Fiancés malgré eux

Hallmark movies that are shot on location are always the best kind, and 'A Paris Proposal' is better than it would otherwise have been thanks to it being shot in the City of Lights rather than somewhere in British Columbia that is standing in for Paris.

I'm not a huge fan of movies where the plot revolved around a fake relationship. They usually aren't done all that well. This is an exception.

Stars Alexa PenaVega and Nicholas Bishop do a good job with a decent script as advertising agency colleagues who are in Paris to land a big contract with a Parisian jeweller. One thing leads to another...and they're suddenly telling everyone they're married.

Truth be told: I didn't think I was going to enjoy this film very much, because of the plot, but I watched it for the authentic Paris setting and the movie grew on me after a while and I actually did enjoy it. The chemistry between PenaVega and Bishop shines through after some early adversarial moments between them.

All of that said, Paris is the real star of this show.

I was so looking forward to this movie. I really like Alexa PenaVega and the movie was filmed in Paris. Beautiful city and great food.

The movie is about two advertising people trying to get a major France jewelry account and accidentally pose as a married couple. The ads looked funny, but although the one-liners were cute, there was no chemistry between the actors.

I watched for half the movie and gave up. The characters were sooo boring, the story was sooo boring, no chemistry and I just couldn't keep any interest. Terribly disappointed. Total Meh movie.

Hopefully Hallmark starts doing better movies for Alexa PenaVega.

Anna Bowman (Alexa PenaVega) and Sebastian Laurent (Nicholas Bishop) are co-workers in an advertising agency and they don't get along. She's a by-the-numbers account manager and he's the creative kind. They are forced to team up for a pitch in Paris. A misunderstanding leads the clients to assume that they are married.

This is a Hallmark romance. It is a little funny when he's insulting her. This is a fine standard fire-and-ice coupling. They need to fight more. I don't get her outfit with the big front flower. She should be dressed like an accountant. That's the premise. They need to stick to it. All in all, this is fine for Hallmark and we get a Paris vacation on top of it.

This Hallmark romance begins with a familiar situation: coworkers who go together like oil and water. Anna (Alexa PennVega) and Sebastian (Nicholas Bishop) work for a New York ad agency. When they are sent to Paris to sell an important new French client, a small mistake results in the impression that they are married. To their consternation, their charade snowballs, until it threatens everything, including personal relationships.

PennVega and Bishop work well together. Others in the cast have their moments---especially Elie Kaempfen as Andre the hotel clerk who adds some moments of light comedy.

The conflict in the film resolves fairly quickly, but the final scenes are satisfying.

We have here the start of a classic antipathetic romance, and unlike most antipathetic romances in these Hallmark movies, the writers had the courage to carry the tense relationship deep into the movie ... almost to the end, in fact.

The man (a Frenchman with a disaster in his family's business) develops exorbitantly expensive ideas for ad campaigns. The woman (with a one year disaster of a marriage in her past) is practical and keeps her ad campaign ideas sensible.

Together they're assigned to travel to Paris to secure the account of a French diamond jewelry house who wants to expand into the USA.

The story of their conflicting ideas for the ad campaign needed to win the account drives the movie, and in the end they come to an mutual idea surprisingly easily.

However, the movie is charming, in my mind more because of the older French couple who own the diamond house than the stars.