The Hallmark Movie Strikes Again
Jun. 18th, 2019 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engThis is the third post in what is now apparently a series. See, what happened was, I made it approximately 24 hours after that last post before realising that I had forgotten an essential work.
No, really. ...and I do not mean this just in the context of it as a Hallmark film. Like, it's fine as that sort of thing goes, but it is also a fucking McShep AU. I repeat, and this is not a drill, this is like a goddamn serial numbers filed off motherfucking McShep AU. It's established relationship genderswapped het; he's a USAF pilot turned aeronautical engineer, she's a musician and fails hard at fitting in with the other wives. Someone dies and leaves them with a crayola box of children and they go ...yeah, not planning on being parents, and then proceed to accidentally become parents. She has curly blonde hair and he's played by Joe Flanigan. YES. REALLY.
It came out two years after SGA ended and is full of shit that would be great footage for vidding. The film is Change of Plans. One reviewer writes "bland" and "this is horrible movie, and i am suspicious that one of the other two reviewers given high scores". It is clear that they are an uncultured plebe who does not know the joy of a Hallmark film and has not seen such cinematic classics as Thoughtcrimes and Boa vs. Python; they know nothing.
I spent most of my time watching this film internally squeeing, and some of it externally squeeing. It is not great; it is magnificent. My only regret about this film is that I did not watch it sooner. That is a lie. I also regret that it wasn't made earlier, that it wasn't available to light up my life like that episode of Tru Calling where Joe plays the dead guy.
I shit you not. Our copy of Thoughtcrimes had a weird glitch and we were somehow forced to watch the first ten or so minutes repeatedly, and we did; we watched in rapt and agonised attention, waiting for more. And I had forgotten about it until this moment but Boa vs. Python is one of the only DVDs I have ever owned and I used up a region zone switch on my laptop to watch it, broke it in a move and am still a bit sad about it.
This film, dear reader, I wallowed in, I soaked up its "bland", its "predictable", and I frankly disagree with other reviews on imdb including the one titled "one of the worst movies I ever watched" and another saying "as much as I love Joe Flanigan, I just don't think I could suffer through anymore". I have suffered through so much worse just because that's how I roll, and I wouldn't do anything for love, but I would totally do that again.
Jewel Staite has also done some post-SGA Hallmark-type work, including Same Time Next Week, wherein she plays a grieving widow who's coping with her bereavement by ticking off items on her dead husband's bucket list and somehow stumbles into a weekly consolatory pie date with a widower who gets it and a waitress who doesn't give a shit. I have no idea how there is a waitress that bears a strong resemblance to Ida, the robot from The Middleman in this, but there is; stare in baffled wonder as the grievers revel in her sarcasm and complete lack of enthusiasm.
The whole dead spouse thing cuts the saccharine a bit - for a while anyway - and justifies some of the departures from normal human behaviour that Hallmark seems to delight so much in. Enjoy the multiple cemetery scenes, peak Hallmark fashion, and the part where the male lead is the human equivalent of Watson's oatmeal sweater with the tiniest dash of Scott McCall thrown in. If you, like me, are the sort of person who gazes into the background and wonders why, for example, someone claiming to be a GP is sitting in a podiatrist's personal office like they belong there and if we're going to find out what happened to the real Dr. Carlisle at any point - boy are you in for a treat with the bookstore they're setting up in this one.
If all of that sounds too bleak to be bearable, Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Home Again just might be the film for you. It's part of a series consisting of a season of television and twelve films in total - I counted twice, so unless they made one without the guy who plays Daniel in Ugly Betty that's probably right. He plays Oliver, a man who doesn't particularly need a job because he has so much money but nonetheless chooses to spend his time working at the ...lost letters department? of the US Postal Service and he and his three underlings ...commit mail crimes? so that they can right wrongs? It's like a very toned down version of Batman and a strange fantasy that the government was more up in your business and really cared - you know, like Uncle Sam really was your uncle. They open mail that they shouldn't, read it, and then show up in your town trying to solve whatever problems you have that somehow stemmed from or relate to that undelivered letter and sit around in your beautifully sunlit kitchen drinking your coffee on the way to doing that.
There's enough films that there's probably some variation in that, but I haven't seen it in what I've watched and I am only about 90% certain that I've seen this film. I tried to rec a different film in the series but then figured out that some of the things that I thought had happened in that film hadn't and it wasn't immediately obvious which film they did happen in because there are apparently twelve of these things and someone should write a fucking paper on them, Hallmark, and their role in and representation of American culture.
I'm reasonably certain that Crystal Lowe isn't half Chinese in this and at some point they make her character genuinely believe in Santa Claus while no one else does - so just standard Hallmark bullshit, really. I think that's not in this particular film, but it's become pretty clear that I have no idea what happens in any of them and there's a non-zero chance that I'm also mixing up the Rita character in this with someone in a different film because she's a quirky caricature.
It's a boy-girl-boy-girl sort of set-up here. Rita's match is Norman and he's also a socially awkward geek and they end up dating - adorbs, right? Shane is the one who is probably the best at human-ing out of the four of them and she sets them up with the unintended consequence of throwing her and Oliver together a bit. She and Oliver dance around each other a little - he has a missing wife at some point? Possibly all the points? And he's noble and - repressed, quiet, gentle, traditional - there's some Spock/Luke Danes/The Middleman-type vibes with Hallmark smeared all over it. So there's an actual ensemble set-up, the actors and dynamics are generally enjoyable when they're not rage-inducing, the costuming and set design is reasonably solid and the later ones are uniformly pretty. All of the titles start "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" and you can probably watch whatever to about the same effect.
My notes for that one were just "the postal series - how" - there's a lot of how to unpack, this entry is way too fucking long to add any more to, and in the words of Gary Barlow and Chris Braide: "I'm tired emotionally inside". I feel like a darkness has descended upon me and I can no longer. I am out.
No, really. ...and I do not mean this just in the context of it as a Hallmark film. Like, it's fine as that sort of thing goes, but it is also a fucking McShep AU. I repeat, and this is not a drill, this is like a goddamn serial numbers filed off motherfucking McShep AU. It's established relationship genderswapped het; he's a USAF pilot turned aeronautical engineer, she's a musician and fails hard at fitting in with the other wives. Someone dies and leaves them with a crayola box of children and they go ...yeah, not planning on being parents, and then proceed to accidentally become parents. She has curly blonde hair and he's played by Joe Flanigan. YES. REALLY.
It came out two years after SGA ended and is full of shit that would be great footage for vidding. The film is Change of Plans. One reviewer writes "bland" and "this is horrible movie, and i am suspicious that one of the other two reviewers given high scores". It is clear that they are an uncultured plebe who does not know the joy of a Hallmark film and has not seen such cinematic classics as Thoughtcrimes and Boa vs. Python; they know nothing.
I spent most of my time watching this film internally squeeing, and some of it externally squeeing. It is not great; it is magnificent. My only regret about this film is that I did not watch it sooner. That is a lie. I also regret that it wasn't made earlier, that it wasn't available to light up my life like that episode of Tru Calling where Joe plays the dead guy.
I shit you not. Our copy of Thoughtcrimes had a weird glitch and we were somehow forced to watch the first ten or so minutes repeatedly, and we did; we watched in rapt and agonised attention, waiting for more. And I had forgotten about it until this moment but Boa vs. Python is one of the only DVDs I have ever owned and I used up a region zone switch on my laptop to watch it, broke it in a move and am still a bit sad about it.
This film, dear reader, I wallowed in, I soaked up its "bland", its "predictable", and I frankly disagree with other reviews on imdb including the one titled "one of the worst movies I ever watched" and another saying "as much as I love Joe Flanigan, I just don't think I could suffer through anymore". I have suffered through so much worse just because that's how I roll, and I wouldn't do anything for love, but I would totally do that again.
Jewel Staite has also done some post-SGA Hallmark-type work, including Same Time Next Week, wherein she plays a grieving widow who's coping with her bereavement by ticking off items on her dead husband's bucket list and somehow stumbles into a weekly consolatory pie date with a widower who gets it and a waitress who doesn't give a shit. I have no idea how there is a waitress that bears a strong resemblance to Ida, the robot from The Middleman in this, but there is; stare in baffled wonder as the grievers revel in her sarcasm and complete lack of enthusiasm.
The whole dead spouse thing cuts the saccharine a bit - for a while anyway - and justifies some of the departures from normal human behaviour that Hallmark seems to delight so much in. Enjoy the multiple cemetery scenes, peak Hallmark fashion, and the part where the male lead is the human equivalent of Watson's oatmeal sweater with the tiniest dash of Scott McCall thrown in. If you, like me, are the sort of person who gazes into the background and wonders why, for example, someone claiming to be a GP is sitting in a podiatrist's personal office like they belong there and if we're going to find out what happened to the real Dr. Carlisle at any point - boy are you in for a treat with the bookstore they're setting up in this one.
If all of that sounds too bleak to be bearable, Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Home Again just might be the film for you. It's part of a series consisting of a season of television and twelve films in total - I counted twice, so unless they made one without the guy who plays Daniel in Ugly Betty that's probably right. He plays Oliver, a man who doesn't particularly need a job because he has so much money but nonetheless chooses to spend his time working at the ...lost letters department? of the US Postal Service and he and his three underlings ...commit mail crimes? so that they can right wrongs? It's like a very toned down version of Batman and a strange fantasy that the government was more up in your business and really cared - you know, like Uncle Sam really was your uncle. They open mail that they shouldn't, read it, and then show up in your town trying to solve whatever problems you have that somehow stemmed from or relate to that undelivered letter and sit around in your beautifully sunlit kitchen drinking your coffee on the way to doing that.
There's enough films that there's probably some variation in that, but I haven't seen it in what I've watched and I am only about 90% certain that I've seen this film. I tried to rec a different film in the series but then figured out that some of the things that I thought had happened in that film hadn't and it wasn't immediately obvious which film they did happen in because there are apparently twelve of these things and someone should write a fucking paper on them, Hallmark, and their role in and representation of American culture.
I'm reasonably certain that Crystal Lowe isn't half Chinese in this and at some point they make her character genuinely believe in Santa Claus while no one else does - so just standard Hallmark bullshit, really. I think that's not in this particular film, but it's become pretty clear that I have no idea what happens in any of them and there's a non-zero chance that I'm also mixing up the Rita character in this with someone in a different film because she's a quirky caricature.
It's a boy-girl-boy-girl sort of set-up here. Rita's match is Norman and he's also a socially awkward geek and they end up dating - adorbs, right? Shane is the one who is probably the best at human-ing out of the four of them and she sets them up with the unintended consequence of throwing her and Oliver together a bit. She and Oliver dance around each other a little - he has a missing wife at some point? Possibly all the points? And he's noble and - repressed, quiet, gentle, traditional - there's some Spock/Luke Danes/The Middleman-type vibes with Hallmark smeared all over it. So there's an actual ensemble set-up, the actors and dynamics are generally enjoyable when they're not rage-inducing, the costuming and set design is reasonably solid and the later ones are uniformly pretty. All of the titles start "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" and you can probably watch whatever to about the same effect.
My notes for that one were just "the postal series - how" - there's a lot of how to unpack, this entry is way too fucking long to add any more to, and in the words of Gary Barlow and Chris Braide: "I'm tired emotionally inside". I feel like a darkness has descended upon me and I can no longer. I am out.
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Date: 2019-06-18 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2019-06-23 03:20 pm (UTC)