Hallmark For All Seasons

A Little Romance

Love in the Forecast

First, a quick apology to those who received my earlier email notification about my review for “Love in the Forecast!” I hit “publish” before the post was done and many of my email subscribers received an email stating a new post was available. However, I had moved it back to draft mode and so it was no longer visible to anyone who received that email. I apologize for any confusion that email caused.

Now on to the movie!

SO GLAD we had a truly new movie to watch this weekend. It wasn’t an acquisition, and it wasn’t a movie that was put on hold from a previously announced air date – it was filmed in February before production ground to a halt due to COVID-19. It was filmed in British Columbia, Canada and originally titled, “When it Rains it Pour.”

In a nutshell

As I said in my preview of the movie, I wasn’t sure what to expect since the screenplay writer has been hit or miss for me over the past year or two. And I don’t know if it was just fact that I was so happy to have a NEW movie to see, or that Christopher Russell has really grown on me, but I liked this movie more than I thought I would. Now trust me – it has issues (and the final ranking reflects that) – but I still liked it.

Plot for “Love in the Forecast”

After swearing off dating for a full year in order to focus on growing her career, meteorologist Leah quickly learns her new “no dates” commitment has made her a magnet for men. Fortunately, her new neighbor Mark is just the friend she needs to navigate her stormy life.

Actors/Chemistry

I thought Cindy Busby and Christopher Russell played very well off each other. I’ll admit it has taken me a while to get behind Christopher Russell as a leading man – after a few false starts for me, he won me over in “The Mistletoe Secret” in which he and Tyler Hynes had CRAZY bro chemistry. And then his hilarious interview with the boys from Deck the Hallmark sealed the deal. I like Christopher Russell.

It has also taken me some time to like Busby. I’m one of the few Hallmarkies that HATES the “Darcy” movies, and so my dislike for her was more for those movies than her as a lead. She and Russell were a good pair together, and helped this movie a lot.

Love in the Forecast — image: Hallmark Crown Media

I thought the secondary actors were good as well. It was mildly disconcerting to see the actress playing Leah’s mom wearing a silver wig. But the actress in question, Jennifer Copping, is probably only 14-15 years older than Busby, so I guess it makes sense. And while the wig was obvious, I have to say I did love the color of it. I aspire to have silver hair like that someday.

The movie also featured Donna Benedicto, a Hallmark “best friend” staple who played Mark’s former girlfriend Rochelle this time around. And last but not least, “Forecast” featured Nelson Wong – although I was disheartened that his character’s name was George, not Kenny. Seriously, they couldn’t make that small change???

Six Degrees of Kris Polaha: Jennifer Copping is three degrees away from Kristoffer Polaha. She had a small role on the 2016 movie, “The Confirmation” which featured Maria Bello. Bello shared the screen with Paul Sorvino in a movie from 2003 called “The Cooler.” In 2019 Sorvino was cast in “Beneath the Leaves” in which Polaha plays a detective.

Tropes in “Love in the Forecast”

A couple tropes stood out for me. First, Brody the dog was ADORABLE. What’s funny is the dog’s actual name is KEVIN. Not really a dog name, but he was fantastic. For those wondering, I suspect that he is a blue heeler cattle dog, which is a great breed of dog (I’m partial because I sometimes think my own dog may be part red heeler). Second, there was one appearance of empty coffee cups and a big scarf. We even got a short sort-of baking scene, although it wasn’t Christmas cookies.

Did I Hear/See That Right?

I worried about this movie at some point because my “Did I Hear/See That Right” notes kept getting longer and longer. This is what brought the score down, y’all. First, and most importantly, HOW WRONG can these weather people be? Both Leah’s boss and Leah herself are clearly incompetent.

With satellite technology being what it is, we can see whether it’s going to rain or not. Sure, we may not know about pocket storm burst that come out of nowhere. But for the most part a weatherperson can view the radar and be able to say with some confidence, “It’s NOT going to rain tomorrow.” In this anti-technology propaganda (I kid, I kid. Sort of.) ONLY the farmers know what they are talking about. And while I respect farmer’s knowing about a LOT of stuff, even they aren’t right about the weather 100% of the time.

The fact is, the only time the weather people really get it wrong nowadays is how bad the SNOW might be. One inch or one foot – they never get that right. But rain or sun? That one is pretty easy to forecast. It’s the whole reason we can now have 7-10 day forecasts!!!

The movie opens with Leah in front of a green screen, giving a weather update. Once she’s done she says, “Back to you, Bob!” Then the producer yells cut, and apparently they are at commercial. Um, what about Bob? Where’s Bob? Or is she filming her segment in advance and not doing it live on air? Totally confused about that. And this “Back to you, Bob!” thing is done a couple times in the movie.

Next, once Leah has decided to stop dating and focus on her life, she sees an ad for an apartment. The picture featured? The bathroom sinks. Now they were nice sinks, to be sure, but is that really the picture you want to use for your apartment rental?

At some point Leah is in her backyard struggling to get batteries into some sort of device (oh, that darn technology!) and she can’t get them in properly. Is it a manual dexterity thing? What made this scene laughable though, was that she gives up as Mark comes over, and as she hands it to him so he can get the batteries installed correctly (oh, that darn technology!), the screen is clearly ON, which means she got the batteries in just fine. So what, is he putting on the cover then? That too hard for her?

Leah’s getting her weather thing on and has equipment in the backyard. They have a quick shot of Mark jamming a weather vane into the ground in her yard. Now, that’s well and good, but her yard is LOWER than her house, which means that the weathervane will be partially blocked from the winds, depending on the direction the wind comes. If it comes at her house, that weather vane isn’t turning, y’all. Aren’t weather vanes supposed to be up high?

And last (but not least – at some point I stopped writing things down), Leah puts a cold lasagna on a non-preheated oven. Now, I’ll admit to being lazy when I cook my frozen pizzas – I’ll put those things in before the oven is heated up to 400*. But this was a stone cold lasagna going into a stone cold oven. That’s not how baking works.

Feelgoods

Things that I loved from “Love in the Forecast?” Having Nelson Wong pop up as the flower delivery guy. The mom’s silver ha– uh, wig. The adorable dog. And lastly, that dairy farm looked lovely. I loved the cows following Busby and Russell in the background and kept waiting for one of them to actually nudge one of the actors. *lol* But I love cows – partly because my boss used to own a dairy farm and has regaled me with many stories of his cows. Not only that, but he still gets dairy farm magazines that have awesome articles and pictures of cows.

I also loved that Leah and Mark became FRIENDS before realizing that they had feelings for each other. Too often this type of friendship-building does not happen in Hallmark movies, but in this one I appreciated that as neighbors they got to know each other platonically over time, with the romantic feelings coming in later. Hallmark needs to do more of that.

Re-watchability

Despite the low score and the frustrating lack of weather expertise, I would probably watch “Love in the Forecast” again if I happened across it. It was nice to see these two actors play well off each other. I know the nitpicks brought its score down quite a bit. Had it been less “wrong” I think it would be at least two or three spots higher than its current rank. And yet again we have an instance where the raw score is actually better than it’s final ranking suggests.

The Ranking

Sadly, because of so many plot holes, this one fell hard in the rankings. “Love in the Forecast” sitting near the bottom – but still ranks almost 10 percentage points higher than the movie in last place for the year.

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%)
Fashionably Yours (air date: Apr 11) – 594 pts – weighted score: 102.6 (72.0%)
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%)
Nature of Love (air date: Apr 18) – 520 pts – weighted score: 90.3 (63.3%)
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%)
Love in the Forecast (air date: Jun 13) – 520 pts – weighted score: 76.5 (53.6%)
How to Train Your Husband (air date: May 16) – 350 pts – weighted score: 62.5 (43.9%)