical gardens that Henry works for into condos, which injures Helen, a florist, deeply, and she severs ties with him. She later refers to Charles as a "prince who was more frog," which seems awfully harsh for a man who was inadvertently made to be extremely different from his real self thanks to Henry's meddling.

Henry, meanwhile, is moving to Arizona (how else will our leads work up the courage to confess their feelings if not torn apart by distance) but returns home when a teary Helen tells him she loves him over the phone. He stays in New York and decides to surprise her, calling in a flower order that Helen must deliver to the botanical gardens where he lies in wait (the fact that she had to prepare a flower arrangement that was intended as a gift for her is not lost on the audience) with a ring. This jump from "just friends" to fiances feels extreme for the movie, even if these two have been friends for more than two decades (assuming their ages are similar to the actors' own). Also quickly resolved in the last second is that Helen's specially grown rose has won first place in a competition that, early on in the movie, felt quite significant, but ended up warranting no more than a quick glance at a first place ribbon in the last few moments of the film.

Overall, the movie was charming in its simplicity, but hardly challenged or surprised the audience at any moment. At no point did anyone suspect that Charles was real competition for Henry, or that Helen and Henry would not come to their senses by the movie's end, creating a lack of suspense that would have kept the movie much more interesting had it existed.

score 5/10

savethewatchmaker 2 March 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4078824/