This was a pretty bad movie, and it wasn't the fault of the cast. Jen Lilly seems quite talented. I was less impressed with Brendan Penny but that may be just me. Peri Gilpin is a talented actress, and when she gets decent writing she can run with it. The screenplay was just bad. I don't necessarily expect great dramatic writing from a Hallmark movie, but the story ought at least to make sense.

So, Lilly, who has great cooking talent, is jobless when Gus closes her diner, and is unable to find any actual cooking job because she doesn't have a culinary school degree despite the fact that (a) this is Chicago, city of ten thousand restaurants! (b) her parents sell food to restaurants, but apparently have no connections! (c) even a diner has Yelp reviews! This is just to put her in a fix.

Penny is the executive chef at Gilpin's restaurant. She was a great chef in her day but now is a candidate for Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, shutting down Penny's every attempt to deviate from her aging bland recipes. (Although apparently she still has a great reputation because in Chicago no food critics ever re-review a restaurant and as mentioned before Yelp doesn't exist in Hallmark Chicago.) She doesn't even taste her cassoulet any more. When I saw this behavior I was sure that it would turn out she had some kind of dementia or neurological issue, which would have made sense, but there is no attempt to make it make sense.

After a meet-cute with Penny, involving both the dumping-coffee-on- him cliché and the cliché where she criticizes his food without knowing who he is, Lilley ends up with an office job in Gilpin's restaurant, although she never does anything office-y with it and it's just a way of getting her locked into the kitchen in the dead of night, where she cooks up something imaginative for herself. Gilpin shows up, tastes Lilley's cooking (more than she ever does for Penny!),and decides to let her cook every night and steal her recipes by video surveillance! So a few minutes ago she was unwilling to change her recipes at all, and now she is willing to create a whole new menu based on just ripping Lilley off! Why doesn't she just start letting her executive chef do his job? There's no sense to this!

The romance develops predictably except for things that appear out of nowhere to make the plot Hallmarky, like when they want Lilley and Penny to have a fight so they invent something incomprehensible about his relationship with his father. This is at the time when they want everything to go badly for Lilley, so Gilpin gets the big food critic (really the only one in Chicago apparently) to print a story about how Lilley stole Gilpin's recipes (without ever asking Lilley about it - Chicago papers care naught for libel laws). Then they turn everything around and it's the end of the movie. Blah.

I suppose there must have been some reason they put in the romance between Lilley's African-American coworkers, Kandyse McClure and Antonio Cayonne, who get just about as much screen time as they have in this review.

Honestly, I have nothing against facile romances, but is it really impossible to give some care to the story?

There is a lot going on in this movie, which cannot be said for many Hallmark original movies. It is entertaining and interesting throughout the two hours (minus commercials) and while some parts might be semi-predictable, the plot points were still intriguing.

Add this to my favorite Hallmark movies list I really liked this movie, Jen Lilley as Nikki and Brendan Perry as Paul made a great couple, lots of chemistry there. Don't you just love Brendan Perry. He has a sincerity in his acting that is rare.

I was a little disappointed that Nikki didn't defend herself when Holly accused her of stealing her recipes and thay best friend Angela did not stand up for her, there were enough other friends there that you would think someone would speak up on her behalf, like maybe the lady from the soup kitchen. But that was not enough to spoil the movie for me.

I suppose everyone has their favorote Hallmark actors, like Brendan Perry, Andrew Walker, Cameron Matheson. Paul Greene, Michael Rady, Mark Blucas, Tyler Hines, Mark Deklin, David Haydn-Jones, Jessica Lowndes, Nikki DeLoach, Lacey Chabert, Candace Cameron Bure, Alison Sweeny, Jill Wagner, Alicia Witt, I expect a quality performance from those mentioned and they rarely disappoint. And when they do disappoint it is usually because of the script.

This script was very good, the story flowed, and a good job was done in the editing department, And thankfully the music did not over power the dialogue, which happens so often with Hallmark movies.

Kudos Hallmark an a great enjoyable movie.

And "The Way You Look Tonight' is one of my favorite songs. Did you know it won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936? It just show you the quality counts whoever is singing the song.