October Kiss (2015)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Really Surprised!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie is so sugary I feel the need for some insulin. Per the Hallmark template, motherless kids with well-meaning but harried dad get a lovely young nanny. Nanny is ebullient, attractive, and able to overcome the kids' initial hostility to become much loved and their prime candidate for step-motherhood. Yadda, yadda, yadda.The hook here is supposed to be the Halloween theme, which fills every scene like car exhaust in a closed garage. Who but owners of popup Halloween stores decorates every inch of their environment with this sort of schlock? Main character Poppy is a perpetually grinning hobgoblin who talks, eats, sleeps and dresses Halloween for weeks before the "big day". She's unrelentingly cheerful and quick with the the happy-talk repartee and it's all just too too much. It ends as you would expect...and I'm off to watch something less syrupy . Reservoir Dogs, anyone?

I tagged this as having possible spoilers, but I don't think I said anything you wouldn't expect on your own.This isn't quite your usual Hallmark nanny movie where the kids declare all out war on the new nanny.Ashley Williams, plays a totally upbeat Poppy who seems to find positive in everything and also can turn almost anything into a life-learning experience. Even when things aren't going so well, she can laugh and move on. Part of this is a little childishness, but I think life loving is a better description of her than childish.Even her rival is not mean in this movie and actually she is kind of nice.Of course this is supposed to be a romance between Poppy and Ryan, but much more than that it is a romance between Poppy and the kids. While that is true to some degree in most nanny movies, it is even more so here. If I were a single dad, I would find it very hard not to love someone who loves my kids so much and is so good for them.There are no huge surprises or plot twists in this movie, but I still enjoyed it so much, mostly because of the relationship between Poppy and the kids.

You have seen this movie in other iterations for decades. What makes this one different is Ashley Williams, who shines in every scene. She is a delight to watch! The children she becomes a nanny for do better than fine in their roles, as does the father. The father has a gorgeous, brilliant, successful girlfriend - someone who's also good through and through - not someone the audience can dislike for any reason other than as a foil to our heroine, Ashley. While we know where this is going and where it'll end up, as a man I sure wish I had this father's problems, at least for awhile. While the women are in their 30s, they're both hoping to be with this father who doesn't appear to be anything special (that's his role though) other than having two wonderful children. Maybe it's his skill at keyboard clicking and gripping his smartphone that puts him up on a pedestal. He also has a huge Apple MacBook Pro on his desk, a 15-inch, and how many guys could afford that?One quandary in the script was money for services rendered. There is no discussion of salary for her nannying. There is also a scene where Ashley takes the children Halloween shopping with a seemingly unlimited budget, because shopping with no money is what makes people happy? She wasn't given a credit card by the father, nor is there any discussion about her being reimbursed for all the purchases she made, even though she is relatively low on money. A 10-second scene of dad handing her a card for emergencies should've been in the final edit.

A woman named Poppy who bounces around from one job to another becomes a nanny to the two children of a workaholic widower. She quickly wins the kids over, then the dad, but a burgeoning workplace romance for him and Poppy's commitment issues may spell the first ever sad ending for a Hallmark romantic comedy. Yeah, right! It's a Hallmark movie so, of course, it's predictable to a fault. But what saves the movie from the mediocrity that engulfs so many made-for-TV efforts is the winning personality of Ashley Williams. She's charming, bubbly, and downright lovable in this. That isn't to say the rest of the cast is bad. It's actually a very good cast for these types of things. Sam Jaeger does an admirable job making his workaholic father character likable. The two kids are terrific, especially the daughter. The cast plays well off one another and really come alive in scenes with the delightful Ashley Williams. It's a funny, sweet, and pleasant movie; a nice way to pass the time. It won't challenge you and it doesn't reinvent the TV romcom but, if you are a fan of such movies, I doubt that you will find anything to dislike here.