Love, Romance & Chocolate (2019)

Fun fact: she voices Zatanna a lot.

    First things first, I’m already annoyed by the lack of an Oxford comma in the title.

    For once it’s not the New York City skyline we’re opening on but some chocolate porn and oops, too soon, there’s New York. Our lead is some kind of career woman whose company has something to do with baking (spoiler: it never really does get defined although it is established she works for some kind of food magazine) who is off to Bruges in a week’s time for something. I thought she was shown learning German earlier but maybe it was Dutch? After establishing she’s good at baking she rushes off to meet someone for lunch. The man she’s meeting is very obviously about to break up with her so let’s wait to see how long until that happens. She walks in at two minutes twenty seconds, he breaks up with her at ... three minutes forty two seconds. Half of that time is her establishing her family’s connection with Bruges so we could be back in efficient script territory.

    She goes to Bruges by herself. While checking into the hotel the concept of the prince’s wedding is introduced. I guess this is the Belgian prince? I don’t think she’s going to fall in love with him, they would’ve worked that more obviously into the title, not to mention that’s a title that actually exists, but she’s going to, I dunno, enter into a baking competition for a part of the ceremonies? Is her love interest a Belgian rival she initially doesn’t like but has to join forces with at the fifty minute mark? I’m kind tossing random darts here, let’s see what happens.

    She’s doing some chocolate sightseeing, which I am perfectly prepared to believe is a real thing, and has a meet-cute at a stand with a guy she assumes doesn’t speak English. He clearly will and will tease her about it and at the speed with which these things move I assume we’re about half a scene away from that.

    Ah, because of the wedding they’re holding a competition to be the royal chocolatier. I’m revising on the fly, she wouldn’t want that job herself so she’s going to instead help the cute guy she just met for ... hmm, we’ll see what reason they come up with.

    Oh, the teasing is actually a scene and a half later, well-played movie. Turns out he owns the oldest chocolatier shop in Bruges and it’s becoming less clear what’s going to force them together. C’mon, movie, it’s been over ten minutes, set up your entire premise already. Which they start to do in the next scene, okay, he sticks with traditional recipes, she likes to experiment. I bet they’re going to come together in the end! If we get a scene of the prince wandering by and liking one of her recipes and that’s why they start working together I am officially going to kick up my feet and focus most of the rest of this on why you should use the Oxford Comma.

    Ah, the oldest shop in Bruges is having money troubles, that’s why he wants the gig. Oh, and his assistant is apparently pregnant and needs bed rest so our lead volunteers to help. All right, didn’t see that one coming. She justifies this by saying if she helps she gets to go to the palace, which apparently is a thing she wants to do. Fine, premise established, let’s see if this random shuffling of plot elements continues. It’s almost twenty minutes in and the couple isn’t even resisting their love for each other yet.

    So they wander around Bruges looking for ‘inspiration.’ They try chocolate from other shops and she info dumps the personal history we should’ve been shown at the beginning. They hit the ‘cooking as bringing unexpected combinations together’ metaphor that I just know I’m going to get thoroughly sick of. She decides to make up some her own own chocolates to show him and that ‘prince is intrigued by her chocolate’ theory is starting to come back to life.

    Her grandparents and their history in Bruges comes back up and she decides they need to dig up their history to learn how to put love in chocolate? Sure, movie, I’ll let you run a while with this. Although these leads have zero chemistry and you’re going to have to put in a lot of work to convince me otherwise.

    There’s a very minor subplot about a guy trying to buy the chocolate shop, there’s a scene where he gives our lead directions, and he’s listed, let’s see, fourth in the credits, so he’s the fake love rival, gotcha. Oh, and he’s super experimental with his ingredients, that’s a least a little interesting.

    Now with basically no prelude they’re going on dates and acting all awkward and flirty and I’m sorry none of this was really set up. It’s like they hit the forty-five minute mark and decided it’s falling in love time. They run into the fake love interest, he and our lead are perfectly civil, and now the shop guy is throwing a huge, judgy hissy fit that has her rightfully confused. We are at fifty minutes so I suppose it is time to set up a fake conflict but pffffft, this is weak stuff here.

    Now the prince is touring and they haven’t come up with their signature chocolate and what is going on here? I should not be confused by a script this simple. Oh, they’re just visiting all the shops, okay. And our leads actually have a conversation and get past the hissy fit, fine.

    They end up combining their talents and interests to come up with their entry, who would have guessed! They go to the contest, present their entry, and they’ll find out the winner the next night. And now blech, the misunderstanding, he goes to profess the love he suddenly feels, sees her having coffee with his business rival, throws away the flowers he was carrying like a drama queen, you have twelve minutes, movie, I’ll just be over here contemplating commas.

    The reason it’s called the Oxford comma (more generally the serial comma) is because the Oxford style guide is one of the few prestigious British style guide to insist on its use. It’s generally accepted as unnecessary or at worst confusing but it has its adherents, including myself. It’s the final comma in a list of three or more items, the one right before the ‘and.’ To me it’s both logical and balancing, I find its absence distracting and opens up useless ambiguity. Plus you get to be pedantic about commas, one of my favorite pastimes, even if I get it wrong as often as I get it right.

    Oh, right, movie. They passive aggressive at each other for a while and I just don’t care about either of them. They win, decide to hit pause on their idiot buttons and declare their love, we out. At least in this one the leads had actual characters, as thin as they were, and had wants, if badly defined ones, and eventually acted on them to come together instead of letting the plot do it for them. I didn’t buy them as a couple for a second but they were generally tolerable. I’m going to try very hard to find a movie for next time that doesn’t involve either food or royalty, let’s see how difficult that is.