Inheriting a Parent's House: Not a Hallmark movie

It's the plot of a dozen Hallmark movies. A small-town girl (the character is usually female) who moved to the big city years ago returns to dispose of the home she inherited from a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle.

During the process of putting the property up for sale she meets her high-school sweetheart who is single, divorced, or widowed, and she falls in love with him again. She also missed the small town friendliness more than she realized; the big-city partnership or corporate vice presidency she had been pursuing would not have been fulfilling. In the end she keeps the family home and moves back to the small town to form a family with her former lover.

(WSJ illustration)

But life isn't a Hallmark movie. Inherited homes are usually sold. [bold added]

One of the first things many people do when they inherit their parents’ home these days is put up a for-sale sign.

Deciding what to do with a family property is often both an emotional and financial decision, but the rising costs of renovations, property taxes and utilities are making it harder for adult children to hold on to the real estate, financial advisers say. Higher home prices and mortgage rates have often also made it impractical for heirs to buy out their siblings, said Dick Stoner, a Realtor in Rockville, Md.

The high home prices of the past few years have made the decision to sell even more attractive. If inheritors can unload a house in a hot location for a high price, the proceeds from the home’s sale can help secure their finances and fund goals such as retirement, advisers say.

Older heirs are probably comfortably situated and are unlikely to want to move to a half-century-old homestead in need of a lot of expensive repairs. Also, middle-class estates tend to be house-rich and cash-poor, so whichever sibling wants to keep the house will likely have to sell his existing home to buy out his brothers and sisters and fix the place. That's a real commitment to sentiment, and unrealistic like a Hallmark movie.

Market Segmentation: Too Far?

Candace Cameron Bure will leave Hallmark
to make movies for Great American Family.

For over five years I've been watching Hallmark movies. The plots lack in suspense. Most conflicts are resolved happily, there are no really bad guys except in the murder-mystery movies, and love always wins over career opportunities and peripatetic inclinations.

To be perfectly honest, I often run the Hallmark Channel as a form of background music when I'm doing something else, like composing this blog post.

Hallmark movies are rife with religious values, e.g., lead characters are always volunteering to help poor orphans, but there are very few explicitly Christian movies on the channel. Church scenes are limited to weddings and funerals, and the words "God," "Jesus," or "Lord" are absent from scripts. The audience is often left to infer that characters are religious by their actions and the values they espouse.

Now some of the biggest Hallmark stars are leaving for a faith-based network: [bold added]

These days, the genre that Hallmark pioneered is everywhere, from major streaming platforms like Netflix to more niche channels like the Food Network and HGTV. While the movies may differ, most share an abiding reluctance to dwell on Christianity.

Great American Family enters the scene with the opposite point of view. With a name that conjures red-state pride and content that embraces faith, the channel is presenting itself as the choice for Christians who think Hollywood is ruining Christmas. Mrs. Bure, a former child star best known as D.J. Tanner from “Full House,” is the religious influencer who serves as its face...

The channel’s formula is what [CEO Bill] Abbott calls “soft faith,” a Christian message he said is there for viewers who are looking for it but doesn’t aim to proselytize. Great American Family also offers holiday films that follow conventional secular story lines: The New York advertising hotshot who falls in love while trying to sell the family farm, the luxury travel blogger who stumbles into romance at a bed-and-breakfast, and the like.

Your humble blogger has long had an aversion to shows that are overtly message-y. Lead characters on network shows sometimes launch into speeches against business polluters, real estate developers, racists, and -phobics who condemn others for "being different." Once the writers' agenda is revealed, then it's clear that the characters are there to serve the agenda.

I won't watch shows where the plot is subservient to ideology, even though I might agree with aspects of the ideology. I'll check out the Great American Family network, but it will be on a short leash.

Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher

Ancient history: Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher,
Tom Bosley's Sheriff Amos Tupper, and a pay telephone.

Last month I began watching Murder, She Wrote reruns on the Hallmark Mysteries Channel. The popular series ran from 1984 to 1996, and I managed to catch many of the episodes the first time around because it followed the Sunday NFL game on CBS.

I have always been a fan of the whodunit. Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher was squarely in the tradition of the amateur sleuth--Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple--who through keen observation, deductive reasoning, and photographic memory bested the professionals.

When Murder, She Wrote began, Jessica Fletcher was conceived as an unassuming Miss Marple who was ignored by police and criminals alike. As the series progressed, Jessica grew in fictional stature by writing numerous mystery best sellers and solving cases in cities toured by the increasingly famous author.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Jessica Fletcher helped to implant in the consciousness of late 20th-century America the idea that an older woman with character and smarts could be successful without being rich or beautiful or riding on her husband's coattails.

Though Jessica was initially conceived as a somewhat flighty character, Lansbury said she fought to portray her as a strong, successful single woman.

“In the first place, she was shown as a rather kooky character,” she told Australia’s Studio 10 in 2018. “That’s all right up to a certain point, but I thought, ‘No, let’s make her a smart woman.’ And by the time we were finished she got back her sense of purpose as a woman, she was attractive, she had boyfriends, she had a nice wardrobe. She became much more of an everywoman rather than a kook.”

After the turn of the century characters like Jessica Fletcher became passé. Detective shows spent more time on forensic science, violent action, and soap-opera-ish season-long character arcs. Those series are entertaining and stored on the videorecorder, too, but lately Murder, She Wrote has been at the top of your humble blogger's list.

Angela Lansbury, who died this Tuesday at the age of 96, had Tony and Grammy Awards, as well as three Academy Award nominations, but she will be most remembered for her portrayal of a schoolteacher-turned-writer from Cabot Cove, Maine. R.I.P.

Destination Wedding (2018)

Misleading: there's little smiling.

Sometimes tiring of too much saccharine, I switch off the Hallmark Channel and go to Netflix and Amazon Prime for romantic comedies, where the visuals are PG-13 but the language is R-rated.

Expectations were middling for 2018's Destination Wedding, currently streaming on Netflix, but with leads Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder there was a good chance the production wouldn't disappoint.

The movie begins as many Hallmark scripts do, with two strangers clashing at the airport. Making things worse, they find that they're both going to the same wedding at a winery in Central California.

Unlike a Hallmark plot, there's no guarantee that Frank and Lindsay will end up together. The dialogue is spirited, and the topics often dark and misanthropic. The only subject on which they agree is their loathing for the groom, Keith, who is Frank's brother and Lindsay's ex-fiancé.

Comments:

I liked the movie.

The repartee was sharp and Neal Simonesque; Keanu Reeves, not famous for his erudition, got off words like "avoirdupois" as if they were natural to his vocabulary.

Distracted by the cinematography that showed off Paso Robles and the hubbub of people at the airport, hotel, and wedding, it took me 20 minutes to notice that it was a two-person play; Frank and Lindsay had the only speaking parts.

The music and transition from various pre-wedding activities to the wedding itself helped to lighten the atmosphere and give the audience a break from the intense dialogue. I don't mean emotionally intense, but pay-attention-to-every-word intense to catch all the humor and cultural references.

The question that loomed from halfway to the end was whether the conclusion would be heavy (Pygmalion) or Hollywood (My Fair Lady). Which way do you think it went, dear reader?

The script made funny, subtle references to some of Keanu Reeves' famous action-hero characters. In the clip below, he can't tear open an airplane snack because "there is no notch."

The Moving Finger

Brooke D'Orsay has become a regular lead actress in Hallmark movies. Graduating from her ingénue role in the USA dramedy Royal Pains (2009-2016), she's funny, modern- but not bombshell-pretty, and smart.

That's why it was disappointing to see this experienced actress play a professional photographer who puts her finger in front of the lens while she snaps a photo in Hallmark's Beverly Hills Wedding.

Hallmark doesn't have the biggest budgets, but, like a photographer, they could have taken a few extra shots just in case.

Interlude

The Hallmark Channel began running its Christmas movies a couple of weeks ago, and though many of the plots are familiar love stories where the boy and girl build snowmen, decorate trees, bake cookies and find the meaning of Christmas together, sometimes one wants to escape from a clangorous world into stories that are as comfortable as an old sweater.

Recently Hallmark has been putting more bucks into production. Stories have been filmed on location in Rome, Paris, and London. Song-and-dance productions are occurring more frequently. It's a pleasant surprise how many of the regular actors have musical training.

One actress that I had never seen before was violinist Lucia Micarelli, who stars in The Christmas Bow.

Actors and actresses can fake being singers or pianists reasonably well, but not the violin (note to producers of Sherlock Holmes movies: you can ruin an otherwise good show by having the esteemed detective try to fiddle around).

Lucia Micarelli not only plays the violin, she also shows off her vocal chops in the movie. In a clip from one of her concerts below she sings an old standard by Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne and includes a short violin interlude:



If you're going to fiddle around, do it right:

Netflix' Holidate

It's the plot of at least a half-dozen Hallmark Christmas movies:

Fed up with being single on holidays, two strangers agree to be each other’s platonic plus-ones all year long, only to catch real feelings along the way.

The movie even has Hallmark regulars Frances Fisher and Kristin Chenoweth acting in the roles of secondary characters.

So why is Holidate on Netflix? The lead actress' monologue in the first minute gives the viewer a clue.

Nothing like smoking a cigarette and an f-bomb to tell us we're not in Hallmark any more

The two leads are attractive, the humor is laced with sexual and scatological references, and the swearing is pervasive with even child characters indulging. Nevertheless, at the center of its beating heart is a sweet Hallmark movie with the ending telegraphed in the first five minutes. Holidate has got some laughs and is a pleasant enough way to spend the afternoon, but not with the kids around.

Easy to Put Down

A weighty tome

Months of sheltering in place have yielded numerous benefits (to those who can handle the economic pain of not working), among which are cracking open books that one never could find the time for.

Apparently, reading War and Peace is now a thing:

Americans have been so desperate for diversion they are reaching for fat literary works that taunted them from their bookshelves for years—the same ones many have falsely claimed at dinner parties to have read...

Tolstoy’s plot traces the upended lives of the Rostov and Bolksonsky families, weaving in and out of the aristocratic salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg before moving on to the battlefield. Pages dwell on gambling, carousing, dueling and love scenes, while an unanticipated disaster (in this case Napoleon) approaches.

After Hawaii, my 2nd Michener book

Long before the distractions of the internet and 500-channel television, your humble blogger went through a James Michener phase. 800+-page tomes like Hawaii, Iberia, Chesapeake, the Source, and Centennial did require setting aside at least a couple of weeks apiece but I did manage to finish all of them.

(In order to impress you, dear reader, I could attribute such dedication to a thirst for knowledge, but that would be wrong. Pronounced introversion plus an almost OCD-like compulsion to finish every book were stronger reasons.)

It's a sign of how much my reading has deteriorated that I'm having a great deal of trouble completing Pride and Prejudice, which clocks in at a mere 272 pages.

There really should not be any difficulty because Jane Austen's writing is not abstruse, plus I have the motivation finally to learn to recognize the Austen references that pervade our culture; at least once a week a Hallmark movie has a character named "Darcy" who falls in love with "Elizabeth".

(In my defense I find English manners in the 19th century to be stupefying, when women can only meet the male object of their desire by being properly introduced through a mutual acquaintance, they spend chapters discussing how they can manipulate the mutual acquaintance, woman and man have the meeting where a few words are spoken, then the women discuss for chapters what the words meant. Arrggh.)

I'd better finish Pride in the coming week, because if the lockdown ends I won't. I did enjoy one movie version, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, where the Bennet sisters, bosoms heaving, defend themselves against the undead with martial arts and swordplay. If only Jane Austen had written about George Wickham dining on brains, it would have been a faster read...

On Holiday

Clothes for fans of the Hallmark Channel

Two weeks before Christmas, and I'm tired of looking at screens. It was time to meet real people and examine real merchandise in nearby brick-and-mortar stores.

The first task was to buy presents for the Samaritan House kids. Target and Costco had a broad selection of clothes, toys, food, and gift cards, and the shopping for 10 people was done in four hours.

At Hallmark I picked up a sympathy card. Sadly, I've been buying a lot of them recently.

A few more items on the gift list were checked off at the renovated Hillsdale mall.

The Apple Store moved to a premier location fronting the square. Charging the purchase to the Apple Card, I felt only fleeting satisfaction from the 6% cash back on Apple merchandise; it wasn't enough to offset the 9.25% sales tax in San Mateo County.

I gave the Samaritan House gifts to Clara, who will wrap and deliver them. I've played Santa before but don't have the requisite cheeriness. She does, and so we make a good team. At Christmas time play to your strengths. Take a holiday from working on your weaknesses, and save them for next year's resolutions.

Apple Store (left) at the renovated Hillsdale Shopping Center

Caution: May be Too Edgy for Some

In a recent Hallmark movie the brutal business practices of a rival are revealed. Actress Ali Liebert's horrified expression tells you all you need to know. Who says Hallmark doesn't make realistic movies?

Eschew the Chewing

Eat, Play, Love: Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner.

Hallmark movies not only have predictable plots, likable characters, and happy endings, often they give us a chance to see nearly forgotten actors from our youth.

In Eat, Play, Love, there's no question that the two attractive young leads will end up together.

The bonus was seeing two 1970's TV stars, Lee Majors (the Six Million Dollar Man) and Lindsay Wagner (the Bionic Woman), whose characters sometimes had guest appearances on the other's show. At the end of their series' runs, they became a bionic married couple.

In the 2017 Hallmark movie Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner's characters also end up together. Hallmark plots may be pablum for the mind, but as we get older we don't have the strength for chewing.

Crazy Rich Asians: New World, Familiar Plot

At the wedding of a secondary character the church is converted
to a jungle and the aisle becomes a pond (the bride wore boots)

I missed seeing Crazy Rich Asians in the theaters last year. When the disk finally made it to the top of the Netflix queue, I popped it in the player.

Nearly every Asian actor on American television had a part, and, as the title promised, there were over-the-top scenes of billionaires showing off their wealth.

But pictures of the lifestyles of rich and famous Asians---specifically, Singaporean Chinese---do not a story make, so the writers basically stole the plot of a dozen "royal-loves-commoner" Hallmark movies:

Handsome prince of a small European country comes to America--for college, for life experience, or to visit friends.

He falls for a girl, who along with every other American, has no idea who he is. He loves her because she appreciates him for himself, not for his title or money.

He has to reveal his identity because he needs the blessing of his mother, the Queen. (The King died long ago; in this movie he's merely absent.)

He can't put off the revelation because he has to go home to be coronated; in many Hallmark movies he also must have named his future queen.

The Queen and her aides disapprove of this American who has no training in royal duties and manners.

However, the common folk and low-level palace workers come to love her.

The middle part of the story is about how she tries to navigate the treacherous shoals of palace intrigue, not only the Queen's machinations but also a rival of noble blood, often someone who has known the Prince since childhood.

The Prince's love never wavers, but near the end of the movie she returns to America to save him from more damage to his status and authority.

The Queen, remembering how in her own life she chose duty over passion, sees the misery in her son. She realizes that the girl loves the Prince so deeply that she will give up her own future happiness for his sake.

The Queen welcomes her future daughter-in-law to the kingdom, and they all live happily ever after.

The would-be "princess", Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu), is the everywoman / Luke Skywalker / Harry Potter character through whose eyes the audience discovers a vast new world. She's a NYU Finance prof whose skill at gaming and game theory later proves useful.

But Crazy Rich Asians is really about the business matriarch, Eleanor Young (played by Michelle Yeoh), who is transformed from disapproving Queen to another mother who wants her son to be happy. (Though Rachel and "prince" Nick Young get most of the screen time, one hint that the movie is about Eleanor is the opening scene, a flashback to 1995, in which Eleanor must assert herself against snooty London hotel staff.)

The movie is rife with references that ABC's (American-born Chinese) will appreciate, e.g., the frugality of the elderly regardless of their wealth, how everyone knows how to play mah-jongg, and how every woman knows how to cook.

I liked the movie because of its glimpses into how the non-American overseas Chinese .001% live, and I also like Hallmark movies. But if the latter are not your cup of tea, dear reader, then you may wish to give this one a pass.

Accountants: No Respect

From "Mingle All the Way"

Her daughter wants to be an entrepreneur, but the Lindsay Wagner mother character wants her to choose a steady, reliable career.

Hey, Lindsay, you didn't play it safe when you were young.

Even the Hallmark Channel says accountants are boring. Ouch.

Fantasies Change with Age, Too

Candace Cameron Bure seems to be
in every other Hallmark movie.

TV ratings are down, but not at the Hallmark Channel.

In 2016, Hallmark saw a 10 percent increase in total viewership and a 26 percent increase among viewers 18-49. During the 2016 election week, it ranked No. 4 among primetime cable networks – even ranking above MSNBC.

...the Hallmark Channel has become a growing safe haven for those weary of the violence, conflict, and uncertainty churned out by both news broadcasts and apocalyptic-themed TV dramas.

There are absolutely no surprises in a Hallmark movie. The boy and girl (no LBGTQ romances ever) always meet in the beginning, surmount obstacles (different stations of life, disapproving parents, etc. etc.), and wind up in each others arms at the end, usually engaging in their first kiss.

...and Lacey Chabert seems to be
in the rest.

Children are not a barrier to romance; often they're the ones who encourage a single parent to start dating. They want Mom or Dad to be happy again and have an extraordinarily grown-up attitude about replacing the usually-deceased-not-divorced parent. Yes, that's why Hallmark movies are well-liked--they're fantasy.

The Christmas movie is a sub-genre that is especially popular.

Often there’s a struggling family business that needs saving, like the cozy inn in “Christmas at Holly Lodge,” the old-fashioned holiday shop in “Sharing Christmas,” or the theater that loses its lease in “Christmas Encore.”

A big-time star encounters small-town romance in “Marry Me at Christmas,” “A Song for Christmas” and “Rocky Mountain Christmas.” In “The Perfect Christmas Present,” the hero is a personal gift buyer known to his clients as Mr. Christmas—not unlike the nickname for the title character in “Miss Christmas,” whose job is finding the perfect tree for Chicago....

In addition to a feel-good finale, there’s an atmospheric checklist for every movie. “Buying a Christmas tree. Wrapping gifts. Thinking of gifts. Baking and cooking meals. Family gatherings. All of the things that you think of as traditional,” says Randy Pope, senior vice president of programming.

(For further study, here are 12 Rules of Hallmark Christmas Movies.)

I started watching the Hallmark and Hallmark Mysteries Channels a few years ago when visiting my mother. Now they're a favored way to relax, with G-rated happy endings, deus ex machina financial windfalls, and selfish characters always changing their ways.

I will go gently into that good night illuminated by the faint glow of the Hallmark Channel.