Jackbv123

Dear Hallmark writers. Please stop showing how little you know about real business. For starters, you don't go on an interview unprepared to answer the obvious question: what have you done lately, or in other words, what happened in your last job? Abril talks a big game and keeps talking a big game, but she's all talk and where is the substance?

Then things get complicated, but it is too much business logistics. It dominates too much of the screen time. There is some hardball - threats which amount to extortion. There is a mysterious unpaid loan that makes no sense how it was ignored. But an experienced viewer knows that some miracle will come along to save the day for everyone. The solution for the ranch also doesn't make sense and involves creating one of the most common rom/com obstacles to the re-budding romance.

Meanwhile this is a rom/com. Jousting between the leads early on is expected. I love some witty banter. This wasn't witty. Eventually Abril and Diego settle down to rebuild their relationship.

The network I watched this on and the production company that produced it can both be hot and cold, so when I chose between two Saturday night rom/coms, the Hallmark movie won. And it had one of the worst premises I have ever seen so I was done in 15 minutes and switched to my recording of this movie.

The story is fairly common where it revolves around the week before a wedding with some leisure and some planning. Shane is a huge movie star. Jessie was once a top photographer but left the rat race behind with a vengeance. She has some aspects of her personality that are borderline irresponsible. She might be mistaken for a slacker, but she keeps coming through.

I'm not a fan of when the leads meet and one or both tears into the other. This movie had a brief moment where the big movie star said leave me alone, but they quickly cleared up the misunderstanding. I liked it.

The conflict is done a little differently than you might expect in a couple of different ways. And unlike a lot of rom/coms that blow something totally out of proportion, in this movie it makes sense why one of them is so upset. In this genre you know there has to be a reconciliation, but this obstacle was almost too much to overcome.

Natalie Dreyfuss and Anthony Konechny have good chemistry. A lot of screen time early is spent with them getting to know each other. The banter is good.

BTW - this movie gets a D-, almost an F, in my pet peeve, size of text messages.

The title implies it, but when I read the synopsis, suggesting Beau was like her book "prince", I thought no more about it. Until ... Turns out this story plays like any other Royal Christmas movie. Beau is part of a very rich family that acts like royalty right down to Mom picking her son's potential bride. Mom is strict and controlling just like the typical queen perhaps one of the meaner ones. (What American mother books the venue for her son's wedding without consulting him about the date?) The different worlds theme is also a big part of the story. And have you ever noticed that almost every Hallmark Christmas movie has suppliers who bail or don't deliver on commitments without any consequences? There is an interesting twist to the fake fiancé trope since the fake couple are not both the lead couple. Actually there are a couple twists in that, maybe a few.

This movie probably has the most serious romantic conflict of the 4 Unwrapping titles.

There is a side story with Mia's sister. I caught some early foreshadowing to something late in the story, but only because of the way it was presented in the story.

The acting is OK. Much better than in Olivia's Reunion. Mia's awkwardness was natural to the story and had nothing to do with Beau the man. There is some quiet chemistry between Kathryn Davis and Nathan White. The dialogue is a little too hyperbolic. So much of it revolves around idolizing the book Christmas in Derbyshire.

I'm not a fan of Royal movies. While this movie checks a lot of the Royal Christmas movie boxes, it adds some things that aren't quite so typical.