You, Me, and that Mountain Retreat

Another day and another barely passable Reel One Entertainment TV movie. This one in the worst ROE tradition suffers from several technical issues. There is a bad audio production in several scenes, and few bad cuts but they're small and you probably won't notice them if you don't look for them. Also what's up with an agressive makeup in nature?

What I really didn't like was the fake location which was immersion breaking. After Act I the movie supposedly takes places at Lake Tahoe except it doesn't. You see, Lake Tahoe is easily recognizable by large surrounding conifereus trees. And yet, the lake we see in the movie is surrounded by deciduous trees, and it was even shot in autumn as some leaves are even yellowish.

Cast was mostly passable. This was the first time that Gladys Bautista was in the leading role and I would say she was fine. The same applies to Michael Patrick Lane except his script mostly ruined him so I can't blame him. He did the best he could. It's clearly that production hired him as Brendan Penny on discount...

Writing and directing are so-so. It is a comedy movie, production played as safe as much as possible and there is almost no romance. Basically all the romance was shown in a trailer.

And speaking about it, obligatory don't watch it as it's ROE one as it shows everything.

I'm still watching the movie as I write this, and I'm not really sure I'll be able to sit through the whole thing. There are some very odd scenes, like someone telling a group to settle down when there was no noise, or someone very awkwardly telling their boss they'll have some report on his desk or something. Most of the movie so far has been uncomfortably awkward. I think it's a mix of bad writing and inexperienced actors. There was one scene where in reality a person would speak, but for some reason the guy was silently making awkward gestures instead. That character is extremely odd, though, so I guess it kinda works in a very, very weird way.

I don't know why they decided to say it was set in Lake Tahoe when it very clearly is not. Why not just say that it's set somewhere that looks like where they filmed it?