Deck the Walls: Movie Review

Don’t own a construction company if you don’t do any construction work.

Hallmark continually over does it with their flipping houses storylines. I don’t understand the appeal and I also don’t understand why they keep hiring writers who also don’t seem to understand the process at all. So much of what is supposed to be the main storyline doesn’t make much sense. The main storyline should actually be the romance, and as usual, they get that part mostly right.		2024 Directed by: Danny Pellegrino Screenplay by: Danny Pellegrino Starring: Ashley Greene, Wes Brown, and Danny Pellegrino
The beginning implies that there is going to be two romances: Sal (Danny Pellegrino) and his high school nemesis Jake; and Rose (Ashley Greene) and her high school crush/nemesis Brysen (Wes Brown). Two romances are always better than one, but one of these doesn’t even get started until the very end. It starts with the very common trope of big city girl coming home to her small hometown for Christmas, but at least that was done sort of tongue-in-cheek, it definitely feels like the filmmakers gave a wink and a nod behind the scenes, they know that we know what they’re doing. The driving plot is that the city has hired Sal, who supposedly owns his own construction business, to fix up a house which will then be given to a local family in need. Sal then convinces his sister Rose, an interior designer in Chicago, to come home and help him decorate it. She argues back that he technically needs an interior decorator not an interior designer. I disagree. Sal is standing in a completely empty, unfinished home that appears to be in at least partial structural disarray. He theoretically needs a contractor (although that’s supposed to be him) and then an interior designer and then a decorator. When Rose arrives she first goes to a home décor store and starts picking out table settings things that won’t be needed until there’s a table and a finished floor, etc. Most of the scenes involve the three main characters fixing up this house, and yet it goes from the same state of barely started to barely started over an hour later and then in one scene goes to completely done. There is not a single scene of Sal or Brysen doing any construction work at all. I don’t think he ever even held a tool that could be implied that he did construction work. They all just stand around complaining it’s too much work and never actually do any work. All the actors are good. Ashley Greene in particular really lights up the screen and has a very relatable relationship with Brysen. She’s a little antagonistic at first, but warms up quickly since she appreciates his friendship with her brother. Meanwhile her brother’s relationship with Jake needs to get off the ground long before it actually does. It hardly counts as a second romance in a movie that desperately needs more than fake flipping a house.