A Slice of Romance

I've watched many of these cutesy rom coms. They are better than the news. God bless her, the lead actress (Stephanie Cleough)is probably the worst actress I have ever seen. Constant, contorted facial expressions are annoying and distracting. She had this valley girl, phony, sing songy, breathy voice all while raising her eyebrows and contorting her mouth in to shapes that are hard to watch. Nobody talks like that. The lead actor was fine, but there was no chemistry. How could anybody have chemistry with her? How could anybody have given her the role? I couldn't watch after 20 minutes. It was that bad. Ive seen better acting in community theater.

Regular cookie cutter story line. Which isnt unbearable on its own. Seen many formula rom coms with exactly same premise. The difference was the characters actually having chemistry. If there was such thing as negative chemistry, this was if, and the lead woman's voice was so unbelievably cringeworthy, I couldn't watch without hitting mute when she was speaking. Scratching a chalkboard with nails is more enjoyable than listening to her speak. And mr pastry dude idk ive seen him in a police drama show, his performance in this was duller than dishwater.

Ughh. It was on again and I decided to give it another go, thinking maybe I was in a pissy mood last time or whatever. Same cringe.

The female lead is utterly unwatchable. If some acting coach told her acting consists of making weird faces and exaggerated voices, she should demand a refund. By the time she delivered her 3rd line of dialog I wanted to turn it off and delete it. All I could think was What the $&#@ is this? Some kind of spoof? Is the camera going to pull back and reveal a painfully amateur production in progress? But, no. It was really the movie. What we saw is what we got. I can't believe some production company actually paid her to do that and call it acting. P. T. Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute. And then more suckers who are stupid enough to waste precious time watching this travesty.

I almost didn't watch this because of the other review that was so negative. But I thought the leads had great chemistry and the story line was not your typical romcom movie plot (although I like them) so I found it refreshing. It was a nice change of pace for a Monday night. And yes, maybe the setting was not actually Portland (since when is that something that matters. So many movies are filmed in other places. That grumpy reviewer needs to get over that need for accuracy because it's not gonna happen on the budgets that movies have these days), but the scenery was lovely and makes me want to go visit Kelowna again!

David Paetkau is relaxed, his character is likable, and he did the best he could with the horrible, horrible writing but he alone cannot save this beyond-terrible movie. The acting by Stephanie Cleogh can't even be called "acting," as far as I'm concerned. Watching her overact and trying so hard to come across as kittenish and sexy and cute was just nauseating. I wanted to poke my own eyes out! Unless you are a glutton for punishment, please just save yourself the two hours you'll never, ever get back and go and get your nether regions waxed. Trust me, it'll be MUCH less painful than this mess!