Love, Classified

Stephen Colbert appears to be off for a month, after already not that long ago having time off. It's a bit annoying. The intro had Jon Batiste referenced even though he was on hiatus. It was eventually noted (not so surprising) that JB would not come back. The guy won like a million Grammys and now is doing acting work too. Anyway, a member of Stay Human, his band, will step in. 

Back next week.

 

More than once, I had problems watching Love, Classified, including someone apparently deleting it the DVR.  Luckily, it was in the library, on DVD with another Hallmark movie. As an extra little bit of amusement (I live for things like this), the back of the box mixes up the plots of two films.  The descriptions do not match.  Edit fail!

I watched this film before and it's one of those that are light and enjoyable enough to at least partially watch twice (I only ff-ed a bit).  The film takes care to toss in romances for the mom and her two kids, who hook up with other characters whose stories we see too.  The very end of the movie even tosses in a hook-up for the bestie of one half of a couple and the mom's editor.  Heck, familiar Hallmark familiar lead Paul Campbell even gets a few minutes of air time, though he doesn't get a hook-up himself.

The most notable thing about this film is that basically the key romance is a same-sex one, in fact the woman (shown) might be thought of as bisexual. We aren't quite there where a "hi-jinks ensue" plot involving  a surprising same sex match-up (one or both halves supposedly with other people, at least one a heterosexual match-up) ala Imagine Me &You, but Hallmark is starting to have some same sex match-ups, especially supporting roles.  

One sign of how busy this film is and how it is somewhat atypical is that the kiss between the couple (the mom's doctor -- plot complication alert! -- and a plant boutique store owner) comes like half-way in the story. A common trope in Hallmark films is for the kiss to come at the very end, a sort of "true love kiss" that shows the couple is truly together.  

(One good older film -- Trading Christmas / 2011 -- did have the older couple, who included Faith Ford [a widow], make out mid-movie.  Again, that was somewhat notable.)  

Anyway, the film was pretty light, though the family issues add serious content, and the first part takes a bit of time before it really warms up.  I  like the characters as a whole, including the quirky bookstore assistant with the purple dye in her hair that on re-watching did not stand out at times in certain shots.  I was wondering if that was some sort of editing fail, the hair and makeup people not making sure to have her hair the right shade all the time. Or, maybe I was not watching closely enough.  

The doctor is also on the latest version of the L-Word, which I checked out, but got bored of.  Maybe, that is why her voice sounded so familiar. The purple hair book store woman deserves her own film.  And, the mom accidentally picking up in effect her own son via a pick-up app (she was really just trying it out to do research for her book) was funny and a bit creepy.  

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Bridget Loves Bernie and Fish were the Decades marathon shows last weekend. I saw a bit of the first before; rather forced sitcom antics with some familiar faces.  The couple married in real life, were married into the 1980s, but at some point it didn't go happily. The actress married a few times over her life, her most recent spouse a woman. 

Fish also seems standard 1970s sitcom and somewhat amazing the Barney Miller spin-off actually lasted two seasons. Again, there were familiar faces, including the adults, and hey isn't that Willis, one of the foster kids. Fish comes off more decrepit in the cop show.  The actor really was not that old at the time -- he wasn't even sixty when Barney Miller began.

(A bit of math suggests this. He died in his mid-90s around 2015.  So, he was thirty-five years younger.)