Normally I put on a Hallmark or Great American Family movie at bedtime to help me fall asleep. This one actually kept me interested enough that I stayed awake to finish it. Hallmark and GAF have done a number of variations of the main theme of the 1998 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan Rom-Com YOU'VE GOT MAIL which is itself a remake of the 1940 Jimmy Stewart-Margaret Sullavan movie THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER: two business associates who can't stand each other are unaware that they are also anonymous pen-pals/email correspondents and falling in love with each other through that channel.
In YOU'VE GOT MAIL, Hanks and Ryan are business rivals, with Hanks a member of the family of a large nationwide bookstore chain (think Barnes & Noble) and Ryan the owner of a small bookstore in Manhattan she inherited from her mother and is struggling to keep afloat. As the newest store of Hanks's family is about to open and inevitably put Ryan's literally named "The Shop Around the Corner" out of business, the intensity of their mutual hatred crescendoes until Hanks learns his email correspondents true identity.
In CRAFT ME A ROMANCE, Jodie Sweetin plays Nicole, the manager and co-owner with her brother and the manager of a small Arts & Crafts store inherited from their parents, about to be eclipsed by a large nationwide craft supplies chain opening a new store around the corner. Alfred, owner of the chain, has repeatedly offered a generous buyout offer to Nicole as decades earlier her parents' store had caused a previous failure of their first attempt to open a store in that town decades earlier. Nicole refuses to even respond to the offer, so Alfred sends Matthew, his son and vice president, to deliver the offer in person. Matthew arrives to deliver the message, but before identifying himself he finds himself enamored of Nicole and enthralled by her presentation to a craft fair of her customers in the store. Without the additional plot element of anonymous correspondence of YOU'VE GOT MAIL,, this movie cuts to the chase of Matthew's conflict.
As I said in the review of another variant of the YOU'VE GOT MAIL theme, nothing wrong with that. Even with the mandatory formula for ANY Hallmark or GAF movie where you know within the first twenty minutes which two characters are going to be coupled up at the end and that the movie ends with a kiss. This is where the old metaphor kicks in that Life isn't a destination, it's a journey. We already know the destination is the kiss at the end, and we know that the YOU'VE GOT MAIL plot is the parameter of the journey. (I recognized it for the other movie I reviewed immediately just reading the program guide, but not for this one!) The trick is to deviate enough in the journey so that it's not totally predictable and stale and a rehash of the previous versions.
I don't know why other reviewers have a problem with Jodie Sweetin's acting; I suspect that they still see her as little Stephanie Tanner from FULL HOUSE and are frozen in time with that memory. She and Brent Bailey as Matthew have good chemistry together and it works. In all the years that Max Caulfield (Alfred) has been acting, there's only one role of his I'm familiar with, but it's my all time favorite movie, GETTYSBURG (1993) in which he plays real-life Union Colonel Strong Vincent who dies heroically in the eponymous battle. I was curious how he would come across as the only real "bad guy" in this movie. I won't spoil anything, but I was not disappointed.
