Hallmark For All Seasons » You're Bacon Me Crazy

You’re Bacon Me Crazy

Let me preface this review by saying: I love bacon. I would go broke due to daily visits to a food truck featuring bacon in every dish. Fortunately, we have no such food truck in my area (I know this because I’ve used “the app.”). “You’re Bacon Me Crazy” aired on Saturday, April 4, 2020. Once again, we have a movie set in Portland, Oregon but filmed in Vancouver, Canada, including the Langley area of British Columbia, which was also featured in Christmas Under the Stars and A Brush With Love.

In a nutshell

Knowing this was based on a book for middle schoolers, I was a bit worried about this movie. However, it won me over despite a lot of nitpicks that I had in the storytelling. I liked Natalie Hall much, much more in this movie compared to her 2019 turn in “A Winter Princess,” and Michael Rady, as always, was fabulous.

Plot

Cleo Morelli (Natalie Hall), an aspiring Portland chef, tries to win a food truck competition while the competition (Michael Rady) tries to win her heart.

I realized when looking at some older posts recently that I used to do more in-depth descriptions of the movie plot versus relying on the short blurb found on Hallmark’s website. And so here I will attempt to recap the movie in a few sentences. Cleo comes from a history of good cooks, notably her grandfather, who once owned a local Italian restaurant. However, while Cleo opted to stick with the family legacy of being a chef, she has opted to be a chef on wheels, owning a very popular food truck in Portland.

Gabe, another food truck owner and former resident of Portland, is back in town to celebrate his younger brother’s birthday. Taking a break from his wanderlust, Gabe takes up space near Cleo’s truck, quickly becoming a popular truck among the locals.

A flirty rivalry begins, even as Gabe seeks out Cleo’s company to re-introduce him to some of the better foodie places in Portland. As their friendship builds, Cleo finds out about a food truck competition being hosted by her chef idol, Norma Duncan. After the votes are in, both Cleo and Gabe find their trucks have secured spots in the competition.

Will the competition get in the way of their mutual attraction to each other, or will they be able to see past the prize money and take a chance on love?

The plot is completely different from the Scholastic book version of “You’re Bacon Me Crazy” which is about teenagers working on the same food truck.

Actors/Chemistry

Look, there are three Hallmark pairings that I adore. Jill Wagner with Kristoffer Polaha. Brennan Elliott and Lacey Chabert. The third is Nikki DeLoach and Michael Rady. It is VERY hard for me to let either of them pair up with other people because I adore their chemistry in “Love to the Rescue” and “Two Turtle Doves” so, so much. However, I really liked this pairing with Natalie Hall. I was worried because I didn’t care for her in “A Winter Princess” (although having seen this movie I now feel she was the victim of being in a badly conceived movie versus anything she did wrong). Hall was GREAT in this and created a very likable character in Cleo.

You're Bacon Me Crazy — image: Hallmark Crown Media

I also totally bought the fact that Michael Rady and Casey Manderson could be brothers. They actually were very similar to each other. And while I don’t mind when Manderson gets scruffy, his beard was WAY too thick in this movie. I’m fine with beards, but I like them short, cropped and neat in appearance. Manderson’s was as though he had been on a camping vacation for a few weeks and showed up on set and said, “I’m keeping it!” (but he’s still a cutie and deserves to be a Hallmark lead as opposed to the brother, best friend, faithful co-worker).

Six Degrees of Kris Polaha: Natalie Hall is only two steps away from Polaha. She starred in the 2016 movie “Summer of 8” along with an actor named Michael Grant. Grant had previously worked with Polaha on the lovely 2014 movie, “Where Hope Grows.”

Tropes in “You’re Bacon Me Crazy”

You guys. I only saw ONE. They did the standard big city drone shot for the movie opener. Maybe I was off my game, but I did not spy any others. Tell me what I missed in the comments below!

Did I Hear/See That Right?

There were SO many things in this movie that made me go:

via GIPHY

Let’s go through them quickly.

Why does Cleo go into the flower shop first thing in the morning and buy flowers when she is just going to spend the day getting hot and sweaty making food on her truck? I know this is a spring fling movie, but there tie-in to the spring theme was so weak as to be nonsensical.

It is established early on that not only is Cleo a Portland native, but Gabe is as well. I don’t know about you, but whenever I found out that someone is from where I have lived in the past, we begin comparing notes. “Oh you lived in Fairfax, Virginia? Did you ever go to Tastee 29 diner near Fair Oaks Mall?” “Oh, you lived in Essex County in New Jersey? Did you ever go to the Tick Tock Diner off Route 3 near Bloomfield?” It’s human nature to begin comparing commonalities when you find you have a potentially shared history. These two did not do that when Gabe asked Cleo if she was a local.

Calling a “BLT” a “BLP” when you swap out the tomato for a persimmon is NOT a genius thing to do. It’s an obvious thing to do.

Lastly, when Norma Duncan comes over to taste Cleo’s food, Cleo hands her a plate of what I believe was tagliatelle pasta with sauce. Tagliatelle is a ribbon pasta, similar to fettucine or linguine. For anyone that eats pasta, they know that you have two options with ribbon pasta – wrap it on your fork and go for it, manners out the window, OR (quelle horreur) cut it into smaller pieces so that you can spear it with your fork. Norma Duncan NEVER put that food in her mouth, and it was HILARIOUS. She was seen holding the fork, and seen “chewing,” but there is NO WAY that she actually put that fork in the pasta.

And that scene made me wonder – have we ever seen Hallmark actors actually EAT FOOD? I know we’ve seen them eat COOKIES, maybe a bite of cake or pie, but in all the dinner scenes we see, do they actually eat food? I will have to start paying attention that.

The last one didn’t confuse me, but it made me laugh. The Mo Bacon truck had theme music, y’all. EVERY TIME the truck rolled onto the scene, an electric guitar rock riff kicked in, wanting to make sure viewers were aware that bacon is edgy and grungy and manly. So. Funny.

Feelgoods

I loved seeing Casey Manderson walk out of that glass house, y’all. He’s so great and that was a nice surprise. I appreciate that “You’re Bacon Me Crazy” moved Hallmark into the 21st century and acknowledged that there is a food truck app. The negative though, was that Gabe – food truck owner – should have been aware that there was an app so that he could promote HIS OWN BUSINESS on the app.

Lastly, while I cringed the 100th time someone mentioned that it is important cook with love, it also made me smile because years ago my friend Lori talked about how her nephews knew that with her food, love was the most important ingredient. I mocked her, saying, “So if you call one of them right now and ask them what the most important ingredient is in your cake, they’ll say love?” She swore they would, and promptly called one of them, putting the phone on speaker.

“Hey Aunt Lori,” he said upon answering.

“Hi, honey. I’m here with Jane and we were talking about baking, and I told her how much you enjoy when I bake for you, because you know I always put a special ingredient in my cakes. Do you know what that is?”

“Love.”

Y’all, that 16-yr-old boy didn’t even HESITATE.

Re-watchability

I would totally watch this one again, if only to see Michael Rady struggle with his thick Italian accent during one comedic scene. But also because it was a fun, easy-going, perfect for spring Hallmark movie.

The Ranking

“You’re Bacon Me Crazy” ended up with a strong score – landing in the 5th spot thus far. Even with the lack of tropes, it scored high in the other categories, making this one a winner for me. I really DID enjoy the movie a lot.

Matching Hearts (air date: Feb 8) – 640 pts – weighted score: 109.0 (76.5%)
Winter in Vail (air date: Jan 4) – 623 pts – weighted score: 108.8 (76.4%)
Love in Store (air date: Feb 22) – 637 pts – weighted score: 108.2 (75.9%)
The Secret Ingredient (air date: Feb 15) – 617 pts – weighted score: 105.2 (73.8%)
You’re Bacon Me Crazy (air date: Apr 4) – 591 pts – weighted score: 104.0 (72.9%)
A Valentine’s Match (air date: Feb 1) – 562 pts – weighted score: 99.8 (70.0%)
Love On Iceland (air date: Jan 18) – 563 pts – weighted score: 99.4 (69.7%)
Hearts of Winter (air date: Jan 25) – 561 pts – weighted score: 98.2 (68.9%)
Just My Type (air date: Mar 28) – 565 pts – weighted score: 95.4% (66.9%)
Bad Date Chronicles (air date: Feb 28) – 520 pts – weighted score: 91.0 (63.9%)
Love in Winterland (air date: Jan 11) – 508 pts – weighted score: 90.7 (63.6%)
Amazing Winter Romance (air date: Jan 20) – 487 pts – weighted score: 85.6 (60.1%)
In the Key of Love (air date: Mar 14) – 470 pts – weighted score: 82.5 (57.9%)