Movie: Not Cinderella's Type (2018) **

I thought Not Cinderella's Type was going to be a gentle romantic cheesy movie, but it turned out be an after-school-special-like-film about emotional abuse with a storyline that went all over the place. Let me tell you how it went:

Girl's mom dies when she is little and her uncle and aunt, who already have two daughters, take her in.

Flash forward to 16: A boy runs over the cat her deceased mother gave her (That's the only thing left of her mother).

Boy tries to apologize, but she refused to hear him, so he kind of stalks her at school and beyond.

Boy asks her out, she considers.

When talking about boy to her bestie, she discovers that her male best friend thought they were boyfriend-girlfriend.

Seeing both boys at the same time.

Weird neighbor who never says anything all of a sudden calls her aunt to tattle that the girl is making out with male best friend on the soccer field.

She finally gets fed up with the mean uncle and aunt who treat her like a maid and she speeches at them about how mean they are to her.

Boy comes over and picks her up and takes her back to his house because his dad is certified to host foster kids.

After her uncle and aunt are investigated, she ends up living with boy and his family.

Male best friend failed to be there when she needed him, now he's in the friend zone.

Boy and her go to prom and start dating. Yes, she still lives in his house, but moved out to the pool house.

The end.

• Cheesy or sentimental: The production was cheap, but not cheesy. Its like they used the producer's house and maybe the director's parents' house for locations.
  
• Production value: Low
  
• Suspension of belief: High
  
• Trope: Cinderella-like story
  
• Diversity: Nope. Nada.
  
• Paranormal: None.
  
• Clownish character: None.

Rating: Not Fun; Two stars because I made it to the end **

I wasted on of my Hoopla credits to watch this. 

Movie: Falling Inn Love (2019) **

Falling Inn Love It is about a woman who suddenly looses her job, then wins an inn in close order. The inn is in New Zealand and when she gets there she finds its in terrible disrepair and has way too much pride to hire the local, handsome contractor to help her to restore it. 

I've had this movie saved on my Netflix watchlist for a while as a potential movie for my spring romance movie marathon. When I finally watched it it was a slapstick silly mess with people rolling off beds, dropping things down stairs, an intrusive goat, and of course the standard shelf that falls when someone leans in it. The story was interesting and I was getting into the characters, but the silliness was way too distracting. I was supposed to be amused, but I was just greatly annoyed.

• Cheesy or sentimental: Cheesy
• Production value: Good Mar Vista production 
• Suspension of belief: high
• Trope: Enemies-become-lovers-ish. Like I said, the story was interesting and I haven't been able to identify a trope that fits this movie well. 
• Diversity: Afro-Latina lead, interracial gay couple. They represented!
• Paranormal: there was a mention of a ghost, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if it played into the story. Although I suspect if i waited long enough the antagonist character would somehow fake a ghost so as to scare the main character away only to be foiled by the pesky goat. 
• Clownish character: About half the cast was silly and clumsy.

Rating: Not fun; Two stars **

I watched this movie on Netflix. 

Holiday Cheese 2018 Marathon Part II: Not Good Cheese

Cheesy movies have a low production value, usually subpar acting and the storylines have a ton of holes and therefore require viewers to suspend some of their realistic expectations. I like cheesy, b-level romance and this is my 2nd cheesy holiday romance movie marathon. The bar is set low, but the cheese level is high. On my scale, Good Cheese falls onto the So Good It’s Bad side of the scale and is obviously fun for me. Bad Cheese is not fun. Click here to read about 2018 Good Cheese.

Didn’t Finish

Homeless For the Holidays-This was a c-level production, crappy writing, terrible acting (Amazon)

A Christmas in New York- Stopped it 29 minutes in because it still felt they were setting up the stories of six couples in a NYC hotel. Good luck! (Amazon)

Home for Christmas- Stopped it 22 minutes in. Felt like they were trying too hard to be Girls-Judd-Appatow-like. And then there were very annoying close-up dialogue scenes. I don’t think this was intending to be cheesy. (Amazon)

Christmas Next Door- I gave this about 20 mins, but it just didn’t hook me. Granted, I watched this after Christmas, and by then I had had my fill of holiday romance. Even so, this just sucked.

And finally.... Bad Cheese!

Christmas Wedding Planner- For her first job, A wedding planner is working on her cousin’s Christmas wedding. She finds herself teaming up with her cousin’s ex to find dirt on the fiancée. Of course, they fall in love. Production value wasn’t bad, but the music supervisor should never be allowed to work again. The music was silly, obtrusive and often didn’t match the visual tone. There’s a lot of realism-suspension involved in watching B romance movies, but the ending of this movie called for too much. (Netflix)

Christmas with a View- Vivica Fox, Patrick Duffy, and Kaitlyn Leeb, who plays Cassandra on my favorite Canadian TV show, Heartland, star in this movie about a failed-restaurant-owner-turned- restaurant-manager who falls in love with a visiting celebrity chef looking to settle down. The potential for a successful b-holiday romance movie was there: good cast, good locations, good styling and costuming, but the writing was awful. So many incomplete scenes and conversations that went... Click here for a trailer. (Netflix)

Shadow Island Mysteries: The Last Christmas- I was a little perturbed that I actually finished this because I fell asleep the first time so I finished it a second night. So much time wasted. The fist thing that bugged me was that they used horror or edge-of-your-seat thriller music that was completely inappropriate. There was some bad editing. And overall it was cheesy in a bad way. (Amazon)

I’ll Be Homeless for Christmas- I’m actually hoarse from laughing so hard at this movie. It was the worst movie I have ever seen. The sound and editing and everything was so exceptionally bad that at less than five minutes in, I paused the movie and called my best friend to laugh with me. We ended up watching the whole 54 minutes together. Who in the hell would plan a heist to rob a homeless shelter?! Why are all the characters and extras suffering from lack of peripheral vision. Everyone’s clothes were ill-fitting. This was a hot, but entertaining-because-it was-awful mess. (Amazon)

Christmas With a Prince- Kaitlyn Leeb stars in anther sub-par holiday romance. A pediatrician is thrown off her game when she agrees to host an injured prince in her hospital ward. So many story lines were thrown in and quickly resolved it was like a 21 episode sitcom cobbled together into a 90 minute movie. Everything was a bit off: The editing, the acting, the writing, the production and costuming. Also, it was too long. There were at least two endings and the first one would have been just fine. This is produced by the same company (Brain Power Studio) that did Christmas With a View, which was also poopy.

A Firehouse Christmas- This one wasn’t all bad, but it turned into bad comedy toward the end and now it lives in Bad Cheese land. 

Movie: Happytime Murders (2018)*

Happytime Murders takes place in a world where puppets and humans live side by side. A group of puppet actors who starred in a sitcom are being murdered and a former-cop-turned-private-eye puppet detective and his former human partner team up to find out whodunit.
The potential for an awesome story is great, but the stupid and not funny comedy made it difficult to watch. Melissa McCarthy was not funny.
I'm pretty sure I heard a podcast story years ago about puppet murders and I thought it really entertaining and I wanted more. When I heard about this movie, I thought they finally expanded on that podcast and I got excited. This was not the same as the podcast. Nope. This sucked.
I did not like this movie and it was not fun. It gets one star*.
I checked this DVD out from my local library.
This 9 minute video is funnier than the entire Happytime Movie:

Movie: Beatriz at Dinner**

Photo by Dante

Beatriz at Dinner is an unhurried, character-focused, bleak drama about a holistic health
practitioner who is invited to stay for her employer’s business dinner because her car broke down at the employer’s house. I watched it on Amazon.

My reaction during the movie:
I knew what was going to happen as soon as she tried to start her car. The whole time my stomach is just wrenching. I keep saying Why? Why did you invite her to dinner? Why did she decide to stay? Why did she cut off of the maitre’d? Why is she still drinking? Why did they not call AAA? Why did she leave the bedroom? What the hell?!
My thoughts after:
Beatriz At Dinner made me think of Mother, which was completely unrealistic, yet a commentary on realistic society. Whereas BAD (Yeah. It does spell bad) is completely realistic and trying to explore social classes and cultural bias, but is unable to fulfill that intended subject matter because there is not one likable character in this movie, not even the main character. BAD turned out to be a movie about what not to do. Do not NOT take care of your car. Do not invite a friendly service person to your very important business dinner. Do not cut off the maitre’d announcing the menu. Do not insult and throw a phone at one of the invited guests.
I found that Beatriz spent so much time trying to be this pure, vegan, healing, soulful person, that she didn’t realize how selfish she was acting during the dinner and if this movie was any indication, maybe throughout her life. She violated people’s space by giving everyone a full-body hug. She was rude to the main guest at dinner. She was inconsiderate of her  so-called-friend, who invited her to stay.
I listened to the Filmweek segment about this movie and I’m apparently way off from the critics. They thought this film was great and the acting by John Lithgow and Salma Hayek was amazing. Apparently, they saw it right after the inauguration of Donald Trump, so they though Lithgow’s character was quite similar and the movie was an “allegory of the Trump era.” It seems like they saw Beatriz as a representative for the downtrodden, which again, I would have agreed with if she was only likable. I saw one trailer that made her look as intrusive as the Brady Bunch’s Alice. Then I saw another trailer that made John Lithgow’s character to be the embodiment of evil.
I also noticed two actors from the horrible, yet addictive show, Transparent in this movie. A show about a family full of unlikeable people.
It turns out the director and writer have worked together twice before. I only know about The Good Girl (2002) that okay movie with Jennifer Anniston and Jake Gyllenhaal and Enlightened, which I never watched on HBO.
On the Nitpix scale, this movie falls into the Not Fun zone. On my scale it gets two stars**.
Next day addendum: From her behavior it is clear that Beatriz was experiencing a mental breakdown that started during the massage scene. If you can relate to Beatriz and need to talk to someone, please call the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI):
800-950-NAMI, Mon - Fri 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM EST or find help in a crisis by texting NAMI to 741741.