Curious Caterer: Forbidden Fruit

Used to love Curious Caterer, but they are losing me. It was a good installment, but not that good as it used to be. The mystery was fine, but not really engaging.

Goldy is catering at the concert, the guitar player gets electrocuted. Of course the police - that was present at the event - cannot solve it themselves.

Star of the episode was Sarah Strange - Dani from Garage Sale Mysteries. She was brilliant as a cool, tough no-nonsense manager.

The let-down of the film was this whole Goldy - Tom date storyline. Hallmark painted themselves into a corner again with the slowburn romance that drags on and on, and the characters are not getting any younger. Their teenage angst over a date (while they are obviously over 40, Goldy is a mother of a teenage daughter) is stupid even by Hallmark standards.

I was super excited to see a new Curious Caterer. I've read all the books and enjoy seeing them made into movies. I'll say up front, having watched the commercials for the movie, I was a little worried I might be tuned off by Nikki DeLoach's but it worked for her. This movie is a must see.

The story was a good mystery. It offered a lot of twists, but kept one involved and interested in the movie. The regular cast and the guest cast did a great job.

The chemistry between Andrew W. Walker and Nikki DeLoach was fantastic.

I'm really hoping they continue this series. It rivals Mystery 101 and Aurora Teagarden.

I'm a big fan of the Curious Caterer movies, but I didn't like this one.

The band characters were fairly boring and several of the guys were interchangeable making it hard to follow. Stop throwing a zillion names at us to explain a plot. That's hard to follow. Just write a good plot.

I've always liked that the characters in these movies were somewhat realistic, but at least one character, the super fan, was too over the top and silly.

I couldn't stand the way Goldie behaved. She seemed less like an adult in charge in this and more like she was a tween jumping up and down and giggling at the band.

I think getting Goldie & Tom together this soon is a mistake. They'll lose the undercurrent.

And, finally, there was a lot of really bad hair in this. Goldie's new bob is bad on her face and it looked fluffy and sometimes fuzzy. Tom is parting his hair down the middle, which is a giant no. The stubble makes him look 10 years older. Sara Strange's short hair leaves me speechless. I hope it was a wig.

All in all, this was a real disappointment.

First off, I still like this series. But it has gotten a bit stale on all fronts.

It's still fun, which is most important for these types of films. But everything else felt mailed in. This includes the romance, the mystery and the overall script.

Like the previous film in this series, you find yourself suspending disbelief a lot. Beyond this, the band and their fans and everything else just felt...cheesy and unrealistic in a very Hallmark sort of way.

It's like the script was written by aliens whose only knowledge of the people and culture they're writing about comes from distant observations. This film (and the one proceeding it) had very cheesy and out-of-touch vibes.

This was a very solid mystery. Several red hearings, good miss directions, A good number of suspects. I like the fact also that it was a solvable mystery. I was able to correctly, deduce the murderer or murderers about 3/4 of the way through using the clues provided.

The pacing was pretty good, the characters were relatively likable. Their actions even were fairly realistic for a movie. I thought characters acted like I might have expected them to act.

All if you like a good solvable mystery, a who done it, This is a solid watch and a good way to spend two hours, or an hour and 25 minutes if you forward through the commercials.