Mail Order Bride (2008) (TV)

Director:

Anne Wheeler

Writers (WGA):

Tippi Dobrofsky (written by) &
Neal H. Dobrofsky (written by)

Release Date:

8 November 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Western

Plot:

Diana McQueen notorious con-woman has had enough. She leaves town and her boss, Tom Rourke, behind. She takes the place of her dying friend, who was to become some man's mail-order bride. Can she pull off this last con? |

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Daphne Zuniga	...	Diana McQueen
Greg Evigan	...	Tom Rourke
Cameron Bancroft	...	Beau Canfield
Vincent Gale	...	Ghost
G. Patrick Currie	...	Kelly (as Patrick Currie)
Tom Heaton	...	Willy
William MacDonald	...	Sheriff
Michael Teigen	...	Joe
Brendan Beiser	...	Auctioneer
Ted Whittall	...	Aaron Carlyle
Katharine Isabelle	...	Jen
Angelo Renai	...	Franco
Philip Granger	...	Association Rancher
Karin Konoval	...	Mrs. Vaughn
Robert Mann	...	Stagecoach Clerk
Patrick Gilmore	...	Homesteader
Marcos Amaya Torres	...	Banjo Player (as Marcos Amaya-Torres)
Oliver Schenelder	...	Accordion Player

Directed by
Anne Wheeler

Writing credits (WGA)
Tippi Dobrofsky		(written by) &
Neal H. Dobrofsky		(written by) (as Neal Dobrofsky)

Produced by
Suzanne L. Berger	....	supervising producer (as Suzanne Berger)
Randy Cheveldave	....	producer (as Randolph Cheveldave)
Noreen Halpern	....	executive producer
Sunta Izzicupo	....	executive producer
John Morayniss	....	executive producer (as John Moranyniss)
Ira Pincus	....	executive producer
Dori Weiss	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Michael Richard Plowman

Cinematography by
David Pelletier		(director of photography) (as Dave Pelletier)

Film Editing by
Jana Fritsch

Production Design by
Paul Joyal

Art Direction by
Sean Carvajal

Set Decoration by
Josh Plaw

Costume Design by
Beverley Wowchuk		(as Beverly Wowchuk)

Makeup Department
Jullin Hadden	....	hair stylist
Diane Holme	....	swing hair/makeup (as Dianne Holmes)
Kathy Howatt	....	makeup artist (as Kathleen Howatt)
Kathryn Jarymy	....	assistant makeup artist
Deborah Kliewer	....	swing hair/makeup (as Deb Kliewer)

Production Management
Keith Hines	....	post-production supervisor
Nancy Welsh	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Shelley Cox	....	second assistant director
Trevor Ralph	....	third assistant director
Patricia Dyer Walden	....	first assistant director (as Patricia Dyer-Walden)

Art Department
Jean-Paul Carthy	....	on-set dresser
Matt Eaton	....	construction coordinator
Christine Ganderton	....	assistant props
Linda Ganderton	....	props master
David Lewis	....	lead dresser (as Dave Lewis)
Chris Nohel	....	assistant decorator

Sound Department
Graeme Duffy	....	walla director
Chris Fairfield	....	adr recordist
Chris Fairfield	....	background editor
Chris Fairfield	....	walla recordist
Patrick Haskill	....	sound designer (as Pat Haskill)
Gord Hillier	....	dialogue editor
Gord Hillier	....	sound re-recording mixer
Luke Martin	....	foley mixer
Luke Martin	....	sound effects editor
Ryan McKinnon	....	foley editor
Shawn Miller	....	sound mixer
Millar Montgomery	....	boom operator (as Miller Montgomery)
Maureen Murphy	....	foley artist
Brody Ratsoy	....	sound re-recording mixer
Brody Ratsoy	....	sound supervisor
Hank Shih	....	assistant dialogue editor
Hank Shih	....	walla editor
Steve Szeto	....	assistant dialogue editor
Cam Wagner	....	foley artist

Special Effects by
David Allinson	....	special effects coordinator (as Dave Allinson)
Russell Allinson	....	special effects assistant
Pierre-Paul Charbonneau	....	special effects assistant (as Pierre Paul Charbonneau)
Michael Walls	....	special effects first assistant

Visual Effects by
Romald Geoffery	....	visual effects (as Geoffery Antony)

Stunts
Shannon Aldrich	....	stunts
Janene Carleton	....	riding double: Diana
Chad Cosgrave	....	stunt driver: stage coach
Chad Cosgrave	....	stunts
Mike Garthwaite	....	stunts
Corry Glass	....	riding double: Diana (as Corey Glass)
Dave Leader	....	stunts (as David H Leader)
Quentin Schneider	....	stunts
Heath Stevenson	....	stunts
Clay Virtue	....	stunt coordinator
Danny Virtue	....	stunt coordinator
Eli Zagoudakis	....	stunts

Camera and Electrical Department
Dan Basaraba	....	dolly grip
Michael Berlinguette	....	grip
Monty Black	....	generator operator
Geoff Dane	....	best boy (as John Geoffrey Dane)
Filip Dobosz	....	second assistant camera: "b" camera
Christian Elton	....	lamp operator (as Christian Eric Elton)
Mike Fiedler	....	best boy (as Mike Fielder)
Miguel Gelinas	....	key grip
Rayne Holloway	....	lamp operator
Darren Joseph	....	second assistant camera
Ryan Ketchum	....	lamp operator
Chris Large	....	still photographer
Iván Maldonado	....	Steadicam (as Ivan Maldonado)
Iván Maldonado	....	camera operator: "b" camera (as Ivan Maldonado)
Stephen J. McKnight	....	first assistant camera: "b" camera (as Stephen McKnight)
Jos Oman	....	first assistant camera
Glenn Pineau	....	camera operator: "a" camera
Miles Robison	....	trainee
Kyle Ruiterman	....	grip
Jim Swanson	....	gaffer
Katie Yu	....	still photographer

Casting Department
Linda LaBelle	....	extras casting (as Linda Labelle)
Larkin MacKenzie-Ast	....	casting: Canada (as Larkin Mackenzie-Ast)
Melissa Perry	....	casting: Canada
Melissa Skoff	....	casting: US
Lynette Therrien	....	casting assistant

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Derek J. Baskerville	....	truck costumer (as Derek Baskerville)
Catherine Church	....	costume coordinator
Brittany Elchuk	....	costume intern
Oriana Graber	....	extras costumes
Brenda Knight	....	costume cutter
Kate Pierpoint	....	costume set supervisor

Editorial Department
Romald Geoffery	....	colorist (as Geoffery Antony)
Romald Geoffery	....	on-line editor (as Geoffery Antony)
Luben Izov	....	first assistant editor

Transportation Department
Tony Boulter	....	driver: cable truck
Kelly Charlton	....	transport captain
Joe Hermoza	....	driver: honeywagon
Laurie Morris	....	transport coordinator
Lindsay Morris	....	driver: cast
Mark Schmitke	....	driver: hair/make-up/wardrobe
Ray Waechter	....	transport captain
Sharon Whyte	....	driver: cast

Other crew
Karie Adkens	....	armorer
Ashley Ayre	....	assistant to Ms. Zuniga
Dave Carlson	....	chef
Nathan Clark	....	adr artist
Laura Collini	....	script supervisor
Peter Conway	....	craft service
Peter Conway	....	first aid
Than Hadjioannou	....	security coordinator (as Than Hadjioanno)
Kerry Hansen	....	wrangler
Tom Hoeverman	....	location manager
Arron James	....	craft service
Arron James	....	first aid
Krista Johnston	....	clearances
Dave Leader	....	wrangler (as David H Leader)
Melissa Lukacevic	....	production assistant: assistant director (as Mellissa Lukacevic)
Otto Mak	....	assistant location manager
Otto Mak	....	scout
John Manestar	....	wrangler
Lindsay Moffat	....	production accountant
Stefani Rockwell	....	assistant accountant
Mark Shannon	....	key production assistant
Lee Sollenberger	....	hat designer
Meghan Steeves	....	key production assistant
Maureen Sugrue	....	assistant chef (as Maureen Surgue)
Lani Terada	....	wrangler
Wayne Toews	....	key production assistant
Victor Van Der Merwe	....	assistant coordinator
Christena Zatylny	....	production coordinator

Production Companies

• Hallmark Channel, The (presents) (as Hallmark Channel)
• Entertainment One
• Mail Order Bride Productions

Distributors

• E1 Entertainment (2009) (USA) (DVD)
• Hallmark Channel, The (2008) (USA) (TV)

Special Effects

• GFZStudios (visual effects color correction services)

Other Companies

• Line 21 Media Services Ltd.  closed captioning
• Line 21 Media Services Ltd.  post-production script
• Virtue Studio Ranch  supplied by: horses and wagons
• Western Post Productions  re-recording facilities (as Western Post)
• William F. White International  grip and lighting equipment

Also Known As:

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Hallmark Channel, The

Soundtrack:

Traditional American Music

Daphne Zuniga does her part for sociology

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I would like to start this review by thanking Daphne Zuniga for serving as a reference guide to exactly how much cosmetic enhancement is used by most women in Hollywood. Zuniga is a beautiful woman who's allowed herself to age more or less naturally and, as such, stands in great contrast to other actresses who've used every nip, tuck and injection they could to pass for 33 as long as they can. I mean, when you look at Zuniga in this Hallmark Channel flick and then take a look at, say, Jennifer Aniston, it becomes clear that Aniston must bathe in the blood of virgins every night. If the burden of most actors is they look too young to play grown men (I'm looking at you, 50 year old Tom Cruise), so many actresses get themselves their own Dorian Gray painting at 29 and after that, the only thing that ages on them is the look in their eyes. The result is that American pop culture has lost all sense of perspective when it comes to women and appropriate age. Whenever there's a 20something actress playing a daughter and a 40something playing the mother, there's this Judd-effect where they look more like sisters. They say there's no great roles for women over 40 but even if you came up with one, where would you find an actress who looks the part?

Putting all that aside, Mail Order Bride is a by-the-numbers romance that's effectively clichéd until it erupts like a geyser of suck at the end. Most of the movie is extremely predictable and dramatically shallow. That doesn't mean it's unenjoyable. If you like this sort of formula, watching Zuniga and Cameron Bancroft act it out is not a bad way to spend an hour. That last half hour…yeesh, it is so bad. You can almost literally see the filmmakers grabbing at straws to try and keep the story going until the end credits blessedly arrive to put them out of their misery. If you can make any sort of logical sense out of the 24 hour long siege at the conclusion of Mail Order Bride, you're a lot smarter than I am.

Diana McQueen (Daphne Zuniga) is a thief in 1888 who flees from her criminal master (Greg Evigan) by impersonating a dead friend who was the mail order bride of Beau Canfield (Cameron Bancroft), a lonely rancher who has spent way too much time with his crotchety cook (Tom Heaton). Diana makes her way from Boston to a small frontier town and fools Beau for a while. He eventually figures it out and puts Diana to work as a farm hand. Then Diana's boss shows up to reclaim her, she and Beau admit they really love each other and I hope I don't shock you by admitting they live happily ever after.

Zuniga and Bancroft are perfectly charming and the relationship between their characters, while old hat, is soothingly simplistic. If you've ever seen a Hallmark Channel movie before, you pretty much know what you're getting here. Except for the finish, which gets to be almost laugh-out-loud funny at seeing all these previously random plot points brought back up just to kill time and stretch this thing out to fill two hours with commercials.

Maybe with those breaks at the end to keep the increasingly silly nature of the standoff between Diana and Beau vs. Diana's boss and his hired guns, Mail Order Bride didn't come of quite as ridiculous on TV. When you see it all run together at once, there are so many "what the hell" moments that it almost appears as if something happened to make their original ending scenes impossible to do, so the cast and crew had to improvise something else at the last minute. Whatever the reason, the last half hour of Mail Order Bridge is so bizarrely incompetent that it knocks an otherwise mediocre flick into the "skip it" pile. Unless you're doing a term paper on "Female Aging in Early 21st Century American Entertainment", that is.