see more Lolcats and funny pictures
If actions speak louder than words, my cats don't think much of me. None have left little hearts for me ever.
Today we decided to tag team it to the swim meet. Yesterday we all went, including the dog. That made for a long day. This morning hubby and the two younger ones set off at 6:15 am. Hubby will then bring the youngers home so they aren't stuck at the pool all afternoon when Mackenna swims. I will miss seeing Finn and Rose swim, but I think this will work better. Plus Chaos can stay home. She won't be alone for long, either, due to the break they take between the two sessions! A win-win situation for all involved.
I was very disappointed with last night's Hallmark movie, A Princess for Christmas. I'm a Christmas movie junkie. I watch only one TV show a week, but I tune into as many Christmas movies as I can in December. I usually love Hallmark Christmas movies. I know I'll have that same warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I finish a romance novel. I can't wait to watch them over and over again.
But this one left me shaking my head and thinking, huh? Needless to say I won't be watching it again that's for sure. Which is a bummer because it had all the elements I would have normally loved in a holiday movie. But I just can't get into a movie with such weak characters. Not the actors. I enjoyed their performances, but the plot structure and the character conflicts/arcs didn't work for me.
(There are spoilers in the next couple of paragraphs!)
The Duke (played by Roger Moore) was the only one with any kind of character arc and conflict. The heroine (Aunt Jules) starts off as the kind of heroine I love. She's trying hard to do her best, but not really succeeding, still she's spunky and not about to back down against the duke. She's willing to do what it takes to give her orphaned nephew and niece a good Christmas. Anyone can see why the prince would fall for her over the aristocratic shrew who he's dating. It was a very enjoyable movie up to this point.
Then Jules overhears a conversation between the prince and his father, the Duke, and thinks it's about her when it isn't. Rather than be her spunky self and prove them wrong, she turns into a weepy wimp and runs away, leaving her niece and nephew at a castle with a bunch of people they just met to spend Christmas without her. I can imagine what my editor would say if I tried doing that.
Maybe there were other scenes that explained her motivation that got left on the editing room floor, but this just didn't work for me or the rest of movie. Even hubby, who isn't a writer, mentioned how badly Jules was acting out of character.
If you're an inspiring romance writer, this is a perfect movie to watch to show you what editors mean when they say not to use misunderstanding as the conflict and/or plot device. A couple sentences of dialogue resolved this at the ball. It was a total non-issue that Jules was willing to run off for. Watching this movie is also a good lesson in keeping characters consistent. That is don't make them act out of character without good (strong is probably a better word) motivation.
I realize movies aren't books. You can't get into the heads of movie characters and know what they're thinking regarding conflict the way you can in a novel, but just watch Borrowed Hearts if you want to see a made-for-TV Christmas movie that does it right. There are others, too, but this was the one that popped into my head when I started thinking about Christmas movies of the past.
Okay, it's time to get writing. It's easy to read page proofs at the pool so I'll do those this afternoon. It's a little harder to write so I'm going to do that now. I want to get my words in so I can watch Once Upon a Time tonight.
What are you up to?
