Un prince pas très charmant

The Hallmark Channel scrapes the bottom of the barrel -- I hope -- in this would-be knock-off of WOMAN OF THE YEAR. He's an incoherent sportswriter who doesn't own a shirt with a collar who has written a book. She's an obsessive-compulsive control freak who does some sort of makeover show for the paper's affiliated TV station, called upon to give him a makeover for his upcoming book tour. Of course they fall in love, but first we have to endure ninety-minutes of obnoxious pretty people. At least they probably are obnoxious. We are given no more sense of who they are than I have just given you. Our only reason to wish them well is that their friends are even more overtly annoying than they; he's got a stoner friend and she's got a self-involved boyfriend and a looks-obsessed girlfriend.

No one expects anything new in the way of story lines. This one was old when Shakespeare set Benedict and Beatrice wrangling. Still, if the hacks who produced this wish us to look at this plot yet again, they need to give us something: characters we can care about, situations that are novel or a couple of jokes that are well told. This one offers the viewer nothing, except that they are good-looking young people. So are their vile friends and I don't care a fig about any of them.

This was barely ok. It just wasn't interesting or in depth at all. Everything was predictable (though improbable). The writers really need to work on their scripting.

Here's to Hallmark's formula romance movies. Yes, it's typical...girl meets boy....but in this one neither can stand each other! Of course, the fairytale happy ending. I've watched this movie a few times and enjoyed it every time. If course it's not an Oscar movie. You don't watch Hallmark for that. Instead we watch to escape and enjoy the happy enings.

Not perfect, but wonderful and feel-good. It is the kind of movie you can enjoy alone (even if you're single!) - you don't have to have a date to enjoy it. It is a good movie for a single hopeless romantic. The beginning half had some moments of incredibly brilliant scripting (I laughed or chuckled several times during the movie). The latter half took some stretching of our ability to believe and somewhat less brilliant scripting, BUT, it was always feel-good and good-natured throughout. Generally compassionate and considerate characters throughout as well. So 1.75 thumbs up from me. I was impressed with all of the actors' abilities as the movie progressed. And I am left smiling after the movie and in a good mood! So overall, it was good.

Much better than the majority of similar movies. Good pacing, not a lot of irrelevant padding or unnecessary conflict, a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, good chemistry between the two leads.

A lot of these made-for-TV romantic not-quite-comedies-because-they're-not-very-funny have the same build-up. The familiar formula is here but the build-up is a little different, it's got a slower burn with a lot more not-realizing-they-have-feelings-for-each-other-yet, which I prefer.