Falling Inn Love (yeah, I see what you did there)

So...I was all caught up on Oh My Baby and didn't feel like Good Casting today and needed something long as I didn't work out yesterday (hubs has been on me to take some days off and after too much sake on Friday night it was, like, erm, yeah day of rest oh yeah). So I thought I'd watch a movie that no one would watch with me i.e. a rom-com. 

So. Yeah. I'd saved Falling Inn Love to my Netflix list a while back when it popped up. It was about the right length (97 minutes, 1245 calories). It looked cute. It's set in New Zealand.

Welp. It's basically a Hallmark movie. 

We meet Gabriella Diaz, a San Francisco architect? designer? not totally sure who is treading water in both her job and her relationship. She soon loses her job, when she shows up to work one day with all the "bros" and the building is locked because funding has disappeared or someone has been arrested? I dunno. Let me just add in that her job makes no sense. There's a "Chad" who is the Chad of all Chads that's her boss? Is this a startup? What is it? What do they actually do? Oh well. The important thing is that she is suddenly jobless. Cue the depressing job hunting montage. 

Then she gives her boyfriend (who after 2 years has made it clear he likes things as they are and has no desire to take things further and is more interested in his phone than conversation, though he's pleasant enough in a non-threatening, non-interesting way) an ultimatum and breaks up with him immediately when he waffles. 

Then she enters a "win an inn" contest while drunk on cheap white wine and wins the next day. Because, of course, that's how Internet contest scams work. 

Upon arrival in New Zealand, the first person she runs into is handsome, slow-talking Jake. And, maybe because she's embarrassed (after hitting his truck with her luggage, which pops open to reveal her lacy underthings) or just because they needed the plot to start out with them hating each other, she's kinda a bitch to him. Though she's perfectly lovely and bubbly to literally everyone else in town, winning them over in record time.

The Inn, of course, is a total wreck.

She resists accepting any help from Jake, even though it's literally his job to renovate things until about the halfway point of the movie when she finally thaws for no apparent reason. He's been nice but confused the whole time, so this is all on her. So, blah blah blah, they form a partnership and fall in love, la and then things come to a head when the Chad (remember him?) calls to offer her a new job + her old boyfriend shows up because the Charlotte (i.e. New Zealand's answer to a Susan or a Karen) had texted him from Gabrielle's phone saying to come woo her over because she wants to buy the inn. 

But then there's the whole quick reevaluation of life choices and bending/thawing and even a random fire and yay, she's going to stay, etc. etc.

Okay, so it wasn't horrible. It also wasn't great. It was kinda lazy. The fact that it works at all is, at least for me, down to the dude who plays Jake (actor Adam Demos) and the lady who played the Kiwi garden centre woman (Claire Chitham) and the goat with the comedic timing. And New Zealand. Since it's a lovely place.

Everything else was a bit of a meh. The actress who played Gabriella plays her as if she's fuelled on entirely too much espresso and is desperate for people to like her akin to a comedian up on stage seeing the crowd slipping away and not quite sure why. Also, extensive renovations cannot be completed in just a couple of months by two people, one of whom is kinda useless, if plucky. The roof had freaking massive holes in it. 

I suppose if you go into it expecting a Hallmark movie, it's a perfectly acceptable example: sweet, not very complicated, and designed for feel-goodedness.