...and while this movie was not a total exception, it had a few gems sprinkled throughout.
Honestly, it had an excellent cast and some scenes that were just great. But sadly, it lacked cohesiveness. Which was odd given that neither the director nor the writers were inexperienced. The cast did a great job of making the great scenes awesome. But many scenes felt disjointed, clunky, and choppy. It's like they wrote a bunch of scene ideas on post-its, reassembled them in some kind of order, but there was no smooth flow tying them all together. And there was a lot of repetitious dialogue over and over again as they tried to share the moral of the story but in such a shove it down your throat way. Hallmark frequently has a habit of telling rather than showing, and I distinctly remember from my own film classes many moons ago, that for the medium, it should be show as much as possible instead of tell.
I'm glad I gave it a chance because in what they had to work with, Paul Campbell (also one of the writers), Andrew Walker, and Tyler Hynes executed it wonderfully. It was fun to see three leading and favorite actors play off of each other as brothers and bring to life some of the better scenes. They were all adorable in their interactions with the baby. It fell short in many respects but it was worth at least a watch. Might even watch again while skipping over the less desirable scenes.
And the final wrap up scenes were all just cringe with secondhand embarrassment. Awkward to watch but I'm glad they kept it real with the contest. But it could've been worse. Hallmark's proven they can do much, much worse these days.
Honestly, it had an excellent cast and some scenes that were just great. But sadly, it lacked cohesiveness. Which was odd given that neither the director nor the writers were inexperienced. The cast did a great job of making the great scenes awesome. But many scenes felt disjointed, clunky, and choppy. It's like they wrote a bunch of scene ideas on post-its, reassembled them in some kind of order, but there was no smooth flow tying them all together. And there was a lot of repetitious dialogue over and over again as they tried to share the moral of the story but in such a shove it down your throat way. Hallmark frequently has a habit of telling rather than showing, and I distinctly remember from my own film classes many moons ago, that for the medium, it should be show as much as possible instead of tell.
I'm glad I gave it a chance because in what they had to work with, Paul Campbell (also one of the writers), Andrew Walker, and Tyler Hynes executed it wonderfully. It was fun to see three leading and favorite actors play off of each other as brothers and bring to life some of the better scenes. They were all adorable in their interactions with the baby. It fell short in many respects but it was worth at least a watch. Might even watch again while skipping over the less desirable scenes.
And the final wrap up scenes were all just cringe with secondhand embarrassment. Awkward to watch but I'm glad they kept it real with the contest. But it could've been worse. Hallmark's proven they can do much, much worse these days.