Autumn in the City

This Hallmark romance takes place in New York City. Piper (Aimee Teegarden) moves from the Midwest to NYC to find herself. She doesn't know what career path to follow (though viewers can discern her eventual career immediately), so she temps at various jobs. When she meets her neighbor, Austin (Evan Roderick), things are not very cordial, but we know where this is going. Austin's dream is to write children's books, but he has put that option on a back burner.

The problem with this film is the script. The dialogue is stilted and unrealistic, particularly in the early going. If you can get past that, the rest of the story is endurable. Just don't expect any great plot twists.

This was fairly watchable despite a few troublesome aspects. One of which was the mismatch in the casting. Aimee Teagarden is an attractive and relatively youthful Hallmark leading lady and Evan Roderick as her love interest was a fresh new face and did well. Unfortunately, together, the pair didn't work. Aimee is in her early 30s playing an almost 30 year-old. Evan Roderick is 6 years younger and could pass for 17. So, for me the chemistry was off.

Piper has escaped from her hometown and her over-protective parents to pursue her dreams in New York City. Unfortunately, she doesn't have any dreams other than escaping from her dead end life in Iowa or Omaha or whatever. This leads to a series of temp jobs where she hopes that her destiny will hit her "like a bolt of lightening." She is almost 30 years old. Honey, if lightening hasn't struck by now, it's not going to. She is pretty oblivious because her future career is right in front of her and is obvious to the alert viewer. Big Clue: she never goes anywhere without her sketchpad and she sketches and colors non-stop. She meets cute Austin who is an aspiring Children's book author, despite his egomaniacal world famous journalist mother who relentlessly badgers him to become a world famous journalist just like her.

After throwing amazing opportunity after amazing opportunity back in the faces of all of the nice New Yorkers so anxious to hand out cool jobs, Piper finally gets struck by lightening, figuratively. She hooks up professionally and personally with Austin, who has shockingly landed a publishing deal for a whole series of books with Piper as the illustrator. After a lot of ups and downs, Piper and Austin have their dream careers and a relationship. There were a lot of fallen leaves in this one, but no pumpkins unless you count pumpkin spice lattes. The couple's career trajectories were fantastical and should probably come with a disclaimer lest New York becomes invaded with aspiring Midwesterners hoping to be just like Piper.

I saw Aimee in My Christmas family tree and thought she was amazing. That was the first thing I had ever seen her in. So I was excited to watch her in this one, and I don't know what happened to her in this one, but from the first second that she was on the screen, she lost her likability. There was also zero chemistry with her costar. It's almost like the casting director was happy with her, so they did not worry about it even having tryouts for any of the other parts. I've only done this a couple of times but here I am halfway through the show writing a review for a show that I absolutely wish I had not wasting my time on.

Obviously romance writers are not expected to churn out "Citizen Kane," but couldn't they at least consult the dictionary? Worse than the fact that Roderick's character uses the term "hoi polloi" incorrectly (he uses it to refer to the rich, elite of society - but it means the rabble, the commoners), but no one corrected it. Does NO ONE on this production have a vocabulary? Or access to a dictionary. I wanted mindless entertainment, but...there are limits. Also, I agree with the reviewer that said the leads were mismatched - it bordered on a reverse "Lolita" - he didn't look old enough to drive, let alone drink, and while she's not old by any means, she looked ancient next to him. Creepy.

Piper is about to turn 30 and she wants to make her own path, figure out what she wants to do. So, she moves to NYC and tries a few different temp jobs. There she meets her handsome neigbour Austin, a wanna be writer whose mom insists follows her path.

It's realistic in a way that a 30 year old doesn't know what to do with life and also in a way in which a parent wants them to follow their same path. I kind of sympathise with both.

I thought Aimee was amazing and there was chemistry with Evan. I personally thought Evan's character Austin could show more excitement and a fun, silly scene was missing from this as well.

This is clearly not a Hallmark production even if it was shown there. I'm not sure if a few of the NYC shots were real but they looked like it (The Manhattan skyline and Washington Square Park). The streets certainly weren't and that's okay.

I had big expectations about this. It's definitely not a 10 but this tv film certainly delivers what's promised.