Hallmark For All Seasons

“Just Add Romance” aired on March 2, 2019 on the Hallmark Channel. It starred Meghann Fahy and Luke McFarlane.

In a nutshell

While this one had a couple major plotholes that drove me crazy, I still liked many things about this movie.

Plot

Carly (Fahy) and Jason (McFarlane), exact opposites, meet in culinary school and form a kinship that borders on romance.  But when he abruptly leaves school, it is not until later that they unexpectedly reunite while competing on a famed cooking show for the chance at their own restaurant.  Sparks ignite again but which will win out – their culinary dreams or falling in love?

Actors

I’ll admit that I was not familiar with Meghann Fahy at all before this movie, and I kept thinking she was a mix between Erin Krakow (from Hallmark’s “When Calls the Heart”) and Cindy Busby (from “Unleashing Mr. Darcy”).  That vague familiarity worked in her favor, and I thought she was great.  Luke McFarlane is a solid Hallmark actor and while I had some issues with his performance (which I’ll go into a bit), I thought he was fine.  Meghann Fahy is three degrees away from Kris Polaha, having co-starred with Sam Waterston in 2016’s “Miss Sloane.”  Waterston co-starred with Armie Hammer in 2018’s “On the Basis of Sex” and Hammer and Polaha co-starred in “Billy the Early Years” in 2008..

Chemistry

The two leads had decent chemistry together.  They both definitely had good chemistry with their various co-stars as well.  It was fun seeing two of my favorite Hallmark Dads, actors Keith MacKechnie and Malcolm Stewart.  Those two men have been in so many Hallmark movies between them that they deserve a medal!

Feelgoods

With yet another food-themed movie, this one made me itch to get in the kitchen.  Were there a lot of feelgoods?  Not really.  It wasn’t that kind of movie.  It was just a fluffy romance and even though they were in a contest, I never really felt that anything was at risk if one of them lost (although Jason did get fired for excessive absenteeism at some point).

Tropes

Had I pulled out my Hallmark Christmas movie bingo cards, I’d have hit on a few boxes even though this is not a holiday movie.  She still wore a big scarf at some point, there were plenty of cooking/baking montages, and it even had a cute kid.  A sort-of promotion was at stake (although no Christmas Eve deadline this time around), too.

Did I Hear/See That Right?

So here’s where we come to some of my issues with this film.  I know it was for dramatic effect, but there should NOT have been music playing during the announcement of who went home after each round of the cooking contest.  That’s not how TV shows are put together.  The music is added post-production.  POST production.  Not during production.

Secondly, it was distracting how tight Luke McFarlane’s blue chef jacket was.  And not in a good way.  It was so tight that he clearly couldn’t sit comfortably, and it made him look very stiff and robotic because he just didn’t have room to even take a breath in that thing.

Thirdly, another production issue.  The competitions were timed, and yet with that last challenge they were running around the studio like they had no worries about getting the food made.  You can bet on Food Network they do not stop the clock when someone cuts a finger or has a tantrum – and yet Carly fled the kitchen and had her sous chefs scurry about and find out what Jason was making.  Uh…shouldn’t they be prepping like Jason’s sous chefs were?

Re-watchability

I don’t know that I’d watch this one again, although I do hope that they bring back Meghann Fahy for more movies on the network.  She’s a great addition.

The Ranking

So where does it fit in the rankings? Unfortunately, it falls in the lower half of the 2019 movies thus far.  But it’s still well ahead of the four movies below it.

1. Winter Love Story (air date: January 19) – 685 pts – weighted score: 115.8 (81.2%)
2. Mystery 101 (air date: January 27 (HMM)) – 454 pts – weighted score: 94.2 (80.5%)
3. Love on the Menu (air date: February 23) – 642 pts – weighted score: 113.8 (79.9%)
4. Love, Romance & Chocolate (air date: February 16) – 627 pts – weighted score: 110.2 (77.3%)
5. The Story of Us (air date: February 9) – 605 pts – weighted score: 101.3 (71.1%)
6. Ruby Herring: Silent Witness (air date: January 20 (HMM)) – 357 pts – weighted score: 79.5 (67.9%)
7. One Winter Proposal (air date: January 12) – 535 pts – weighted score: 95.8 (67.2%)
8. Just Add Romance (air date: March 2) – 548 points – weighted score: 95.6 (67.1%)
9. Valentine in the Vineyard (air date: February 2) – 503 pts – weighted score: 89.5 (62.8%)
10. Snowcoming (air date: January 26) – 485 pts – weighted score: 87.3 (61.2%)
11. The Winter Castle (air date: January 5) – 475 pts – weighted score: 85.9 (60.2%)
12. A Winter Princess (air date: January 18) – 380 pts – weighted score: 70.5 (49.5%)

To see where this movie lands in my entire ranking of Hallmark movies, visit my Hallmark Movie Rankings page!

What did you think of “Just Add Romance”?