I'm a big fan of Kimberly Sustad who plays Audrey. But her damaged character is really self absorbed. She's always buried in her phone, wears headphones in public around other people, and wears a hoodie on a date to a fancy restaurant. She's really oblivious. And at one point there's a weird shift in tone when Audrey gets manic at work.
Brooks Darnell is very smooth as Matthew. He has a great line about "brands" in which he describes himself as a "savvy professional" and Audrey as a "stubborn, indie creative". Both descriptions are spot on. Matthew also had a good line about the "thousand years of solitude" that he spent waiting for Audrey. It reminded me of the classic Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel of a similar name.
There's also some good direction and editing. For example, right after Matthew notes that love releases the same endorphins as eating chocolate, there's some fun scenes from the refrigerator POV. And there's an amusing early scene where Audrey tries to think about love:
"Love love, love love love; Love is codependency; Sacrificing one's sense of self, that's for sure; Jealousy, distortion of reality; Loss of control."
There's also a groan funny Dad "Joke of the week" featured on the board at work:
"I want to become a chess player, but I have too much of a checkered past."
The writing may seem cheesy at times to some, but most of us Hallmark fans have a high tolerance for cheesy love lines like this one:
"I kinda like the idea that two different stars can collide and make something so different and beautiful".
I also thought the Indigo seminar was really well done. I expected to be making fun of it but, instead, I found it to be rather insightful and a clever way to reveal things about Matthew and Audrey. But then the movie slogs through an annoying and implausible conflict in the 4th quarter (an all too frequent problem with some Hallmark movies). The initial assignment (to create a market ready board game and submit it to a "tabletop" competition in just 4 weeks) was ridiculous and all too typical of Hallmark's tendency to feature plots driven by artificial and unrealistic deadlines. And there is an equally ridiculous "business" decision by The Board in the 4th quarter that makes no sense (and annoys everybody, including the audience).
It was also unclear to me why the company hired a marketing consultant to help design a board game in the first place. Plus, I never got any kind of idea about what was actually in the board game. I just saw circles on a board with some huge player pieces. We saw Evie (a customer who never leaves) playing it with a stranger and some random people playing it at Boardwalk Café and Games (which is in Abbotsford, British Columbia, not Seattle) but we never hear any of the questions they presumably ask each other or see any interaction whatsoever.
But worst of all, I just didn't buy the love story. At best, this seemed like a movie about colleagues learning to work together (although the eager beaver co-workers seemed like caricatures). They were pleasant together, but I just didn't feel the sparks. And those sparks are kinda the key to making a romance work.
There's a much better "game developers to lovers" story in "On the 12th Date of Christmas" with Mallory Jansen and Tyler Hynes.
