Brimming with Love

At one point the heroine's best friend reads the comments on her story she is writing for her newspaper. The comment read "writer seems cold and distant." "Oh Ho," I thought, maybe this stiff, wooden, bored performance is her version of cold and distant since that is what the character was supposed to be. (Which was very unlikable) I was just about to quit watching this movie because the portrayal of the lead actress was just that bad. Instead, I decided to skip ahead to see if the ice melted and she showed some energy in the inevitable happy ending. Nope. It wasn't the character, it was just terrible acting. Cute girl but she should be a model not an actress. She has that glum expressionless runway model-face down pat. The secondary romance was pretty good though.

I saw this on the UPtv network, but made by Lifetime. I really like Asbille in Yellowstone and enjoyed seeing her acting in something different. I found her character, Allie, in this tv movie a bit too depressing, however. Her eventual love interest, Sam (the coffee shop owner) was just not interesting enough to be appealing. I found the two coffee shop employees the most interesting, with Allie's two coworkers being next interesting. Overall-movie-wise, I saw no reason to place the movie as being in San Francisco. Except for a few panoramic views, the remainder of the movie appeared to be on a generic movie-set. With the square-dancing scene, the movie would have been more believable if set somewhere in the mid-west or even Canada. The outdoor scenes in the park just didn't look like San Francisco. Nice try, but it's hard to get the feel Hallmark gets with its movies.

Allie is looking for a place to work and Sam, convinced that he was an employee of hers, passes him some balloons to hang. Being on the staircase she doesn't see who she was and when she notices she offers him a coffee because she was kind that she helped him. When she is inside she is given 30 coffee cards to make new acquaintances. Allie proposes him to her boss to be promoted to writer of articles, she finds a huge obstacle that she having suffered she does not want to experience and asks for help from her friend. A very well acted story with many points the protagonists are nice and funny. Does this film make a lot of thinking about people who are afraid of falling in love but if they find a person they trust is it love for life?

While the story is kinda typical and you see what's going to happen a mile away, the actors are cute together. The boss is annoying. But what is going on with the background music? It's awful and totally distracting. At points you can't even hear the dialogue at all. I ended up having to put subtitles on just so I can understand what they are saying. Ok love conquers all I suppose.

The plot line that a writer gets involved with her story subject is not new, but a lot of how this was done is a little different. Unfortunately, the movie is still extremely predictable. There's a minor surprise toward the end, but I knew something had to happen to create a crisis.

This movie is actually about three romances. It becomes pretty obvious who they will be. The second and third use really common plot devices. I don't think saying what they are would be news to anyone that would spoil anything, but just in case, I will avoid the possible spoilers.

I actually found Alexandra Metz to be a better candidate for the lead than Kelsey Asbille. Other reviewers have already commented about Asbille to the effect that she was almost missing in action, so I won't add to that other than to say that for much of the movie I didn't like her character. Metz, on the other hand was vivacious and fun. Unfortunately, her opposite number was the prototypical stiff male even after he changed. Jonathan Keltz was the appropriate lead and in some ways had the same spark as Metz. The third couple was what they should be. Gatlin Kate James was a good "best friend" but more.

One problem that often occurs when there are too many main characters is that their stories get spread too thin. I think this movie did well to keep that from happening. True, we could have spent more time with Sam and Allie, but unless it loosened up Allie, why would we want tor?

Despite the flaws, I enjoyed this movie more than many in this genre.