Love In The Villa | Movie Review

Kat Graham from The Vampire Diaries and Tom Hopper from The Umbrella Academy are in a Netflix romcom. So Love in the Villa can’t be that bad, can it?

Julie (Kat Graham) is a third grade English teacher from Minneapolis. She books a dream trip to Verona, Italy, setting of her favorite story - Romeo & Juliet, with her boyfriend, Brandon (Raymond Ablack). When Brandon backs out of the trip at the last minute, Julie decides to go alone. After an awful trip, Julie arrives in Verona to find out that her villa has been double booked. With no other option, she has to share the villa with Charlie (Tom Hopper) for the next week.

Love in the Villa is another one of those ‘hate turns into love’ movies. A good portion of the movie consists of Julie and Charlie being absolutely terrible to each other. The argument culminates in a giant food fight where they basically destroy an apartment that neither of them owns. But, for some reason, the two decide to call a truce and spend some time not trying to kill each other.

Of all of the romcoms that I have watched, this one is not the worst. It’s pretty rare to see an amazingly good romcom. This is not one of those. However, it is definitely watchable. Both Graham and Hopper are decent actors and the script is not completely terrible, even though the writer (who is also the director) likes to litter random Italian all over the place. There isn’t a ton of chemistry, just a lot of unexplainable googly eyes when they happen to get their faces too close to each other. We do get a little bit of a third act twist but, honestly, that is probably the worst part of the movie.

Fans of Graham and Hopper will most likely love Villa. Everyone else that wants to watch it should do so with a glass of wine or their phone in hand. Something that will distract them from the bad parts but let them enjoy the good parts.

Operation Christmas Drop | 2020 Christmas Movies

After binging so many Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies, I took a break and switched over to Netflix. One of their first releases for 2020 is Operation Christmas Drop.

When Congresswoman Bradford (Virginia Madsen) sees an article about an Air Force base’s humanitarian mission called Operation Christmas Drop, along with a picture of a shirtless airman with a ukulele, she sends her aide, Erica (Kat Graham), to the Guam base for a budgetary analysis. Captain Andrew Jantz (Alexander Ludwig) is assigned to show Erica the ins and outs of the operation.

There is a lot to unpack with this movie. I know that there needs to be a heartless villain that wants to ruin The Good Thing but I’m pretty sure one of the purposes of US military bases is to provide support to locals. In this case, it would be local islands that don’t have access to necessities. So I don’t think that a congressperson would make a decision to close a base based solely on one annual supply drop. It is a good backdrop for a movie, however, and it does shine light on the good things the US military does.

In case you weren’t aware, Operation Christmas Drop is an actual Air Force tradition that began in 1952. (If you stay tuned after the movie, there are some real life facts about the mission.) And while Erica and Andrew are fictional characters, we do get to see Brother Bruce played by himself. I appreciated seeing someone who participates in the annual event in the movie.

Is Operation Christmas Drop worth watching? Well, it’s not as cheesy as the Hallmark/Lifetime fare. And there are some really pretty locations. But there isn’t a lot of substance. It’s OK, just not great.

Advent Day #21: The Holiday Calendar

The Holiday Calendar is Netflix’s lesser known new holiday movie for 2018. It plays a third fiddle to The Christmas Chronicles and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding. As a matter of fact, it took me awhile to even find the movie in Netflix’s menu system. I almost had to do a title search for it, which is a terrible way to advertise your new shows.

Kat Graham plays Abby, a struggling photographer. (I’m not really sure why she’s “struggling.” She has a job taking pictures.) Abby’s best friend, Josh (Quincy Brown), has been traveling the world as a travel photographer and now he’s moving back home. During some time with her family, Abby’s grandfather (Ron Cephas Jones) gives Abby an antique advent calendar that used to be her grandmother’s. Every day, a new door on the calendar magically opens, giving her a small toy. Amazingly, the toys seem to be telling her future for that particular day. Abby follows the clues, thinking it is leading her to the handsome doctor, Ty (Ethan Peck), as a love interest. But Abby’s fate lies in another direction.

I’ve been a bit of a fan of Kat Graham’s acting since she was on the CW series, The Vampire Diaries. Unfortunately, Calendar doesn’t really give her anything to work with. Her character is literally led around the plot and still manages to get everything wrong. The photography thing is supposed to be super important but doesn’t feel like it. Abby talks about wanting to open her own studio and how much she loves photography. Yet she doesn’t do anything to work on making her art better or trying to network. She gets a job photographing the mayor’s family only because her boss and her sister put her in positions to get noticed. Abby doesn’t do anything on her own to make her dreams happen. Life just happens to her. And that is boring.

It’s sad that Calendar had a great premise but was so badly executed. I would love to see a movie with a magical advent calendar with a protagonist that actually did something. What we have been given is nothing but a boring waste of time and talent.