Natalie Hall is sweet and pretty, and I liked her in the horribly titled, but surprisingly entertaining Hallmark food truck movie, You're Bacon Me Crazy. But I absolutely hated the last movie she was in (Road Trip Romance) and the script for this movie did her no favors.
Hallmark once did a pretty good (and more realistic) movie about a character with a pet, living in a "no pet" rental (Nine Lives of Christmas). But doubling down with TWO such characters, each with noisy pets, in a luxury high rise "no pets" apartment building, that has a lobby security desk, with security cameras, and an ever present rules loving building manager, just made no sense.
First, it's not like Angie tried to move in with her pet. As the movie begins, a noisy macaw literally flies into her unit just as she's moving in and minutes before the building manager drops by. So why not simply tell that to the building manager (who was somehow able to evict the prior tenant for "feeding the pigeons")? Angie had zero connection to the bird at that point and yet inexplicably lied and went into full stealth and deceit mode for a pet that wasn't even hers. Why?
Second, Ted has a big dog that needs to walk and pee and poop every day. And likely barks if left behind (and even when Ted is there). Which means that dog is coming and going multiple times a day. Past the "security" guard, past the cameras, past other tenants, and past the "condo cop". What was he thinking? Answer: his part was written by a lazy writer unconcerned with logic and reality.
Third, given how hard it was to find a decent rental, why would Angie or Ted jeopardize their hard to find rental units by repeatedly lying to the building manager and blatantly violating the rules?
Otherwise (if you overlook the fundamentally flawed main premise of the movie, which colors every aspect of the story) the romance between the leads was believable, pleasant and would have worked in a different movie.
Random observations:
Having Hall's character do an elaborate jumping and dancing routine out on the deck, in a stunningly ineffective attempt to get the bird to leave its cage, was just ridiculous.
The luxury apartment is at least 15 stories tall and seems big. If daddy owns it, and his daughter is the building manager, why isn't she living there?
Who moves in and out of a rental unit one plant at a time?
If you're trying to pretend you don't have a pet, why are you carrying a LARGE uncovered pet cage?
Tenants can't be immediately evicted. Even if they break the rules. There's a process. Sometimes it takes months.
Arguably, a truly "new" no pets policy would only affect future tenants, unless the existing leases already had that prohibition or purported to make tenants subject to future policy changes.
The casting director on that TV commercial needs to be fired.
Where did wannabe pilot Ted get that pilot's uniform?
Hallmark writers, like many of their characters, seem to have a childlike sense of financial realities.
Sometimes, a workplace is so toxic you have to quit even if you don't have a new job lined up; other times, quitting is just stupid unless you're a trust fund baby.
Good luck paying rent anywhere, let alone for a luxury apartment, without a job.
Good luck turning a first script into spendable cash right after (almost) finishing it.
And the "lines" that we heard from her script sounded more like descriptive text from a novel.
Gladys Taber once said "BEING a good neighbor is an art which makes life richer." But Louis says "a good neighbor is an art which makes life richer." The missing verb is the key to the original quote. The neighbor isn't the "art" , it's the act of "BEING a good neighbor" that's an "art"
Louis seems like a nice guy. But he's REALLY bad at his job and is begging to get fired (has he met his boss?)
