Butlers in Love

The femme lead is obsessively fixed on being a butler. She falls for a Son Of A Butler at school. Love or Butling! Can She manage both? The screenplay spends much of the action on Butling. Is it Be Careful of What You Wish For?

I really didn't want to watch this. Only my compulsive side to complete everything had me give it a try since it was on my DVR list.

My first impression was that both Walker and Emma were too disruptive and with the personality to go with it. I wouldn't think either should have survived to the first commercial. "Perhaps concentrating on your work and not debating with other students will help you not burn down the manor."

Henry's obnoxious arrogance really made it hard to get to the second commercial. It ticked me off even more that Emma gets blamed for Henry grabbing her bottle. And that's the point where Henry's personality changes 100% in under a minute, which is a plot device I hate in this genre movie.

Emma has a positive and energetic personality and yet the first 40% or so of the movie is depressing. There are brief interactions between the leads, but to that point they don't have much connection.

I have wondered if this movie is meant to be a tribute to butling or a parody. The latter idea was reinforced when Emma thought she could change Henry's attitude with that lame movie. Emma's dedication is even more mystifying after Henry's speech about the time requirement of the profession. Why would a vivacious young lady like Emma sacrifice her entire life like that? 1 day off in a year?

That 40% point was significant. From that point on, the positive aspects of both leads' personalities, especially Emma's, starts to come out. And Stacey Farber, as Emma, paints a really appealing character.

The story seems unusual. The ending is interesting. Some of it was predictable. Some of it was a surprise. Some of it, I'm not exactly sure what happened.

If you stick with it, it's really not that bad.

Maybe not the best storyline, but the acting was good. The three main characters were fun. Maxwell Caulfield was good as the stern but kind teacher. The overall movie was cute. The scenery was good. Would watch again.

It's as if the writers of the final two scenes didn't watch the first 90% of the movie. They undermined it all with how they concluded the story. Without the inconsistent ending, this movie would probably be a pleasant watch -- maybe a 5 out of 10. It was pretty dull either way, though there were some nice scenes and a really fun, likeable lead actress.

If you've seen one Hallmark movie, you already know how this is going to go so I won't talk about predictability except to say that the end had one surprising, and unsatisfying, bump. Corey Cott brought this up to a six from a probable four as his character was so real and fun to watch. What largely brought the movie down for me was Emma, the character not the actress. Part of it was that I felt sorry for her, past sympathetic almost to pittying but no emotional connection to really make me care. But mostly what annoyed about her was her hair. I know it's minor, but the fact that her shoulder length hair is loose the whole time when there's no way a school whose dress code is stricter than the military's would allow that. This is backed up by the fact that every other female affiliated with butling has her hair pulled back neatly. Not only was it loose, it looked like it hadn't even been brushed since the day before. This, her short stature, and the uniform made her look like a kid playing dress-up most of the time so it was hard to take her seriously.