Tag: Andrew Dunbar

For the longest time on Gorgon Reviews, we have not bothered to watch most made for TV films. There are of course exceptions. For example, I did watch and review A Deadly Adoption on the Lifetime Channel because it was also a parody of lifetime channel films, and had some big names attached.

But Hallmark and Lifetime churn out so many romance and drama films that go straight to their network, with very low budgets, and some famous names, but basic scripts. It is a known joke. If I started to review them, I would have to dedicate basically all of my movie time towards them and nothing else. Or cancel all of my hobbies and jobs. Either way. I think it is easier to ignore them. If we all already accept they are bad and nothing has ever changed that fact, then we don’t need a weekly reminder.

But yet here I am, now reviewing, unprompted, a Hallmark channel movie. This one being called Taking a Shot At Love. I did it because I saw it existed, and saw it was a love story involving hockey and said fuck it, let’s take a shot at Taking A Shot At Love.

And take a walk at Taking a Walk At Noon. 

Jenna (Alexa PenaVega, oh shit, the Spy Kid!) is a ballet instructor to the youths of a very rich New England small town community. You know. One of those extremely white places. And I don’t say that just because it is set in winter and there is snow. It is small enough that she is one of two ballet/dance teachers, while the other one is a dance TEAM who goes on to compete. And she just wants to teach dance for the love of dance, because she hates competition and putting that extra anger and stress on others/kids. But, she is losing dancers to the team, and the time commitment, and rent is going up, and and and and.

In New York City, we have famous hockey player Ryan “Coop” Cooper (Luke Macfarlane). He is battling some ankle injury, that affects his skate. He has seen a lot of specialists and had the surgeries, but there is something still off about it. He wants to get back on the ice and help the New York Rangers win stuff, and he is a great scorer, but if he can’t skate well, he can’t play.  His agent (Kurt Long) happens to be cousins with Jenna, and she went through the same injury but got 100% better. How? By going back to the basics of ballet, and reworking her skills from the ground up.

So sure, lets send Ryan to her guest house and studio for a month of 1 on 1 ballet training, to see if that will work for him, since they tried everything else.

And sure enough, these very different people, are gonna grow to hate each other and blow up the small community. Wait. No. Opposite. Love and stuff. Got cha.

Also starring Nolen Dubuc so we can have a main kid figure for them to bodn of, Heather-Claire Nortey so it isn’t 100% white, and Andrew Dunbar to give side plot problems to this story.

I guess air hockey is like a bonus hockey reference.

If I focused entirely on Lifetime and Hallmark movies, I could tell you if this one was better or worse than the majority of those sort of movies. And I haven’t, which is a good reason why I won’t just randomly try to pick and choose any of these in the future too often, because it just isn’t fair to the genre. Because I have to compare this movie just to all movies I have seen before and well, it is definitely not great.

Anyways. Compared to other films, Taking a Shot at Love is indeed bad.

There never feels like any real conflict in the film, in terms of ways for the characters to grow or overcome anything. The entire film just feels like filler. Oh, we don’t have enough actual romance to work between our leads? Let’s have a side character be bitter about hockey in general because of real life circumstances kept him from getting drafted. (These real life circumstances were a choice and….a very bad choice in terms of helping his family it seems like). Let’s have literally one kid on the ballet team, one of the two boys, be able to recognize him and need help with hockey so that there is a kid figure but neither of their own kids.

The romance happens because the script says it happens. I can’t say there is real chemistry between the characters, outside of them be youthful-ish and attractive and good at their skills. There is no performance from anyone in the movie worthy of note. I am surprised the New York Rangers let them use their image.

Also, this takes place in winter, but unless I misunderstood a conversation early on…they implied the team was already done with round 1 of the playoffs. Which wouldn’t be happening until April in a normal year. Not during winter. The player wanted to get back on round 2, so he could help with that round. And instead is sent for a whole month to get fixed. Are they still in the second round of the playoffs then? Is this the finals now? Who knows. Definitely not the writers of the movie.

Almost universally agreed upon, Leprechaun is one of the worst franchises known to man. It has always been known for its more comedic elements and campy atmosphere, but a lot of people just seem to loathe it. Most of knowledge of it came from Wayne’s World and seeing the first one as a kid, which kind of creeped me out. But then we also got Leprechaun 4: In Space and Leprechaun In The Hood. The series kept going because, presumably, no one puts Warwick Davis in a corner.

But now that part of the Leprechaun franchise is presumably dead. Now Leprechaun: Origins, serving as a series reboot, is being made by the very prestigious WWE studios.

The company who brought us character studies such as The Condemned, Oculus, and The Day.

Let’s not forget the filter. How else will they know it is dark and brooding?

Ireland, because that’s where leprechauns live. Two couples, one adventure to discover the richness of the land in front of them. What secrets may they find? What hidden gems?

Well, Jeni (Melissa Roxburgh) is looking to get her Masters in History next year, but not sure what she wants to do it on. So why not look around Ireland? Her boyfriend Ben (Andrew Dunbar) more or less supports her theories, although he wants to see cooler less boring things. They also have the less important couple (Brendan Fletcher, Stephanie Bennett), who are expendable.

They go to town, hearing good things, and find out artifacts that are super old. Just a 7 hour trip from the town. They had planned to stay there just an afternoon, but when offered a free cabin to stay in over night and a tour to the site? Well, sure.

But it turns out the town has pact with an ancient leprechaun. It wants to kill the town, as they stole his gold, but they have instead let them have human sacrifices in the form of out of town visitors. Yay, appeasing leprechauns!

Some townsfolk include Garry Chalk and Teach Grant, while the leprechaun himself is played by Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl, who I have been told is a professional wrestler.

Oh yeah, you can tell this is leprechaun, because of his…uhh. Um…Uh.

I was being a bit too hard on WWE studios earlier. They also helped give us Dead Man Down, which I absolutely loved. This is not one of those glorious times.

First off, no comedic elements. Okay, fine, straight horror. I can do that. But don’t give me a leprechaun movie without anything that resembles a leprechaun. You see that picture up there? That is a hideous fucking C.H.U.D. That is not a leprechaun. It looks like they took the C.H.U.D. costume, reduced the eyes, and just said fuck it, leprechaun.

Not only that, but a lot of the “Fear” early on, involved an unseen force rushing through the tall wheat or grass or whatever, and grabbing people. That shit is straight out of Jurassic Park, is it not?

Despite going for straight horror, this movie is not scary in any way. It is just dumb. Bad acting, bad plot, bad reboot, bad characters, bad “villains”, and it feels like it drags on forever. I’d rather watch the original Leprechaun film than watch Leprechaun: Origins again. I am also confused as to why they even bothered to have someone “famous” playing the leprechaun? He has no discernible features, doesn’t talk just growls, and is a complete waste.

It is hard to say that, but this reboot is a disgrace to the already pitiful Leprechaun franchise.