Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat actors. Decent story
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2020
Some Hallmark movies are very catchy and memorable. Others are watchable but not as memorable. This one falls into the latter category. It is the story of a young woman who is a successful lawyer in her dad's law firm who decides to follow her real passion by spending the summer being the captain of a dinner cruise boat recently purchased by her uncle. The chef who was hired turns out to be an ex-boyfriend who supposedly broke her heart years before. They start out being on bad terms but over the course of the movie, they have to work together to overcome some small obstacles to get the boat into operation. They eventually start to rediscover the things they had in common.
This movie has good actors who have been a staple of Hallmark films for a while. They do a decent job with their parts. Brennan Elliott plays the chef. He doesn't seem totally believable as a chef. He also plays a role he often gets of starting out as a character who seems unlikable but ends up being sweet. Autumn Reeser plays two roles that seem fairly unbelievable. She doesn't really seem like a successful lawyer and she seems almost less believable as a ship's captain. She does OK with the roles, but it's hard to view them as being real. The story moves along well and is just different enough to not seem like a total carbon copy of many other Hallmark movies. However, it doesn't necessarily have a lot of zip to it either. The main characters have some chemistry but not a ton. Fortunately, the other love interest angle never really gets off the ground much and doesn't make for an awkward situation. There is another guy in the marina that shows some interest but he quickly backs off in a dignified way. The only other small issue I have is a typical thing for many Hallmark movies. The story is supposed to take place in Seattle and San Francisco, but the scenes were obviously shot in some other location on the West Coast of Canada and look nothing like San Francisco. I don't mind movies shot in Canada, but I don't for the life of me know why they don't just say the setting is Canada or someplace other than the big city that is obviously not the real place the movie was filmed. This is a small thing but I think it detracts from some Hallmark movies.
I can recommend this if you are looking for a pleasant summer-themed movie, but you probably won't consider it to be a Hallmark classic.
