A Dash of Love (2017) Reviews

• This movie is on fire!

  MIssM192017-02-15

  OK, maybe I intended to make a pun and it backfire. What do I have to say? I LOVED this movie. I expected this to be a classic Hallmark movie that I enjoy for half and hour, and maybe pause three or four times to check twitter, but let me tell your something: I didn't paused it, not even once! And that's when I know it's going into my Hallmark's favorite movies list. First of all. The plot was good. The acting was good, even the secondary characters were good. I swear 30 minutes into the movie and I was smiling life a fool. Brendan Penny - and here I thought he had chemistry with Rachel Leigh Cook - may be one of my favorite Hallmark guys (along with Andrew W.Walker) and even though I enjoyed what he has done, he had me here smiling like an idiot. I saw Jen Lilley in "The spirit of Christmas" just yesterday and she did a good job, but in this movie, she was great, she played the adorable girl who is trying to get her dream come true. The most important thing is that... What had me smiling for an hour straight is the chemistry between the two leads, OH MY GOD, I'm still smiling while I write this. I really hope they get to make another movie together. I'll be the first in line to watch it.

• A Great Time!

  pirwinc-897-8394282017-10-30

  What a terrific time! After a long, tough day, I sat down in front of the television daring something to entertain me. I'm so glad I stumbled on A Dash of Love on the Hallmark Channel. The whole setup was really engaging, the performances were spot on, and the story hooked us in from start to finish. I thought I knew where the whole thing was going, but the screenplay, by Judith and Sandra Berg, kept me guessing. Don't let this gem pass you by.

• Too glamorous!

  stevewyzard2017-02-13

  I really enjoyed A Dash of Love, but there were a few things that slightly interfered with the obligatory "Hallmark Channel suspension-of-disbelief". Jen Lilley was really beautiful (and those HUGE eyes!) in the role of Nikki, but for a hard-working chef, she was almost too glamorous. There are a number of scenes where she's over a stove with full make-up, her hair down, manicured nails, and wearing high heels. I'm not in the food service industry, but does this seem right? Even when she's outside of the kitchen, she was always fully made-up and seemingly wore 15 different shades of lipstick throughout the movie. While Lilley did a good job of making the character sympathetic for the audience, this might have been a better opportunity for someone a little more "plain Jane". And about this "pop-up" restaurant idea. Is it really that easy to procure permits and insurance for just a few days? This may actually be possible, taking into account the number of food trucks out there, but I don't know for sure. Also, would 100% of their reservations really cancel based on one bad review? In spite of these things, I still enjoyed the movie. What will make it unforgettable for me is the usage of Sinatra's version of "The Way You Look Tonight". Priceless!

• Bland and tasteless screenplay

  petrelet2017-10-09

  This was a pretty bad movie, and it wasn't the fault of the cast. Jen Lilly seems quite talented. I was less impressed with Brendan Penny but that may be just me. Peri Gilpin is a talented actress, and when she gets decent writing she can run with it. The screenplay was just bad. I don't necessarily expect great dramatic writing from a Hallmark movie, but the story ought at least to make sense. So, Lilly, who has great cooking talent, is jobless when Gus closes her diner, and is unable to find any actual cooking job because she doesn't have a culinary school degree despite the fact that (a) this is Chicago, city of ten thousand restaurants! (b) her parents sell food to restaurants, but apparently have no connections! (c) even a diner has Yelp reviews! This is just to put her in a fix. Penny is the executive chef at Gilpin's restaurant. She was a great chef in her day but now is a candidate for Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, shutting down Penny's every attempt to deviate from her aging bland recipes. (Although apparently she still has a great reputation because in Chicago no food critics ever re-review a restaurant and as mentioned before Yelp doesn't exist in Hallmark Chicago.) She doesn't even taste her cassoulet any more. When I saw this behavior I was sure that it would turn out she had some kind of dementia or neurological issue, which would have made sense, but there is no attempt to make it make sense. After a meet-cute with Penny, involving both the dumping-coffee-on- him cliché and the cliché where she criticizes his food without knowing who he is, Lilley ends up with an office job in Gilpin's restaurant, although she never does anything office-y with it and it's just a way of getting her locked into the kitchen in the dead of night, where she cooks up something imaginative for herself. Gilpin shows up, tastes Lilley's cooking (more than she ever does for Penny!), and decides to let her cook every night and steal her recipes by video surveillance! So a few minutes ago she was unwilling to change her recipes at all, and now she is willing to create a whole new menu based on just ripping Lilley off! Why doesn't she just start letting her executive chef do his job? There's no sense to this! The romance develops predictably except for things that appear out of nowhere to make the plot Hallmarky, like when they want Lilley and Penny to have a fight so they invent something incomprehensible about his relationship with his father. This is at the time when they want everything to go badly for Lilley, so Gilpin gets the big food critic (really the only one in Chicago apparently) to print a story about how Lilley stole Gilpin's recipes (without ever asking Lilley about it - Chicago papers care naught for libel laws). Then they turn everything around and it's the end of the movie. Blah. I suppose there must have been some reason they put in the romance between Lilley's African-American coworkers, Kandyse McClure and Antonio Cayonne, who get just about as much screen time as they have in this review. Honestly, I have nothing against facile romances, but is it really impossible to give some care to the story?

• If you like blandness then this is for you!

  ffxaxrx2019-03-11

  It was okay except for a few things: Pros: 1. Lilley and Penny had good chemistry. Lilley did not look constipated or have the "deer eye in the headlight look. 2. Penny actually gave a good performance for once. Good role selection and execution. 3. The chef(bad guy) was pretty devious and cunning stealing those recipes. Cons: 1. Lilley's character using the chef's kitchen. She really seemed hellbent on creating recipes. Did she not have kitchen of her own? 2. The problem between penny's character with his dad was completely overblown. "I wanted to be a chef but you were disappointed because I did not want to be a baker". 3. Lilley especially with her huge eyes emoted too much in painful sequences. 4. The investor changing clients was ridiculous. He could have withdrawn from the chef and change investments to Lilley and Penny. To take money out from a bad still potentially good investment and putting it on a unknown chef? Not a smart business decision. 5. Penny especially towards the end acting like a spoiled child by storming off when his dad showed. Jumping to conclusions when his dad was already sad.