Coup de foudre au lagon bleu

Lacey Chabert is Emma, an assistant chef in Atlanta. She is the creative one but her boss, who also is her boyfriend, doesn't like to share the credit. So she needs some fresh perspective, she is no longer sure he is the one for her, she flies to Hawaii to visit her old aunt there.

In the process she wanders into a surfing store and meets Ektor Rivera as Ben, he transplanted himself from Puerto Rico for the surfing circuit but no longer surfs. He blames it for a loss in his life.

In a stroke of good fortune Ben's brother is also a chef, but gay with a husband, so he and Emma strike up a good friendly relationship, and cook together in the featured competition with guest judges.

The story develops nicely, the title comes from a comment during a surfing lesson, the "groundswell" is a reference to ocean water welling up to form nice waves.

My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library. Being a Hallmark movie it follows their usual formula, with the first "Hallmark kiss" coming at one minute before the movie ends. A nice, clean and entertaining movie. I love to cook so I especially enjoyed the scenes involving food preparation.

It's a beginning. First HM movie filmed in Hawaii that featured snippets of the real Hawaii, not just beautiful scenery, but especially with contemporary music, clothing, jewelry and yes, the food. We all came to Hawaii from distant lands, my ancestors included, and it was nice to see the Puerto Ricans honored. Lacey Chabert and Ector Rivera were convincing in their roles as rejected chef/girlfriend and surfer who lost his wife. Singer Anuhea and chef Lee Ann Wong were a real treat, as well as Katie Lee who authored the book, Groundswell. And just for the record, most female surfers don't wear just swimsuits for surfing! Maybe we'll hear pidgin English in the next one. I'm watching this again, as one can miss so much with only one viewing.

It's that this should not be a character Lacey is still playing. Give it to one of the newbies where a younger or more unknown actress (NOT a slam, Lacey is only a couple years older than me) could be more believable with responding to life drama this way. How many times have we seen Lacey in a role close enough to this? In fact, it might have been smarter to let the character be a divorcee (since HM is doing that now) like the book. Again, Lacey is 40/41? It would fit what is not uncommon in the lives of women in our age group. Let the story be told from that POV and develop it from there, instead of this grown woman running away from a boyfriend. I actually have the same issue with a few of Nikki DeLoach's romcoms.

I do like Lacey, (although not all of her movies), but I got bored with this one. The scenery was great. I'm hoping to vacation in Hawaii next year, so I loved it. I love any beautiful shots of the beach. Speaking of which, the beach/tropical movie with Hunter King was better. Sorry Lacey.

People are being very pernickety about this film. I think you just have to accept certain things when you watch a Hallmark film, rather than pointing out all of the little issues along the way.

I thought this was a good film, with Lacey Chabert as always being safe pair of hands where this sort of material is concerned.

There were some nice twists on the usual Hallmark format I thought, and the two things that make or break a Hallmark film for me (good chemistry between the leads, and a good story) were both in place.

I think films like this are trying to bring people joy and escapism and it did that for me.

Waste of Lacey Chabert's talent and status. Listless and dull dialog, entirely predictable which fails to utilize Lacey's skills.

The silly body double scenes were cheesy and did not appear to be deliberately do, in order to join the audience into an inside Hallmark joke.

Several cringe like moments cemented this onto a movie that will not be watched more than once, as so many good Hallmark movies are watched year after year.

We watched only the first 15 minutes and then turned it off. A few weeks later we went back to it and watched it through the end. We were reminded why we bailed out earlier.