When they were still on the air, "Gilmore Girls" and "Chuck" were among my favorite shows. And Alexis Bledel and Zachary Levi each played my favorite character on their respective shows. So this movie has to work, right? It does. Molly is Rory Gilmore without the fancy education or love of books. Such a sweet and intelligent girl, but so frustrated. Gus is brilliant, but scatterbrained at first when interacting socially, much like Chuck Bartowski. He's easy to like.
This sounds like a comedy, and it does have a lot of laughs. And I've seen another movie that does the "Clean Slate" gag for laughs. But it's not all funny. Sometimes it's pretty sad. You want Molly to be happy. You want Gus to be happy. It's just going to be so hard. So many obstacles are in the way. But they're just so cute together.
There's a lot of annoying music that I assume is intended to please women. It's not that bad, but just not my taste. I prefer the New Orleans jazz that starts each day for Gus, the good country song that was playing in Molly's restaurant, and that fiddle player--who is a talented actor as well as musician. Oh, and "Dancing Queen" by ABBA in the skating rink. Okay, that's not GOOD music ...
Baptiste is a curmudgeon who really does care about Molly. Sam is a caring father figure. Jolene looks good, but she's kind of mean.
And there's nothing that would make this inappropriate for family viewing. Gus' problems are kind of intense to deal with, but that's about it. And a couple of off-color comments about relationships by Jolene don't really pass the kid-friendly test, but we can forget those.
I wasn't totally convinced this was worthy of the title "Hallmark Hall of Fame". But toward the end it becomes more than just a cute Lifetime romance. This movie really does mean something.
