Hallmark For All Seasons

 

Hallmark’s Love Ever After series came to a close this past weekend, and closed it out with a very well done rom-com! On February 22, 2020 they aired, “Love in Store.”  The movie was filmed in the lovely city of Victoria in Canada, with many scenes filmed at Camosun College.

In a nutshell

Joie Botkin wrote the screenplay.  She has represented some of the best and one of the worst in Hallmark scripts in the past couple of years.  Fortunately, this time out she produced a winner that I thoroughly enjoyed!

Plot

Two rival home shopping hosts (played by Alexandra Breckenridge and Robert Buckley) are forced together while competing for a promotion. Along the way they find their on-air chemistry kindles an off-air spark.

Actors/Chemistry

I think we can all agree that Hallmark Channel needs to bring back both Alexandra Breckenridge and Robert Buckley.  As I said in my preview of the movie, I like them both tremendously and knew they’d bring a little something extra to the characters of Terrie and David in “Love in Store.”  And boy did they!  I laughed out loud at some of their interactions, especially when David would kind of needle Terrie to get under her skin.  I thought their chemistry was great and thoroughly enjoyed this pairing.  The secondary cast was fine – no standouts really, other than Carlo Marks, who was good in his Bad Boyfriend role, and Jackee Harry as the Shopping Queen, Sharyn.

Six Degrees of Kris Polaha:  Another easy one this week – Alexandra Breckenridge co-starred with Polaha in a few episodes of the TV show “Life Unexpected” so she is only one step away!

Tropes in “Love in Store”

I only noticed a few, including empty coffee cups, the cute kid, and the big city skyline opening shot (after the ANIMATED CREDITS, WHAT????).  If there were others, I was too busy enjoying the movie to notice them.

Did I Hear/See That Right?

I only had a few things that distracted me during the movie because they seemed odd.

When Terrie arrives at the SHC studio, there is a visitor’s tour going on and two random people leave the group and come take selfies with Terrie even though no permission has been given and they’ve not bothered to ask.  Rude!

When Terrie talks to her boyfriend at the restaurant about the possible promotion, she mentions that she dreamed as a kid about working at SHC.  Are there really people out there who as children dream of becoming hosts on a shopping channel?

I don’t know that we needed to have a cute kid in the movie.  And truth be told, I don’t know that we necessarily needed to have David’s sister either.  His co-presenter, Frank, could have easily been the person giving that same advice throughout the movie, and allowed *that* character be more than a token stand-in.  I think by reducing the cast by a couple players, it would have allowed some of those remaining characters, and perhaps the story itself, to be more developed.

And I don’t think we necessarily needed a full dinner scene with Terrie’s co-worker announcing her engagement – it could have been a conversation at work, which then initiated Terrie talking to her Bad Boyfriend about marriage.

Feelgoods

The animated opening credits were a very nice departure for typical Hallmark openings!  I was flabbergasted and for a moment I thought I was on the wrong channel.  Hallmark, please do more creative openings like that one!

I was seriously coveting the thick knitted blanket that Terrie had laying across the back of her sofa.  It was one of those oversized throws with super thick cables, and I loved it.  I do know how to knit, and once looked into the cost of that yarn in order to make my own blanket.  It would have cost me HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS to make that blanket because that yarn is NOT cheap!!

I was also surprised by how much I liked David’s house.  Did he need that big a house as a single guy?  Nope.  But that didn’t mean I hated it.  I really, really liked it (which is surprising since I don’t typically go for really modern architecture and design).  I think I liked it because it was very linear and full of square angles (which, yes, I know, is a signature part of modern design).  THAT I love.

Re-watchability

For sure I plan to watch this movie again.  The score below may not reflect how much I love it, but that’s because there weren’t too many tropes, which meant the score was automatically reduced in that category.  Nonetheless, this was a very enjoyable movie!

The Ranking

“Love in Store” moved into third place for the year thus far with a respectable score!

1. Matching Hearts (air date: Feb 8) – 640 pts – weighted score: 109.0 (76.5%)
2. Winter in Vail (air date: Jan 4) – 623 pts – weighted score: 108.8 (76.4%)
3. Love in Store (air date: Feb 22) – 637 pts – weighted score: 108.2 (75.9%)
4. The Secret Ingredient (air date: Feb 15) – 617 pts – weighted score: 105.2 (73.8%)
5. A Valentine’s Match (air date: Feb 1) – 562 pts – weighted score: 99.8 (70.0%)
6. Love On Iceland (air date: Jan 18) – 563 pts – weighted score: 99.4 (69.7%)
7. Hearts of Winter (air date: Jan 25) – 561 pts – weighted score: 98.2 (68.9%)
8. Love in Winterland (air date: Jan 11) – 508 pts – weighted score: 90.7 (63.6%)
9. 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 “Love in Store”?  Comment below and let me know!

Love in Store Share on X