It’s almost June Weddings month on Hallmark Channel. Do you feel the excitement? My DVR sure can – I’ve got almost a baker’s dozen movies lined up, waiting for me, and that’s not counting next week’s Marrying Mr. Darcy, which – I don’t know, am I excited for it? Do I want it to be good for the sake of it being “Mr. Darcy” or do I want to pick it apart because they dare to expand Pride and Prejudice after the final word from Miss Jane?
I’m not sure. Mr. Darcy isn’t even my favorite – that honor, as I’m sure I’ve said before, goes to Mr. Henry Tilney, as played by lovable scamp JJ Feild.
But whatever, that’s not why we’re here today. We’re here for Perfect Match, starring our favorite Danica McKellar and some guy who credits tell me is named Paul Greene. Blandly handsome, I’ve seen him before but I don’t care enough to find out when.
They have a meet cute at the elevator in a hotel, where both of them are there for a meeting, and it is established that both find each other attractive, and both of them are super competitive. She’s a wedding planner, he’s an event planner. They both want the same ballroom, and he tries to smooth talk her out of the room she booked 6 months ago, but she’s not having any of his affable charm, and she walks out. Danica’s character is Jessica Summers, a single mom wedding planner, who is oddly chatty about her business with grade school son, Luke, who wants a dog. Luke also points out that Jessica is way too scheduled.
Celebrity Alert – Sue Ellen from Dallas is the mom of a young groom, Paul, who doesn’t believe in a fuss about weddings, and Lucy the bride is over the moon for a princess-themed, pink, blush and bashful wedding. Paul draws the line at wearing a pink bowtie. Jessica then has to give a peptalk and everyone is happy until Event Planner Adam shows up – he’s the groom’s cousin, and he was invited to work together with Jessica to plan this wedding to ensure that it doesn’t get too girly. But Jessica is a lone wolf – she works alone.
Paul’s ideas are stupid. His and hers dart boards at a wedding? WTF?
Huzzah! Jessica’s purse looks like it has more than just a phone in it!
Sue Ellen steps in surreptitiously to get Jessica to help Adam with the wedding planning. She’s totally lying. Luke steps up and tells Jessica to be on the bride’s team, so agrees to meet Adam for coffee, and is pissed that he’s late. He was getting his passport updated, and he tells her his birthday tradition is to throw a dart at a map to find a place to go. What is it with him and darts? They do realize that Sue Ellen set them up, and they decide to work together. All this before the first commercial break!
The groom’s mom is apparently paying for this wedding, and she’s less than impressed by Adam’s ideas – solid gold grill, having the wedding at a football stadium. Jessica gives her a speech about how weddings need to bring two people together, and then they go off on a location scout – one of them is the back of the house where Barbara Hershey’s character lived in Beaches. She’s very super bubbly about weddings, and he doesn’t understand why you need a piece of paper to be in love. I hate that stupid argument. I am totally on Jessica’s side here, but she’s written VERY annoyingly.
Oh, I thought she was a widow, but apparently she’s divorced. She still believes in marriage, they are walking through the woods in high heels to a waterfall location that is the most impractical place for a wedding ever. When she points that out, they result into name calling and she quits, again.
Adam and Paul have a heart-to-heart about why weddings are important, and while Paul is a douche about his wedding, he has the right answer about marriage. Oh, and Adam has a dog.
Jessica asks her son Luke if they have enough adventure in their life, and Luke parrots back her line of “Adventure is not really on our schedule.” Which is sad when an 11 year old says that. I’m amazed at how well her business is, judging by how fabboo her kitchen is. Adam shows up at her door with 15 white “apology” roses. What the hell is that thing? Apology Roses? And they look fake. But now they are working together again, and Jessica has to teach him why paper invites for a wedding are an important thing. Yeah, Adam, let’s do a wedding with an evite. Man this guy is dumb. Jessica also vision boards every wedding with French bulletin boards that are way too small to encompass every wedding detail.
Now they are talking cakes. They are having a showdown of bakers – her baker has lime chiffon with buttercream, and Adam’s idea of bring adventures to weddings is to have chocolate cake AND chocolate ganache. And Paul is a doofus who was unaware of such a thing as a groom’s cake and is overjoyed that he gets one. But then he throws another hissy fit about wearing a tux, like a big baby. But Adam gets him into a tuxedo, and Sue Ellen goes all teary-eyed.
Jessica gets to go look at wedding dresses with Lucy and Adam tags along. Lucy’s dresses are boring, but they are all slightly pink. She likes the third one. They pick the ballgown. I watch a lot of Say Yes to the Dress, and this 5 minute dress montage was so much better than the drawn out drama of girls in dresses that don’t fit. Although, to be honest, it’s my husband who puts that show on, even though he still thinks the best wedding dress is the one I wore. (Altogether now…awwwwwwww).
Oh now, Adam is vision-boarding! But Manly, with a plank of wood and a staple gun. He puts the picture of Jessica by the impractical waterfall up, and sighs wistfully. Meanwhile, cross town, Jessica is doing the same thing with her picture of Adam. Adam, who is picking her up for a food tasting not-date. But she’s in a beautiful but skin-tight dress so, is it a date? Luke has this thing about old black and white gangster movies, and he talks like Edward G Robinson, and Adam plays along, so that’s nice.
The tasting they are having is in the kitchen of a restaurant. Chef is kind of creepy, and I do not understand how the kitchen staff walks around the large table in the middle of their workspace. They freak out over the crostini. Jessica gets to tell him why she is a wedding planner – and oh my goodness, the homespun metaphors about weddings are getting to me. They are WAY too much. But Adam and Jessica have that awkward thing at her door, wondering if they should kiss, or hug, or what…but they settle on a handshake because we still have 50 minutes left to go. Jessica runs out after him, and just as I think hey, maybe she’ll forget about those 50 minutes and kiss him now, she just announces that she knows where the wedding will be and everyone will just love it. Oh well.
I just realized I’ve seen this movie before.
The perfect venue is the golf course where Lucy and Paul met! (She hit him with her golf ball.) There’s a glass conservatory on the links, and it’s pretty, and Adam has the brilliant idea of adding “twinkle lights” to the gazebo.
Paul and Lucy cannot agree on their “song,” but Adam comes to the rescue with some kind of guitar/country man singing about love. Paul also freaks out about having to dance, and I don’t understand, has this guy lived in a bubble that he didn’t know that the bride and groom have a first dance? Adam decides that he has to show his cousin how to dance, so he and Lucy waltz around the room. Oh my goodness, they’re so in sync. Sue Ellen is freaking out!
Luke and Adam bond over basketball, making Jessica realize that Luke needs a guy in his life, because lord knows where his dad is.
Jessica makes Adam come with her to one of her weddings because this man obviously knows nothing. She picks him up, and sees his map board, and she’s jealous of his spontaneity, but she’s also impressed by his manly vision board (with her picture on it). She’s also very impressed by Adam in a suit. He does clean up nice.
The wedding she takes him to is a very nice wedding, where she solves problems, and Adam is impressed. He tells her that she needs to make time in her life for romance, because that’s what successful women want, men telling her what she needs in her life. Then they have a flat tire, and she’s freaking out that she’ll miss Luke’s basketball game. But they have their moments of honestly with each other when they stare into each other’s eyes and whoa! Kiss before the final reel!
Which gets interrupted by some old hippie in the greenhouse who can call AAA. Jessica takes it very personally that she misses Luke’s basketball game, and she’s going to say it’s because she took time for herself, and she’s a bad parent, and she can’t do this, she just has to focus on her son and her business, and that’s all she’s got to say about that. And Adam calls her a coward and goes into the Sad Times.
Man, Jessica’s character is annoying. She’s annoyingly complicated just for the sake of complicating things until the end of the movie, and ugh, no one’s got time for that. When single mom gets a pep talk from 11 year old son about how it’s ok for her to have a boyfriend, I throw my hands up. Because here’s another man-splaining to our heroine, even if she’s being dumb.
Almost time for Adam to throw his dart at his map, but he can’t do it because he’s in The Sad Times. And she’s wearing big flowy pajamas, not like her Spanxed skintight dresses, so you know there’s Sad Times and probably some ice cream in her future.
Except not yet, as there’s a wedding emergency! The Roof of the conservatory is leaking! But Jessica has her big girl pants on again, and the wedding is back on at that hippie greenhouse that they had their first kiss in. All this is done in a beautiful montage of pretty people helping out the day before the wedding. And it’s magical, you guys! Sue Ellen cannot contain herself – she’s in awe of everything that Jessica was able to accomplish.
Aww, the wedding is nice, and Paul is finally not a doofus. Adam cries at the wedding! Jessica’s optimism has rubbed off! Mother of the groom is for some reason handing out tissues and not in the front row. Weird. Maybe Sue Ellen is contractually obligated for a certain number of shots?
So Danica McKellar does really good conflicted anguish – but Paul Greene just basically sighs and looks resigned. Ugh. Bad choice. Director, get on that, already!
The next day she’s again looking wistfully at Adam’s picture. Then, in an effort to show she can be adventurous, she says that instead of their weekly pizza date, they’ll go for Thai food. Way to go, Mom! She actually looks disappointed that Luke thinks her baby steps of changing her schedule is so sad.
BUT! Adam calls her, asking to book her for a wedding. He’s at her doorstep, and he’s brought red roses this time. He’s there to propose – he wants to plan things that last a lifetime, with her. Luke also finds love in Adam’s dog. And kiss in the doorway, and we’re done.
So, I’m annoyed at this movie, because of all the mansplaining, and all the unnecessary conflicts. If she was so gunshy about falling in love, why was she so optimistic about every aspect of wedding planning? If he was so flighty about his choices, why did he have so many options at his fingertips to offer the bride and groom? Granted, they were all terrible ideas, but he had contacts to make those things happen. Anyway, it’s over. All these wedding movies are making me compare it to my own, which I think will a recurring thing in the next few recaps. Just giving you fair warning! As I said, I have a lot of movies to recap, and I’m glad to do it, just so you don’t have to.
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