Groundswell

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.

Chef breaks up with her boyfriend/boss who has basically been using her and gives her no respect. Very familiar. She retreats to visit family, in Hawaii. Even more familiar. One slight difference is that her ex shows up as formal advisor at the cooking contest she enters.

Meanwhile she is trying to learn to surf. A fair amount of time is spent on this thread and it allows her to interact with her romantic interest. Lacey Chabert and Ektor Rivera have some chemistry but not a lot. The acting is decent enough. It is a very common theme in these movies that each lead inspires the other to get out of their individual rut in life. Nothing surprising here and it leads to a predictable conclusion.

Overall this movie is pretty much the same old thing which puts the pressure on the relationships and actors. As I mentioned, I didn't find anything exceptional here.

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 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.

The movie has a typical Hallmark plot about a woman whose boyfriend takes her for granted with the added complication that he also takes credit for her work. They've used this plot device on an almost yearly basis. But I was interested in watching it because of the setting in Hawaii. I really wanted to love this movie but it was somewhat of a miss. I always enjoy Lacey Chabert but, as attractive as they are individually, the two leads had no chemistry. Her ex boyfriend looked old enough to be her father. The dishes she prepared with the other chef didn't look or sound appetizing at all and they didn't have a plausible explanation for the ex-boyfriends presence at a contest that he's not judging. He just stood around with mostly nothing to do. I kept wishing it was another episode of Hawaii Five-0 because that cast had real chemistry. The settings were gorgeous and I really enjoyed the aunts character but it's just not enough to watch a second time.