Et Rachel créa l'homme parfait !

This thinly disguised remake of the 2011 Hallmark film "Holly's Holiday" gives a Jewish AND gender twist to the Pygmalion story, and manages to mangle every aspect of it despite some deft humor. It has an edgier feel than most Hallmark offerings in places, but completely blows it with one of the stupidest, most unbelievable, badly staged endings in Hallmark history. When will Hallmark learn that the public airing of the romantic finale in front of a fawning audience is a real turn off? No doubt die hard fans of the channel will laud it to the skies, but more sane observers will wonder why they watched it at all.

This film is really charming! Rachel, the lead character, is very relatable. She brings her statue of "the perfect man" to life, like Pygmalion with Galatea. The two guys interested in her were extremely different, but both appealing in their way. Clay is a giant puppy. I love that his name is Clay! David has an edge in just the right way.

The story has the perfect message overall. I laughed all through the ending. An excellent romcom for Hallmark.

The side characters were well-rounded and specific. I enjoyed the fun Jewish details. This is a great movie to cuddle on the couch with and enjoy!

This movie was hilariously bad. It seems like the makers of this movie understood the idea of hilariously bad movies because a lot of other Hallmark movies are just cheesy bad or painfully cheesy bad. I honestly laughed out loud many times while watching this. And not during the stand up comedy sets, oh boy those were painful. Lots of overacting. Her sister's fiancee for example. And that ending was really something else. A lot of people are complaining about Teryl Rotherys' character but I thought she was very funny. And last but not least, Clay was the star of this movie. I need a sequel but with him as the main character.

Teryl Rothery, what were you thinking? How did you get roped into this role? The mother of the lead can be very bad, in the sense of too controlling, but this performance is ridiculous. Rothery is so much better than this. And the thing is that there is no reason this part had to be played so badly.

Except for Rothery, the bride's husband, and David's nephew, the rest of the acting was mostly good. Aaron O'Connell's Clay could have been easy to overplay, but O'Connell walked a fine line between too naive and being normal. Obviously Clay can't be normal, but neither is he too ridiculous. A few times, he goes just a little bit silly and then recovers before it gets too far.

I thought Alexandra Turshen and Matt Cohen had good chemistry. This is another tough situation because their screen time together was cut into by the time with Rachel and Clay and for that matter David and Clay.

The story was not as predictable as I expected. The premise of a statue coming to life in order to be the perfect mate seems like it is going to go in an obvious direction, and in this case that part was unavoidable, but the way it was done was fresh. The subtext of needing challenges in life rather than everything going perfectly was nicely folded into the story without being too preachy. The climax was a little wild which fit the story perfectly.

The dialogue was very good. I don't laugh at much on TV, but I got a few good ones between the standup and the banter.

All the good stuff is in Acts II and III, so don't give up on it.

I absolutely love this movie. The main character really nailed it. His expressions were filled with so much joy in a goofy way. Really an entertaining watch. It was kind of strange for me, because the romance didn't end up working out for him. I took two stars off because the side characters had an uninteresting romance. I disagree with the notion that the perfect man didn't challenge the girl. Yes he did, it just wasn't the way she wanted to be challenged. He challenged her to be more giving, as giving as he is. She wasn't so interested in that though. That's OK, some of us don't have a big capacity to love and therefore are unwilling to try to become a better person for the other.