In Praise of Hallmark Movies

Hallmark romantic comedies (rom coms) are becoming more and more popular. Women of all ages and social strata are appreciative watchers. Men have also discovered them. As the population ages, folks are settling in as couch potatoes. I began watching not too long after I retired.

 

An article in the NY Times provided a more erudite explanation. “One of the genre’s great pleasures” is books (and movies) with “similar archetypes, similar settings, similar tropes, similar tones… because they offer a piping-hot version of a recipe that readers are perpetually hungry for.” Hallmark has a handful of tried and true templates that their rom coms tend to follow. Here are some reasons why I enjoy them.

 

First off, to quote the Times, “Romance is marked by the certainty of the happy ending.”

And we’re not referring to the sexual definition of that expression. Hallmark rom coms don’t have even the subtlest hint that anyone does the horizontal mambo. You can choose to imagine that happens. Hallmark won’t dissuade you, but they won’t encourage your fantasy. Given today’s societal stresses—political, health, financial or other—I and many fans appreciate knowing there will be a happy ending.

 

The lead is almost always female, and usually a strong woman at that, a big draw for me. I’m not sure how the men feel about this, but the women don’t emasculate their male co-stars so I guess that makes their strength acceptable.

 

Many times, a woman from a big city finds herself in a quaint rural town. Maybe she grew up there; maybe she found herself stranded there after a snowstorm or a car accident that left her with amnesia. By the end of the story, she always realizes that the small town is now home to her. No more big city stress. I grew up in a town of about 50 people but worked in Manhattan for 20 years, so I appreciate the conversion.

 

Another common template thread is that there’s some misunderstanding between the female and male leads that derails their relationship early on. One of them hears half of some conversation but doesn’t stick around to hear how it ends, jumping to a conclusion that the other is totally wrong for them. Eventually this gets straightened out, but not usually until the last 15 minutes of the two-hour movie.

 

Many of the stories have an artistic aspect, which also appeals to me. Sometimes it’s found in the female lead, sometimes in the male she encounters. Photography is a popular theme, and writing. A successful but reclusive writer falls in love with the aspiring author who has tracked him down to interview him in “Just My Type.” There have also been bakers, wine makers and chocolatiers. A semi-estranged daughter returns home to help her family, especially an injured father, run (or save) the family business. One time it was a pumpkin farm.

 

There are frequently widowers who are great fathers raising children on their own, or bachelor uncles who have custody of their late sibling’s children (and are clueless what to do with them). The lead woman comes into their lives and “rescues” them. The fathers might be dentists or veterinarians. The women are more often business professionals and less often in any medical field.

 

One thing Hallmark does well in its rom coms and is doing even more of is offering inclusionary casts. The Anglo lead often has a Black best friend. Secondary characters that are gay (male or female couples) are frequently worked into the story. There’s not a big fuss made over them. They’re just another part of the cast.

 

A further template variation has the lead and her male partner being set up on-line by well-meaning family members or friends. “Chance At Romance,” has the tween-age son of a widower pretending to be his successful but creatively blocked photographer dad. The son screens the women who reply to his ad and he invites one to visit. She of course thinks it’s the dad who invited her. Eventually, she and the son create the Pot Pie Of The Month Club. This brings the boy out of the funk he’s been in since his mother died and his father gets his mojo back taking pictures of the pies and their baker.

 

In another pairing via on-line family meddling, the main characters have evolving chemistry in “Straight From the Heart”. She’s an unsuccessful photographer who shoots garbage (literally) at the beginning of the film. By the end, she’s creating iconic photos of the American cowboy she’s met via the meddling and those earn her a solo show. I’ll watch this one until the cows come home. Or more precisely here, wild horses.

 

Copyright 2022 Business Theatre Unlimited

Retirement Planning – Creative Sparks

When I hear about reunions with people I haven’t been in touch with for thirty or forty years, I don’t rush to put them on my calendar in ink. Until recently, with the exception of my fellow band geeks, I hadn’t given much thought to what my high school classmates might have done with their lives. Ditto for my summer crowd

It was a 45 minute bus ride to my regional high school, where only 40 per cent of the students went on to college. The cute guys were more likely to be in auto mechanics and shop than in my calculus or physics classes. Let me amend that. The bad boys that I found fascinating were more likely to be mechanics and shoppies.

We lived year round in a summer community, and the seasonal folks came from all around our state. Looking back, it makes sense that they had the potential to become really interesting adults. But adult potential wasn’t something that concerned me.

Here is my deep dark secret. I was a shallow teenager, not prone to introspection and philosophizing. I was more interested in how attractive my girlfriend’s brother had become during his freshman year in college. Or the muscles that my brother’s beach buddies had developed over the winter.

One thing that has surprised me about the people from my past with whom I’ve reconnected as I approach retirement is how interesting they seem to be. They are smart and well-traveled—one was even in the Peace Corps. The biggest revelation is that they are amazingly creative, especially those who are already retired. This gives me hope for my own retirement.

One of my summer friends does puppetry with her husband. She studied it in Prague decades ago. We’re talking serious stuff, not faces drawn on your fingertips in ball point pen. A college classmate took up clarinet late in life and is totally immersed in her community band. My brother, who retired very early, became a fabulous outdoor photographer once he had the time to pursue it. [Check out his recent fall trip. http://www.pbase.com/rickdecker/sigma_dp1x and http://www.pbase.com/rickdecker/gallery/sd15_fall_2010

I used to do all sorts of artsy things. The company where I worked had a holiday doll pageant. They provided naked dolls (no snickering, please) and asked employees to make or buy outfits for them so they could be donated. They gave prizes in four categories for the handmade outfits. I won first prize thirteen years in a row and eventually captured first in each of the four categories. Mutter “competitive b- - -h” all you want, but I truly enjoyed doing it.

Perhaps retirement will afford me the time and the opportunity to take up new artistic pursuits, like photography. I bought a Nikon digital camera several years ago, but my eyes are so bad, I have trouble focusing. Jagdish would like to learn ballroom dancing. He has two left feet and I’ve broken both of mine (mercifully, not at the same time.) Also, his rhythm is distinctly Indian, and then there’s my diminishing sense of balance. Dancing doesn’t seem too promising an option. I suppose writing is creative, but I was hoping for something more… well, artsy. (Or flamboyant?)

I’m sitting here, trying to feel creative, looking around for inspiration. My computer keyboard catches my eye. Some of the keys are almost completely clean, while others have dark, smudgy spots around their perimeters. I wonder why all the keys aren’t smudged. The cleanest ones are the home row, and the dirtiest are the numbers. Maybe Lily walks along the upper edge with her dirty paws and the keys I use most often are the cleanest. But the function keys on the very top row are also clean. There goes the Lily theory. I’m perplexed. I’m also tempted to go get some Qtips and cleaning fluid.

Then I get into Jagdish’s glass half empty/half full mode of thought (see last Wednesday’s blog.) Were the keys with the white spots in the middle at one point totally smudged, so now are half clean? Or were the white spots never covered, and somehow the smudges only accumulated around the perimeter, so now half dirty?

It doesn’t say much for my creative sparking that I’m so easily distracted by a computer keyboard. I’m feeling quite inadequate compared to my peers. What we have here is a failure to find a muse. I don’t know about you, but if there’s one place I’d expect to find my muse, it’s at the bottom of a—you guessed it—lovely bottle of vino.

See ya!