Love, Romance & Chocolate (2019)

(On Cable TV, August 2021) Straight from the Hallmark romantic movie factory comes Love, Romance & Chocolate, with an utterly unremarkable narrative that manages to benefit from being set in Bruges and focusing on generous helping of chocolate. Lacey Chabert stars as an accountant with serious kitchen skills travelling to Belgium and getting involved with a chocolatier as he aims to win a contest organized by Belgian royalty. The romantic plot is, as usual, completely formulaic — Hallmark wouldn’t have it otherwise. But as it happens on their better movies, the setting and details do manage to make it more compelling. Generous depictions of chocolate-making pepper the entire film, clearly aiming for a chocoholic audience. The added appeal of the Belgian surroundings also does help — for once, we’re out of the typical Midwestern small-town setting and that works to Love, Romance & Chocolate. No, it’s not great art: the blandness of the dialogue and the familiarity of the plot limit the film’s effectiveness. But within these restrictions, it does manage to distinguish itself better than many of its Hallmark equivalents.