Luckless in Love

I am pretty critical of some recent romcom movies, especially Hallmark's cookie-cutter template scripts. These have about five or six different plots, five or six different ways the couple meets, five or six different reasons for dating, five or six reasons for the couple's almost-break-up, and five or six ways that the couple gets back together in the last 11 minutes of the movie. Hallmark seems to think that changing a couple of these options makes an entirely new and different movie script. But they are so predictable they are boring. But this movie was surprisingly refreshing. The acting was believable, the main characters were endearing, and I just really enjoyed this movie. It had its flaws, but in light of the competition's rom-com movies, this one rose higher in my ranking.

This is the second Reel One Entertainment TV movie in 2023 about single dad and is pretty solid. Of course as ROE TV movie there are always some technical issues - some scenes have loud background music so you can't properly hear dialogue, but most of their movies are (much) worse than this one. I only noticed one really bad cut. And location was obviously like so many times Hamilton, CA pretending to be Chicago.

This movie shares similar plot with spins to "Bad Date Chronicles" (2017) which has superior cast, but it failed in execution with the stupid slapstick comedy in the several scenes. This one doesn't suffer from it. Cast was overall fine but I personally mostly liked Jennifer Gibson. She killed it as Inga! Writing was fine, too except that Brett Donahue played fake Brit and I don't understand why was that even important for the story at all because he could be American or even better Canadian, and that would change nothing for worse at least.

And as every other ROE TV movie, don't watch trailer if you plan to watch the movie as it shows everything!

7.7 stars.

Here I fall back on one of the few mainstays of Hollywood: kids ruin everything. Almost every film you watch, when there are children involved, they have a hall pass to run amok. It's endearing, it's fun, it's aggravating, it's maddening, it's kids. But is this really how it should be? I'm going on a diatribe, because that's what I am left with after watching 'Luckless in Love'. How many times can this man allow his son to destroy his chances at having a romantic relationship? Enough is enough. This is a testament on how adults just let their children walk all over everything. Our current society, our current culture, the whole world is falling apart as a result. Ok, done with the lecture.

The movie is about a British man who lives in the USA with his teenage son. The man is a player and he falls in love with a romance writer of a magazine. It's a match made in hell. Eventually they see past the veneer of social pressures and facades that each of them must maintain. At this point stuff gets real, and the gloves come off. She has a deadline and he is the bottom line, he has an agenda, she is the trophy girlfriend. But these negative qualities in each of them are magnified only due to false pretenses and and missed opportunities. But the final act of this story is very fulfilling and that's why I really enjoyed 'Luckless in Love'.

This is not so bad a film and the current 5.8 rating is absolutely wrong for an audience like myself. I'm seeing a personal trend in rating patterns as I watch more and more films. Interestingly, the ones that fall into the 5.9 to 6.3 range are usually the worst, but 6.4-6.7 are the best. Anything 6.8 and above is hit or miss, the politics and agendas kick in at that point and it's a flip of the coin. Likewise, anything below 5.9 is a flip of the coin, because again politics and agendas sway these ratings in the opposite direction (and apparently my ideologies align more with movie flops rather than blockbusters). I'm finding that I enjoy these 5.0 type movies a whole lot more than anticipated.

So many of the characters in this movie are horrible. Some of it is bad acting and some of it is, I think, intentional exaggeration. Holden starts out so arrogant that I couldn't imagine him changing. Then suddenly he does and it's almost instantaneous. Inga is an overplayed caricature. It's meant to be funny but just made me cringe, like with Holden. Dirk is worse than Holden. Kyra is bad too but has some features that soften the image a little. To add to the cringing are the mean spirited pranks. None of them are physically destructive, but except for one, fell in the cringeworthy category.

The positive characters are Winnie, Ret, and Ty. I wanted to see more of Ty's story, especially actually interacting with Jade. Ret was slightly stereotyped as the out-of-touch old timer boss, but his actions as a mentor made him likeable instead of like the others.

Winnie is probably the best developed character starting out with some small flaws and growing through the story. This is in contrast to Holden's sudden personality shift which is not what I consider character development.

The story combines a lot of what are usually major plot elements. Just to name a couple - reporter assigned to a hit piece which hangs as a secret to near the end. Holden is challenged by Ret to get serious with a girl which has aspects of the stories where the Player accepts a bet to win a girl. There are many others.

The sets and backdrops are atrociously cheap, Just as example - a major league rising star practicing at a neighborhood baseball field with almost no fan seating.

There was one crazy scene that did get a laugh from me and that was the last scene with Inga. But then follow that up with the stupid cliche of Holden and Ty running in slow mo.

I can get turned off quickly by exaggeration comedy especially with a lot of overworked cliche and that's the case here. If you like that kind of stuff, you might like this. These aspects got tamped down some toward the middle of the movie making it a little more pleasant for me.

UP buys B/C level films full of not well known actors. The difference between a rom-com that's a success and one that is a disaster, is the quality of the script and this one didn't make it. Jennifer Gibson (Inga) and Steffi DiDominicantonio (Kyra) were just annoying to watch. Brett Donahue's English accent didn't really work, don't know if the accent was in the script or done at the director's request.

Liam MacDonald (Ty) and Glen Michael Grant (Ret) were best among the cast, along Maria Ricossa (Yvette). MacDonald was natural and very believable as Ty.

Hamilton, ON, Canada seems to be the hub for the latest films, shoot exteriors on major cities and set them in Hamilton, cities look a lot alike.