With a bonus day in February 2020 came a bonus original Hallmark movie. “Bad Date Chronicles” aired on Saturday, February 29. Leap day! This movie was acquired by Hallmark, having originally aired on Pixl in 2017. It was set in Portland, Oregon but filmed in Vancouver, Canada.
In a nutshell
The trailer made this look good. The cast was very promising. And while there were certain aspects of this movie that I adored, in the long run it was a bit of a miss for me.
Plot
Leigh (Merritt Patterson) works for an online magazine, covering the ‘Bad Date Chronicles,’ which allows people to post date experiences. When rival blogger Conner (Justin Kelly) becomes the subject of one of her posts, they agree to date each other to see which one is the bad dater.
Actors/Chemistry
I had issues with the pairing of Merritt Patterson and Justin Kelly in this movie. He has a baby face to such a degree that they were just not physically compatible. It was very distracting – and it’s nothing that Justin Kelly can help! He’s adorable! But he looks like he’s 13 years old (the patchy facial hair didn’t help his cause either). The two boss characters were loathsome (no fault of the actors – it’s how they were written) and really the only couple I was invested in was Brad and Erin, chatting away online in their own little subplot.
Where this movie won me over completely was the man pictured below. That’s Giles Panton. He has been cast as the Bad Boyfriend, the Bad Boss, the Bad Best Friend – he’s ALWAYS the also-ran in Hallmark movies (and he’s been in a lot of them). However, in this movie he excelled so much and he was easily the best one in the movie. He played co-worker Brad to perfection, in my opinion.
My favorite part of the whole movie was less than 2 seconds long. Connor was telling Brad about the fiasco of a first date, and lamenting that their other co-worker Julian forgot to call in a favor to get him a reservation at the fancy new restaurant in town. Connor says something like “Julian was supposed to make our reservation,” and it cuts to Brad who in outrage says, “And he didn’t? JULIAN!” and promptly hurls a mini-basketball at an off-camera Julian (which had an audible thud as it hit Julian). I admit I laughed out loud at that. Another time he made me laugh was when his boss asks Brad to come into the office. Brad sees the two rival bosses sitting together, points at them, and as though reprimanding a wayward puppy asks, “What did you do?”
Hallmark, PLEASE put Giles Panton in a witty Hallmark rom-com as the leading man. He deserves it. I know Tyler Hynes was recently tapped as being your funny leading man, but you’ve known about Giles Panton for a few years now, as clearly evidenced by his iMDb credits list. PROMOTE HIM TO LEADING MAN!
Six Degrees of Kris Polaha: Giles Panton is three steps away but his steps are all Hallmark-adjacent. In 2006, Panton had a small role in the movie “Shock to the System” which also featured Hallmark’s Nelson Wong (he of the “Kenny Kwon” phenomenon). Wong shared a screen with Hallmark princess Danica McKellar in 2015’s “Perfect Match.” Outside of the Hallmark universe, McKellar and Polaha shared the screen one year earlier in 2014’s “Where Hope Grows.”
Tropes in “Bad Date Chronicles”
To be honest, the only two I noticed were the big city drone shot as the first scene of the movie and a few empty coffee cups. There were no cute kids or dogs, no big scarves, no big deadline. There was brief mention of the possibility for Leigh to get promoted if she did well with the Bad Date Chronicles, but I actually didn’t take that as a serious offer so much as blackmail by the boss.
Did I Hear/See That Right?
There were quite a few things in this movie that didn’t make sense. First, how on earth is it acceptable for two bosses to FORCE their employees to go out on dates together? I know the first date was an organic set-up of some kind, but to force them to continue to go out? Mean, unnecessary and maybe completely unethical?
Leigh’s boss at some point says that happy people do not get pageviews when their stories are told. To that I say, “Whatever!” If that is the case, then I’m an anomaly because I LIVE for the happy, positive stuff. I mean, c’mon, I love HALLMARK CHANNEL for crying out loud. Of course I like happy people! And sure, some people love the schadenfreude of other people going through bad times, but there are plenty of folks who don’t.
Also related to Leigh’s boss. She is the owner of a popular and successful online magazine/blog. And yet her office is a small interior room with no windows. Huh? Isn’t the whole goal of those who become successful to have the signature “corner office?” And for the boss in this movie, given her horrible personality and general lack of ethics and empathy, I’d have thought having a top floor corner office with a view would have been something she demanded upon moving into that building.
I don’t like when words are mispronounced. Both Connor and Brad pronounced the word “defense” as “de-FENCE” instead of “DE-fence” as to how they are going to play against Leigh’s offense. It’s a sports term, guys. BRAD – you are the sports editor – you should know the proper pronunciation!
In the “c’mon, guys, we can do better” category, I noticed after the 2nd or 3rd close-up shot of Connor’s blogs that the first paragraph was always different, but the subsequent paragraph was always the exact same text. Even though they were supposed to be completely different articles about completely different dates.
This is where I have to say I hated the entire next to last scene. WHY did we need a sidewalk lined with luminaries? There’s no way they had time to 1) plan 2) purchase 3) lay out 4) lightup those luminaries. It was just ridiculous. Also, why did the co-workers and bosses need to be there and read the original write-ups of Leigh and Connor’s good date? It was overkill and made me groan out loud versus feel good about that whole scene.
Feelgoods
Despite all the issues, I did have things that I liked besides Giles Panton. The way the initial bad date was told to us, the viewers, was well-crafted and didn’t let us place the blame on either Connor or Leigh for the date going wrong. We got to see it from both perspectives and we truly have no idea what really happened (most notably with how the candle got tipped over). I liked that a lot and appreciated the comic timing. Very nicely done by director Steven R. Monroe and editor Dan Krieger, who has edited all of the Mystery 101 movies on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries as well.
I also have to admit that even though the way this movie depicted chat rooms (egregiously in error), I had a moment of nostalgia because my husband and I met in online chat rooms back in 1995 and we’ve been together ever since. So while it was painful to watch the “chats” that took place via the blog (that’s not how chat rooms work, and it’s not how comments on blogs work), it was still cute to see two people get to know each other online. And I won’t nitpick too much about Brad misspelling the word “recipe.” Twice.
Re-watchability
The score on this one is low for a few reasons. There was a lack of tropes, I did not see a lot of chemistry between the leads, and there were a number of small things that bothered me (most notably that entire outdoor luminary scene). Having said that, I’d gladly watch the movie up until the last 15 minutes and be pretty satisfied.
The Ranking
“Bad Date Chronicles” is near the bottom despite the awesomeness that is Giles Panton and the interesting back and forth storytelling in the first half of the movie.
- 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%)
- 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%)
- 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%)
To see where this movie lands in my overall rankings of Hallmark movies, visit my Hallmark Movie Rankings page!
What did you think of Hallmark’s “Bad Date Chronicles”? Comment below and let me know!
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