Hallmark, you let me down. I don’t say that often, but I will say that here. You let me down. Game, Set, Love was just not a movie that should have made it to air. Am I aware that is not a popular opinion? Yes.
It’s not the storyline that should have kept it from air. The premise was great.
In the movie, “Taylor (Davida Williams) is a former professional tennis player who retired from the sport following the passing of her mother so she could be there for her father, David (Roger Cross) and has been enjoying teaching tennis to kids at the local club. Her former doubles partner Ashley (Jennifer Khoe) asks her to coach her and her new doubles partner Will (Richard Harmon), a player whose reputation and career are in need of repair thanks to his hotheaded antics on the court. Taylor reluctantly agrees and though she and Will clash at first, she’s surprised to discover a different side to him. Even more surprising is when Taylor finds herself entering the doubles tournament with Will after Ashley is sidelined by an injury. As Taylor and Will spend more time together while they get ready to compete, the pair learns they just may be a perfect match in more ways than one.”
The movie had potential and that’s hard for me to say with how much I disliked it. It’s been awhile since I have had to commend Hallmark for trying, but wonder if they realized that they were way out of their league for this one.
It’s all about the way this movie was shot. The settings, the low budget (and trust, you can tell it was low budget), and the horrendous wardrobe, are what added up for it to be a bad movie.
Now, yes, I had feelings about the movie before I even watched it. Richard Harmon is a good actor, but him on the Hallmark Channel doesn’t fit. He’s not the “good guy” in a role and even though this role was billed as the “bad boy” of tennis, there was nothing bad about his character. Okay, so he yelled at the umpire (or whatever they call it in tennis) and told him that he wouldn’t be on his Christmas card list, it made me laugh more than anything.
Will wasn’t a bad guy. Will was a misunderstood guy with some serious family issues. He wasn’t speaking with his parents and had come to terms with it. His “anger” was part of his persona. He wasn’t willing to let people close and felt as though he had to be angry because that’s what people expected of him.
Taylor is a woman lost in grief, but doesn’t realize it. She’s fully of excuses as to why she can’t follow her dreams, but who is going to debate with her that he father needs her. No one. Well, except Will, who doesn’t seem to mind calling anyone out for anything.
Though the two actors have no chemistry on the screen, but they don’t deliver the worst performances. Harmon as Will was unbelievable, but maybe that’s because it’s really the first time that he’s taken on a role like this. Davida Williams does a great job as Taylor, and honestly she’s the highlight of the movie.
But Will and Taylor together feels against Taylor’s character. Especially when she’s just going back into professional tennis and they are just starting out as partners. She doesn’t seem like the person that would fall for a bunch of lines that a charming man has to deliver.
The costuming felt as though I was watching my grandparents play tennis and honestly, took me away from the characters because I couldn’t get over how frumpy and old they looked, when they were meant to be young people on the tour.
The tennis matches – let us just say that it felt like they decorated a high school gym and put people in the stands. The setting and the shots took me completely out of the movie and I felt like I couldn’t see anything that was happening, because I wondered how this passed the producers.
You can say that everything counts when making a movie, because it does. And unfortunately the settings, the shots, and the costuming took me so far out of Game, Set, Love that the only thing I could enjoy was it ending.
