Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Anglo-Saxon serf, living a quiet life on the banks of a river in the early ninth century. The entirety of your world is confined to the village in which you live, to the tanneries on the edge of town to the bakeries that set your hungry stomach to rumbling with not but a whiff of their deliciously perfumed air. Your modest hovel lies in the shadow of an ancient stone stele, a relic of the Romans who once conquered and ruled these lands. You know nothing of conquest or savagery, though. Yours is a peaceful life, difficult at times, but far from loathsome.
One day, as you stroll along the banks of the river to check your father's eel traps, you notice something in the distance, like a great bird gliding along the face of the water. But no, it's not a bird at all, but a sail, striped the white of virgin snow and the scarlet of blood soon to flow. The trap falls with an unheard splash from your limp hand. You've heard the tales from the coastal villages, but never would you have dreamed that such a thing could happen in your sleepy little hamlet. They've come to kill and to rob - the raiders of Denmark and Norway. The Vikings are upon you.
In blind terror, you race toward the town square to raise the alarm, though you know it will do no good. There are no great warriors in your village, only old men with time-gnawed swords and reedy children with sticks. As you ready yourself to fight - nay, to die - you have but one solace to lend strength to your soon-to-be-hewn limbs: At least you'll die before you have to see "The Love Club."
I have to wonder if Hallmark intentionally created the protagonists of this movie to be the most unlikable characters in any form of artistic medium ever. The primary protagonist, a back-stabbing harpy named Nicole, is engaged to a man named Warren, who commits the ultimate sin in her eyes of confessing that he thinks having birdhouses on the front porch might lead to bird-related messes. With her marriage to the bird-hating fiend fast approaching, Nicole takes out a set of old letters she received from a pen pal in college, which contain poetry that she thinks is brilliant. Given her likeness for said "poems," Nicole also likely finds the jokes on Laffy Taffy wrappers hysterical, and gets all of her medical advice from Web MD. That is to say, the poems are complete and utter garbage. They're the excrement that mediocrity passes when it's eaten too many clichés. But Nicole is not only still obsessed with them after a literal decade, she loves them enough to track down the man who wrote them.
Again, Nicole is still engaged throughout this entire process. Her fiancé has no idea that there's anything wrong in their relationship., and she does nothing to indicate to him that there is. She's more interested in finding the mystery man from an old college assignment than she is in the thoughts and feels of the human being that is Warren.
To aid her in her stalking, Nicole calls in her three best friends from college. I won't get into all of their personalities, because there's really no need. The four-headed jackass operates as a hive mind of sorts, each facet identical in awfulness and unlikability. Throughout the movie, they all prove themselves to be not only perfectly fine with lying through their teeth, they also engage in casual privacy-invasion (rifling through a man's office and computer while he's away) and fraud (pretending to be a team of designers that a hotel had hired). Every one of them is terrible.
Now, let's move on to the love interest. His name is Josh, because this is a Hallmark movie, which means that if the man's name isn't Luke, Max, or Blake, then it's Josh. The dude is a Grade-A, FDA approved lunatic. He learns early on that Nicole is NOT, in fact, the designer hired by the hotel he works for, but is instead a deranged psychopath who stalked him online until she figured out where he worked. Is Josh in any way turned off by this? Absolutely not! He pursues Nicole like she's Orange Soda and he's Kel Mitchell. He contrives numerous Machiavellian schemes to make Nicole "realize that he's the one she should be with." Keep in mind, they've known each other for a couple of days.
I could go on, but I'd rather not. If you're not completely revolted by these characters yet, then there's nothing I can say that will change your mind. Bottom line is, Nicole is a cheating, lying, sociopathic stalker who pursues a fantasy romance with maniacal fixation. Josh is a desperate lunatic who must live a very sad life indeed if the only woman he can connect with is one who sneaks around behind her fiancé's back, weaving a web of lies as she goes, to steal herself a new man.
Absolutely awful in every way.
One day, as you stroll along the banks of the river to check your father's eel traps, you notice something in the distance, like a great bird gliding along the face of the water. But no, it's not a bird at all, but a sail, striped the white of virgin snow and the scarlet of blood soon to flow. The trap falls with an unheard splash from your limp hand. You've heard the tales from the coastal villages, but never would you have dreamed that such a thing could happen in your sleepy little hamlet. They've come to kill and to rob - the raiders of Denmark and Norway. The Vikings are upon you.
In blind terror, you race toward the town square to raise the alarm, though you know it will do no good. There are no great warriors in your village, only old men with time-gnawed swords and reedy children with sticks. As you ready yourself to fight - nay, to die - you have but one solace to lend strength to your soon-to-be-hewn limbs: At least you'll die before you have to see "The Love Club."
I have to wonder if Hallmark intentionally created the protagonists of this movie to be the most unlikable characters in any form of artistic medium ever. The primary protagonist, a back-stabbing harpy named Nicole, is engaged to a man named Warren, who commits the ultimate sin in her eyes of confessing that he thinks having birdhouses on the front porch might lead to bird-related messes. With her marriage to the bird-hating fiend fast approaching, Nicole takes out a set of old letters she received from a pen pal in college, which contain poetry that she thinks is brilliant. Given her likeness for said "poems," Nicole also likely finds the jokes on Laffy Taffy wrappers hysterical, and gets all of her medical advice from Web MD. That is to say, the poems are complete and utter garbage. They're the excrement that mediocrity passes when it's eaten too many clichés. But Nicole is not only still obsessed with them after a literal decade, she loves them enough to track down the man who wrote them.
Again, Nicole is still engaged throughout this entire process. Her fiancé has no idea that there's anything wrong in their relationship., and she does nothing to indicate to him that there is. She's more interested in finding the mystery man from an old college assignment than she is in the thoughts and feels of the human being that is Warren.
To aid her in her stalking, Nicole calls in her three best friends from college. I won't get into all of their personalities, because there's really no need. The four-headed jackass operates as a hive mind of sorts, each facet identical in awfulness and unlikability. Throughout the movie, they all prove themselves to be not only perfectly fine with lying through their teeth, they also engage in casual privacy-invasion (rifling through a man's office and computer while he's away) and fraud (pretending to be a team of designers that a hotel had hired). Every one of them is terrible.
Now, let's move on to the love interest. His name is Josh, because this is a Hallmark movie, which means that if the man's name isn't Luke, Max, or Blake, then it's Josh. The dude is a Grade-A, FDA approved lunatic. He learns early on that Nicole is NOT, in fact, the designer hired by the hotel he works for, but is instead a deranged psychopath who stalked him online until she figured out where he worked. Is Josh in any way turned off by this? Absolutely not! He pursues Nicole like she's Orange Soda and he's Kel Mitchell. He contrives numerous Machiavellian schemes to make Nicole "realize that he's the one she should be with." Keep in mind, they've known each other for a couple of days.
I could go on, but I'd rather not. If you're not completely revolted by these characters yet, then there's nothing I can say that will change your mind. Bottom line is, Nicole is a cheating, lying, sociopathic stalker who pursues a fantasy romance with maniacal fixation. Josh is a desperate lunatic who must live a very sad life indeed if the only woman he can connect with is one who sneaks around behind her fiancé's back, weaving a web of lies as she goes, to steal herself a new man.
Absolutely awful in every way.