Bound & Babysitting

11 minutes in and I'm out... this might only be the second Hallmark movie I've ever stopped watching. Terrible acting and scenarios. If you can't grab somebody in the first 10 minutes, it's a flop.

This Hallmark is remarkable in that there are no festivals or small businesses to save big bad greedy corporations. Two polar opposites who had always irritated each other have to work together to babysit mutual friends' children for a week. Like the Katharine Hegel/ Josh Duhamel romantic comedy Life as we Know It, the woman is uptight and responsible and the guy is an overgrown frat boy. Only in that movie the parents were tragically killed and the couple were the designated substitute parents. It's a good movie. Any Hallmark fan would love it.

This one suffers from 2 bland protagonists, and a bland family. The female lead was unlikable and snotty when she wasn't being bland. I think I'd like the actress in something else, I just didn't like the character she played. The guy was OK. He wasn't all that irresponsible either, just kind of fun loving. it followed the usual pattern except for no festivals or country/city conflict. Other than that it was nothing special but fairly tolerable.

The story is kind of like Life as We Know It, but even a closer to The Christmas Sitters which I guess actually came later in the same year. The trope isn't as overused as many but it's predictable. I didn't see the conflict coming, but an alert viewer might have guessed it. The middle school dance was a fun diversion.

Travis Van Winkle is over the top early on as the irresponsible playboy, and then suddenly he and his character, Alex, calm down. Tammin Sursok starts out almost as over the top. She is the rigid rule following worrier, Maggie. She also does a temporary and abrupt character change becoming the opposite. They did have chemistry and that's what drew me in.

I'm thinking some of the problem may have been in the director since they only significant characters who seemed halfway real were Corinne Massiah and Caroline Aaron. The kids were OK. The actor playing Amber was a little too stereotypical as the blonde.

The backdrop for the phone calls from Hawaii were obviously cheap blue screen.

What is interesting in this movie is that it shows the impact of misunderstandings. The story line was cute. When you remove preconceptions about someone the results are sometimes surprising.