Hallmark Channel
Hallmark’s ‘Winter Escape’ takes us on another cruise, this time in the Mediterranean with two workaholics who find themselves forced to get to know each other as Mother Nature and other forces conspire to keep them off their ship.
Missing the Boat stars Kristoffer Polaha as Parker Andrews, a man who works constantly and never takes a vacation. He’s dragged on a cruise by his sister Emily (Amy Louise Pemberton) but he has to remain focused on his work which, at the moment, involves his company looking to sell the cruise line company with which he is traveling. Parker is also not thrilled that his boss Adam Crandall (Trey Warner) has also decided to join the cruise to schmooze the possible buyers. Parker, who is actually not fond of being on a ship at all, meets Kelly Coates (Emilie Ullerup) on deck, unaware that she is actually on the cruise undercover, working for the company that may buy the cruise line, doing her job of trying to find everything wrong with the ship and its operations, reporting back to her superiors. Emily and Kelly become fast friends, bonding over their ribbing of Parker, who can’t keep his nose out of his laptop. Parker is also a little creeped out that his boss and his sister seem to be getting along a little too well. While Adam stays on the ship with the potential buyers, Parker, Emily and Kelly disembark the ship to see the sights at their first stop, and while Emily hits the beach, Parker and Kelly decide to seek out a waterfall mentioned in the tourist guide books. Having been the last to book the journey, they end up with donkeys instead of horses, and once they get to the waterfall (a bizarre visual that looks anything but real), the donkeys take off forcing the two to run after them. With only an hour to get back to the ship, they try everything, but the ship leaves without them. Trying to book a rental car from twin brothers after being told there is no night train, the second brother tells them they’ll have to take the night train (the brothers worked together at their separate locations to milk the tourists), but in the middle of the journey there is a strike. Kelly is able to communicate with an Italian woman, and she makes an impassioned plea to the workers via her new translator, explaining how both she and Parker need to get to their ship because their jobs can bring more tourists to the region. But the Italians don’t want more tourists. Kelly assures them there will always be tourism but they will manage the number of people who descend on their region, convincing the workers to get back to work and they could strike at 6:00 AM (the head of the union just wanted to go home anyway, so it didn’t take much convincing).
But a ‘Medicane’ (a Mediterranean hurricane) diverts the ship to a different port (even though the storm is nowhere near the ship itself), so Parker has to pull some strings and throw around his bosses name to get him and Kelly two executive suites at a fancy hotel until they can get to the next port. But all of the running has caused a recurring back problem to flare up for Parker, and Kelly has to eventually reveal who she is and why she’s on the ship in the first place. Parker relays this surprise news to his sister, who then tells Parker to do what he can to keep Kelly off the ship so she doesn’t screw up his deal. Both Parker and Kelly oversleep and are frantic to get a cab to the airport to get to the next port of call, but Parker forgot his passport so instead of holding Kelly up, he puts her in the cab and promises to catch up when he can. As he later gazes out over the sea, Kelly shows up because she didn’t want to go without him (and his back problems have gotten better since she forced him to see a special doctor who saw that his pain was all psychological). With the help of her Italian friend, Kelly manages to get transportation to the dock and a boat to the next port in Dubrovnik, but once on the ship Kelly is confronted by Adam, who apologizes for telling Parker to keep her off the ship, which takes her aback. Once in her cabin, she has to attend to dozens of missed calls from her boss, and when she explains to him what happened he informs her that they got someone else on the job to complete her work and her services are no longer required. At all. Blaming Parker now for losing her job, Kelly wonders if anything they’ve shared over the last few days was even real, and it’s going to take a lot to convince her that it was (or maybe just a Margherita pizza will do the trick). Can the romance, jobs and the cruise line be saved, and is there a second romance in the air?
Hallmark Channel
Missing the Boat is another charming ‘Winter Escape’ that does a great job of transporting you to the warmer climate of the Mediterranean. Writers Judith Berg, Sandra Berg and Maclain Nelson have done a nice job of creating believable characters in mostly believable situations, even when the plot depends on one coincidence after another to keep the characters off the ship so they can know each other better. Is it contrived? Sure, but it’s important that it doesn’t feel contrived to the point you’ll want to roll your eyes. You go with the story because the character are charming and the locations are interesting. The production at the various locations is wonderful, though I do still have to question that waterfall. And aside from some shots on the deck of the ship, the interiors are … questionable. Kelly’s cabin is huge and looks like the same cabin seen in Polar Opposites (at least that’s what my memory is telling me). But is there only one dining area on the ship that also doubles as an activities room? We only ever see the characters dining in this one space (and why are there no tablecloths on the tables?) and it’s the same space where Emily and Adam take dance lessons. One thing it does not look like is a gathering space on a cruise ship. Luckily most of the movie is spent at various locations so that distracts from the limited cruise ship scenes.
Helping to engage the viewers are the four participle actors. Kristoffer Polaha is utterly charming as Parker, able to toss out dad jokes and sarcasm naturally as if it’s second nature to him. He plays the back pain situation with authenticity, and at one point we have to question if he is in fact following Adam’s orders to keep Kelly off the ship. He always seems game for whatever the story throws at him, and he has great romantic chemistry with Emilie Ullerup, and great brotherly chemistry with Amy Louise Pemberton. I’ve always though of Polaha as one of Hallmark’s more dramatic leading men, but here he shows he has some excellent comedic skills and timing. He really is a charming performer. Matching him is Emilie Ullerup as Kelly. She has to remain professional without appearing to be ‘on the clock’ so as not to arise any suspicions, especially when she finds out who Parker is. But she makes Kelly very personable, and it’s not hard to believe she and Emily would click so quickly (especially as they can bond over teasing Parker about always being ‘at work’). But she also clicks with Polaha, and even when their situations become tense and he gets cranky, she still manages to remain calm and helps settle him, she shows that Kelly genuinely cares for Parker by booking him the only doctor in town for his back, and the look on her face when she doesn’t go to the airport speaks volumes about her feelings for him. Thankfully, the writers allowed her the opportunity to actually speak with him about what may or may not have happened so that the budding relationship can get back on track. Ullerup and Polaha have terrific chemistry, and they make you want to root for Parker and Kelly to find some common ground to continue their romance.
Hallmark Channel
Amy Louise Pemberton is also very good as Emily. She can dish out the snarky comments with skill, she has a nice bond with Ullerup’s Kelly, and she does a good job at flirting with Trey Warner’s Adam while also managing to keep his somewhat manic personality contained, becoming his conscience when she finds out what he told Adam to do (even if it did backfire just a bit). She also makes Kelly, recently out of a job, somewhat indispensable to Adam, helping him woo the potential buyers, possibly showing that can also be an asset to his company as well as to his personal life (much to Parker’s chagrin, at first). Warner is the over-the-top comic relief of the movie, Adam always seeming to have some crazy plan up his sleeve to get this company sold, but still willing to listen to Emily. He has to tread a fine line without going too far into the absurd and he does a nice job of it. He is almost a bit too grating upon first meeting Adam, but by the end he shows that Adam is actually a good guy.
The movie has a large cast of characters who are encountered at the various locations, with special mention going to Orlando Seale as the twin brothers in two very funny performances, and Laurence Bouvard as Dr. Vulcano, the ‘New Age’ doctor who can ‘feel’ where Parker’s back pain comes from — deep within his soul. She doesn’t do anything but say her lines with some dry humor and give him some intense looks, but the performance is perfect and memorable.
Overall, Missing the Boat is a delightful Mediterranean romp that prefers to spend more time on land than at sea, building a romance between two characters that feels natural thanks to the two actors who bring them and the relationship to live. If you’ve got to be stranded along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, these are the people you’d want to be stuck with.
Missing the Boat has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, is rated TV-G, and is streaming on Hallmark+.
Preview | Missing the Boat
Hallmark Channel
Listen to songs featured in Missing the Boat – Cuore Selvaggion by Pierre Daven-Keller, Yet Another Shuffle by Jack Seymour, Muzak Maker by Bob Bradley, Mille Incendi by Anthony Lazaro, Bambino by Vichenzo Orru and One True Love by Jeff Meegan, David Tobin & Curtis McKonly