Release Year: 2015
Director: Peter Deluise
Writers: J.P. Martin & Ron Oliver
Staring: Jessy Schram, Jesse Hutch, Rowan Kahn, Babara Pollard, Particia Isaac and Willie "Buddy" Aemes.
See this movie if...you also enjoy books with missing pages, hockey games that end in a tie or pumpkins
Don't see this movie if...you believe that marrying for money is as good as marrying for love.
I get asked all the time, “Whitney, why do you do this to yourself? Why do you watch these sappy romantic comedies? You almost never give them a good review. You have to stop doing this to yourself. It will kill you. Do you hear me? This will kill you!” I always respond by saying, “First off, please let go of my arms so I can finish my McDonald’s surf ‘n turf? (It’s Big Mac with one burger patty and one fish patty. Don’t you judge me!)
Then I say, “Second, I do it for you, the people, the common folk.” I do it for all three people who occasionally read my blog. I do it for those who are sick of hate-liking their ex’s Facebook posts (“Check out our amazing family. What’s our secret? Yearly trips to Mexico, of course.” What a total jack-ass...whatever. Like.). I do it for those who don’t want to watch, yet another, chef cook a recipe that we humans are incapable of making at home (“Take your wagyu steak and fry it in the fat of a bald eagle. Top with shaved truffles, a dollop of beluga caviar and bacon crumbs. The secret is the bacon.”). I do it for all those who just can’t watch another tutorial on how to get the perfect smokey eyes (“The secret is coal dust. It’s magical.”). Finally, I do it for those who have finally given up on trying to find the dark web (Hot tip, it’s here.). But the most important reason I watch these movies and write my reviews is that I love romantic comedies.
Romantic comedy is the best movie genre. Sure superhero movies are exciting, horror movies are frightening and murder mysteries are great tutorials, but love and comedy are the best things in the world (not necessarily in that order) and when you combine them right, it’s pure magic. It’s like peanut-butter and chocolate and a good romantic comedy movie is like Reese peanut-butter cups with Reese's Pieces inside. They are salty and sweet, smooth and crunchy and often totally messy, but who doesn’t want to laugh until they throw up their truffles then cry until the coal dust runs down their face?
We all know that nearly every rom-com follows the standard rom-com story plan. Two seemingly opposite people are thrust together, like a rich businessman who pays a beautiful and totally clean escort to pretend to be his girlfriend. Totally plausible. Through the story, they argue and fight and generally behave like children while they get into crazy hijinks, like doing the Thriller dance at a fancy party. At some point the dude realizes, “I know she is my brother’s fiancé and he’s in a coma, but I think I really love her” and the girl realizes, “I know this guy owns the big chain bookstore that put my neighbourhood bookstore out of business, but I think I really love him”. But when the girl goes to the guy’s basement suite to express her love for him, his ex-fiancé answers the door wearing only his Van Halen t-shirt and the girl mistakenly assumes the guy is back with his ex-fiancé. So they break it off or don’t actually get together and both are miserable. When they just can’t take being apart, one of them makes an impassioned speech to the other where they say something sappy and brilliant like, “I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” The end.
While the pattern may be really repetitive and when done wrong, it can be totally terrible, when done right it is magical. Part of doing it right is doing each part just right. You need each of these parts to make it all work. You can’t get the high of going down the rollercoaster if you don’t go up first. That doesn’t sound quite right, but you get the idea.
Which brings us to today’s review, Harvest Moon. (Wow, that took a long time, Whitney. Can you just get to the review faster next time? No, no I can’t. Do you want to spend five minutes reading my long-winded and incredibly entertaining review or spend an hour and a half watching a bad rom-com? I thought so.)
Harvest Moon is a video game where you replace real life relationships and responsibilities with digital versions of...oh wait, that’s my review of the video game Harvest Moon for the Nintendo Switch, which was way more popular than the movie Harvest Moon and for good reason. Harvest Moon, the movie, is the story of Jenny Stone (Jesse Schram), the daughter of wealthy businessman William Stone (Willy Aemes). Both of these actors are just familiar enough to send you to IMDB to figure out where you’ve seen them before. If you’re a child of the 80s, like me, then you’ll be totally stoked when you realize that Willy Aemes also played Buddy on Charles in Charge. And if you’re like me, you’ll pretend that William is actually Buddy because sit-com side-kicks are the best.
While we’re talking about Charles in Charge, it had to be the best prime-time-turned-after-school-sitcom of the 80s. For starters you had a Scott Baio in his prime. Charming and handsome. Second, you had Baio’s side-kick Buddy. Any character who says, “Home is where I hang my salami” is a whole lot of creepy and totally alright with me. Third, and most important, it had one of the top ten tv show theme songs of all time. “Charles in charge of our days and our nights. Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights.” I totally wrote that out from memory. Alright, I’ll stop talking about Charles in Charge, but I know the song is stuck in your head. I feel no guilt for that.
Buddy/William made a bunch of money with a line of sweater-vests for cats. Then he lost it all when people learned he used real cat hair for the vests. Some people like the idea of using cat hair for cats, it's kind of natural. Some suggested it was like using human skin for human sweater-vests and that was the end of his brilliant idea.
OK, he didn’t make sweater-vests for cats, but as you would expect from any 80s side-kick, he made a bunch of money and then lost it all. This left Jenny with nothing but a fancy car, more clothes than a Goodwill in January and a pumpkin farm her Dad bought her as an investment. Jenny decides to pack her whole wardrobe and her plucky can-do attitude into her fancy car and head to Hicksville to visit her pumpkin farm in the hopes she can sell it and get back to easy street
When Jenny arrives at her farm she meets the man in charge, Brett (Jesse Hutch). Brett is handsome, hard working, handy, a little shy, rough around the edges and a widower with exactly one child. That’s what we call in the holi-com movie game “the complete package”. Sparks fly immediately between Brett and Jessy. Jessy tells Brett about her plan to fix up the farm and sell it ASAP. Brett hatches a separate plan to work Jenny so hard that she runs away screaming, but not before she sells the farm to Brett for a song. By the way, the rules of holi-coms state that the song to purchase the farm would be a country song, so not worth a wet bushel of hay.
This actually sounds like a great plot for a story. Two people with conflicting schemes, crossing and double-crossing each other as they try to make their own plan work. I can see Jenny making Brett dress up as the Great Pumpkin and dance on the street corner to promote the farm. And Brett would get Jenny to stand at the bottom of Johnson’s hill to catch the pumpkins in the town pumpkin rolling contest. Jenny would suggest they wear Gucci pleather overalls to get on the cover of farmers weekly. Brett would have Jenny sing Depeche Mode to the pumpkins to help them grow. Jenny would suggest they work the farm by hand because it’s environmentally friendly. Brett would get Jenny to fertilize the pumpkins with her own “fertilizer” because it’s also environmentally friendly.
Will Jenny’s plan to turn the farm around make it attractive to the right buyer? Will Brett’s plan to drive Jenny crazy drive her to sell the farm to Brett for cheap? Will Jenny and Brett’s crappy plans produce enough manure to fertilize something special between them?
The answer is, I don’t know. I’ve seen the movie and I feel like I really can’t answer that question. Well, I guess I know, but I don’t want to answer it because I’m mad. This movie desecrates the sacred rom-com plan by skipping a critical part. Opposite people thrown together in an improbable situation? Check. Disagreements and fighting that is basically foreplay? Check. Hijinks? Sure, moderate hijinks, but it counts. The couple realizing that behind all that frustration and anger is the spark of something special? Check. Someone breaks it off because they find out that the other has done something pretty terrible? Indeed. Super cheesy speech where someone says how much they need the other and they both realize they love each other and get together? Nope. We assume it happens because the last scene is happily ever after. It’s like planting a pumpkin patch and selling the farm in September or watching a hockey game and turning it off when overtime starts or making cookie dough then skipping the baking and just eating it. Wait, the cookie thing is awesome, forget that one.
Then to make it worse, not only does this movie skip the super sappy reunion that makes my life worth living, the scene just before the happily ever after makes it look like they get together for money and not love. Ok, I know that Jenny is cash strapped and she wants to get back to her rich lifestyle and I know that Brett just wants to get the farm back to his family and he needs cash to do it. But, that is the point of a good rom-com. The protagonists are supposed to sacrifice something good (money, fame, pride, comfort) for something better (chocolate chip cookie dough...I mean love, but both would be best). When this movie skipped this part, I was so mad I smashed all the pumpkins in my neighbourhood. If I couldn’t have my sappy make up speech then nobody can have their...pumpkins.
Harvest Moon has almost all the makings of a great holi-com movie, but almost isn’t good enough. I was actually enjoying myself up until the point when the movie dropped the ball. Dropped the ball hard. Heck, it dropped it so hard, it practically spiked the ball right into the ground. I was mad, but I wasn’t completely unhappy. I did get to see Buddy and he reminded me of the amazing theme song for Charles in Charge. “I want Charles in charge of me.” There, now it is securely in your head. I still feel no guilt.
IF you love a rom-com with a tight story and everything fits together...you should still probably look somewhere else.
IF you are looking for a decent holi-com and you are able to overlook a fatal flaw...then you should watch Harvest Moon. You should also get your heart checked out because I think it's broken.
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