Cloudy with a Chance of Love

If you're bored of the usual plots in the TV rom-com genre, then this is a bit different. However, it isn't as feel-good, being quite stressful at times. I probably would watch it again when I want a change, but it isn't a go-to movie for 90 mins of uplifting entertainment. The spoof title sort of implies it is going to be funnier - but there's definitely plenty of other movies that make me laugh more. The casting works well and there's a lot to identify with, whatever your job, in many respects, but probably less so later in life. Also, I didn't find the meteorological aspect entirely convincing.

Finally a romance TV movie which actually has a credible female lead! She looks and sounds strong and convincing, still ticks the romantic lead boxes but adds something extra! I would love to see more of her and leads like her.

The story itself was likeable, if a little bland and the male leads puts in a pleasant of lightweight performance as he usually does. The supporting cast were all very capable and it leads to a very enjoyable film for once.

I love Hallmark films for their predictable formula: single woman-focused screenplay in which too-successful, insufficiently caring "perfect" but workaholic guy must be shed for an authentic man of feeling.

What I especially love are the Hallmark tropes: new guy must be thrown into an early, intense encounter with single girl's parent/s; numerous late model cars must be driven pointlessly around town with elaborate driveway exit scenes; characters' occupations are bipolar business/law vs wedding planning, writing, art. As predictable as this makes a Hallmark, variations on this theme become deeply satisfying, as we watch these elemental themes -- the search for the authentic life, the rejection of empty success, the social pressure for the conventional path, play out again and again. And thus each Hallmark character takes on allegorical significance in this larger search for authenticity.

Hallmark movies remind me of a comment Sana Haque made about the great French writer Roland Barthes' Mythologies: "Barthes deciphers how wrestlers take on tragic or comic "stock" personas for the benefit of their fans and how their exaggerated gestures, drama, and Good vs. Evil conflicts perform a cathartic function for the audience, a venue through which frustrated emotion can find a release and the complexity of modern existence revert to black and white simplicity."

So, in this allegorical frame, Cloudy with a Chance of Love shakes it up a (very) little bit. Here on the road to the authentic life, the sub-theme is change. Katie Leclerc's character, a PhD meteorology student at a mythical San Diego university has spent her life happily in one place, focused on one consuming interest (the heavens). On her heretofore uneventful road to a fellowship and professorship, she now encounters a TV news director, played by Michael Rady, who pulls her toward a huge change when he convinces her to sub as a meteorologist at his station. He even tries eventually to get her to leave San Diego in a two-fer deal to try network news in New York.

Michael Rady has matured from his days of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. In this movie he channels Ken Olin from his Thirtysomething days-- the sensitive and empathetic listener to a well-educated woman's earnestly related hopes and dreams and self-doubts. There's a soulfulness here to Rady's acting that was unexpected and welcome in a Hallmark.While his ambition to go back to network news in New York nearly sinks a budding romance with adorable Leclerc, he manages an unusual Hallmark workaholic accomplishment. He gets the girl despite all that, once he finds his own "authentic" path back to San Diego, and "saves" her by firing her and reconnecting her with her academic destiny.

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and other towering works of allegory have tread these familiar paths many times before Hallmark screenplays, but how nice it is to turn on the Hallmark channel and watch these characters play out our hopes and fears. When the actors are as sympathetic, and winsome as Rady and Leclerc, and the chemistry believable, it is an evening well spent. It would be great to see both Leclerc and Rady enter the pantheon of Hallmark repeaters-- those actors we love to see in other Hallmark themes and variations.

I'm a baseball fan since 1960. So one metaphor that is extremely familiar for me is this - getting to the Big Show. And I love stories that follow that idea. Much of the first part of the movie plays on that idea although in a different theatre and does it pretty well. The wonder and awe of making the big time. It's a bit more complicated than that because this wasn't Deb's dream. In fact it was a diversion to her life's dream which made the story even more interesting. Deb experienced that wonder and awe, even if it wasn't her life's dream. All of this, and the way it was done, makes this a slightly different plot device as a premise. Later in the movie, we get some other plot devices that aren't new, but also not as rehashed as many in this genre. The story gets a little complicated, but somehow I saw almost every detail of it coming together, except the final detail that resolved everything and even that still fit into a more general, but very predictable plot device. (I'm trying to stay away from spoilers, and I think if you have watched the movie, the previous sentence makes more sense.) I loved the wonder and awe. I was OK with the predictable flow through the end because it had to be.

Something else that really impressed me was Katie Leclerc. I browsed her filmography, (and except for one TV movie I don't remember hardly and my rating says I barely liked,) I haven't seen her before. She does the wonder and awe really well, but with a hint of remaining down to earth. Later, she plays the beginning of being tainted by fame and then what follows pretty well also. Michael Rady has always been solid and is here. The two connect with good chemistry.

Gregory Harrison does the conceited anchor man to the hilt, but I think also with a little bit of fun on his part. Then he pulls a nice surprise which did have a couple of little foreshadowing clues along the way.

We get a quality selfish villain and a rival who falls just short of evil. Did I see a touch of respect? Hallmark movies want us to think all the corporate types are the same, and perhaps they are. The dean (?) was a overdone caricature of a clueless academic.

Lately, my ratings often reflect the question - do I want to watch it again and how much? This movie hits high on that scale, but I think it also deserves a thumbs up because it has some good story elements and good acting by the leads.

There was closure to a degree of satisfaction, but I never understood what career path Rady (the lead male actor) was embarked upon considering how it ended. I like that fact that Leclerc (the lead female actress) was a born leader and it showed some multi- taking dynamics that would not be successful without the vision (focused) on her destined choice and where her happiness was in all of those choices presented to her. Yes, the money offers looked appealing, but would she have been happy on a path she did not have in her vision/focus all along? Interesting how options and choices can alter our course as humans. Yes, most of us want the money and that is the ultimate goal if you can get both the happy , fulfilling choice right along with the money. But most of us tend to go the money route and forego the latter, when ideally we need both paths to work in our favor. Money is the biggest topic of many love relationships. So, does that say the money is important to us? Absolutely! Shame on whomever does not feel this way because money is the topic that splits a lot of love relationships up. So we need more focused happy, satisfied and fulfilling money paths early on is our youthfulness, so we can feel a lot more independent and not 'NEEDY' of each other. The movie was great because it helped me shed light on options/choices and how best to satisfy my future with prosperity/abundance of all things I love/desire, including money and maybe a love partnership if that is ever in the cards. It's not a need, but a future desire. Thank you Hallmark for another movie that makes me think!