Love in Whitbrooke

Again Hallmark dropped the ball on this movie. The daughter is a clutz for a person who is supposed to be a highly respected project manager. The story lines are always predictable. Hallmark has made excellent murder mystery series, perhaps they should continue along that genre.

Didn't like ANY of the cast. It was over-acted and the writing was deplorable. The premise of passing up an amazing promotion to run a parent's restaurant for 2 weeks is ridiculous. I moved on to something better.

The script and acting were not good. Everything from the word choice to the fake delivery to the lack of conversation flow felt completely unnatural. Even something as silly as every character referring to their own sister as "Sis" just felt off.

And the nephew -- I just can't with the nephew! "My aunt Amber's pretty, ISN'T SHE??????" Please, all future Hallmark movie writers, just stop it with the awkward kid moments. No one is watching these movies for them.

And for good measure, Hallmark included their usual whimsical music to drive every viewer crazy within the first 20 minutes. If you can watch this entire movie then you're a true diehard!

The movie had so much going on. In the course of one week Amber is offered a promotion to become a director even though she babbles like a ninny and can't make a decision, she returns to her hometown to help her parents run their cafe but has no experience as a barista, design and paint a mural because she's an artist who hasn't painted in a while, design and paint a shirt, sell one of her paintings, travel to a nearby city to fight the rent increase for the cafe, babysit her nephew, go on several outings with the leading man including a visit to her grandmother's home, and fall in love. Enter her counterpart who is a Jack-of-all-trades and helps everyone for free and even though he is a descendant of the Founders of Whitbrooke, he didn't grow up there. So I have to wonder if the writer(s) spun a wheel of cliches and then said "we should give these characters speed so that they are always happy, take on more responsibilities than humanly possible, and everybody is so nice to one another...but we'll take out the part where she has perform an emergency tracheotomy because THAT might be unrealistic."

I confess. I love hallmark movies. But this one missed the mark. To me, it was more comparable to the line up of romantic movies produced by super channel which are, by far, inferior. The writing was awkward and the acting stilted, although how the actors could have done better with such a terrible script is beyond me. Sad to say I couldn't even watch the whole thing.