An Easter Bloom - Hallmark

So I messed up over Easter weekend. We host a big Easter Brunch at our house every year and Saturday is a super busy day cooking and cleaning and preparing for the next day. I finished around 6:30 that evening, sat down and looked at the clock, and realized I had missed the start of the Hallmark premiere of An Easter Bloom by an hour and a half! I completely lost track of time and missed watching and Tweeting about it live. That kind of messed up my whole week’s rhythm, but I’m better late than never. So now, let’s dive right in and talk about it! 

Hi, I’m Stephanie and welcome to the Magical Movie Club where, like you, I love to watch and chat about Hallmark movies. Over Easter weekend we watched a special movie sponsored by Dayspring called An Easter Bloom, which premiered on Hallmark Channel on March 30th and stars Aimeé Teegarden and Benjamin Hollingsworth. 

Before this movie I knew who Aimee Teegarden was, but I had only sort of seen her in one other movie before. That was My Christmas Family Tree. I must confess when I saw that one last year I only had it playing in the background while I was putting up some Christmas decorations, so I wasn’t watching it very closely. Which means I don’t have much to say about it other than I remember I enjoyed as much of it as I saw. 

And although I haven’t seen Benjamin Hollingsworth yet, I was looking up some of the Hallmark movies he’s done before and he’s made some that have amazing reviews, like A Godwink Christmas: Meant for Love. I know I saw one of the Godwink movies a while ago, I just can’t remember it very well.  It wasn’t this one, though.  The reviews on this one are amazing enough that I’m going to have to watch it this season. 

So, let’s talk about An Easter Bloom!  The movie opens with a scene showing us a cheerful country farmhouse surrounded by rows and rows of colorful flowers in bloom. It’s here where a young girl is celebrating her birthday and her parents give her a little starter garden bed that’s hers to grow whatever she would like. Her family owns the Raymond flower farm where people can come pick their own flowers.

We then fast forward to 15 years later. The young girl, Amanda, is an adult now, played by Aimeé Teegarden. She lives in the house with her mother, but her father has passed and he’s been gone now for over a year. She’s looking out the window at the farmland where not a single flower has bloomed, yet.

A peek at a calendar in the kitchen shows that it’s March and they were expecting the last frost to be over by now. They’re understandably worried that none of the flowers will bloom in time for Easter.  I did notice that the calendar was accurate for 2024, which is this year when the movie was released, and Easter did come in March, which is a little early this year. So I wonder if that’s been a real challenge for flower growers.

To make ends meet until the flowers bloom her mother has been baking cookies, and apparently banana bread, too, to sell after Sunday’s church service. We also learn later on that she works at an accounting firm and Amanda works in a local coffee shop. 

On a side note, the movie was organized in such a way that I was confused a lot about some of the details. After watching it several times now I can say they did eventually answer most of my questions, but the details were given to us piecemeal. I didn’t like that.

Anyway, the situation with the farm is apparently very grim. They’ve fallen considerably behind on the mortgage and they’ve been unable to secure any loans to tide them over.  When I first watched this scene I was wondering if the flowers are only, say a few weeks or even a month late in blooming, what happened during the rest of this past year that they fell so far behind financially? This is one of those details where they only gave us part of the story in the beginning.  We will find out later that they actually started falling behind a couple of years ago, so I have to assume then that this was happening while her father was still alive.

In the next scene we’re at the coffee shop where Amanda’s working and we meet several characters from town including Derrick, played by Benjamin Hollingsworth. He’s ordering a latte with very specific instructions I might add. And Amanda is perfectly pleasant and happy to make it for him. Derrick flirts with her a little bit and then he leaves to go about his day. 

One more side note, I’ve seen a couple of other comments about this, too, and I have to agree with them. The accent was a bit distracting. Some accents are charming and enjoyable. But this one just didn’t work for me. I’m not going to dwell on this, either, but if I had made this movie I would have scrapped it. 

Back to the coffee shop, we also meet Gladys, who comments on how much she misses the floral dedications that Amanda’s family farm used to make for the church. 

And we meet Constance. She is not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. And for now I’m just going to leave it there.

A little later Amanda is back on the farm and she’s frustrated because she still can’t break the ice in the ground even in her little garden that’s now looking pretty tired and worn out now from the passage of time. When suddenly she hears a noise and looks up to see a car has skidded off the icy road onto their property. When she goes to check on the driver she meets Lori who is new in town. Amanda invites her inside to warm up and the two of them get to know each other a little bit over a cup of hot cocoa.

It turns out Lori is now retired, but she was a florist for over 40 years. She also says she used to compete in an annual floral arranging competition and came in 2nd place last year, her highest finish ever. This is another situation where I wish they hadn’t only given us part of the story. You see I assumed since Lori was new in town that she competed in the previous town where she lived. Anyway, just before Lori leaves, she asks Amanda what she can do to repay her for her hospitality. She brought up the Easter Floral Arranging Competition that’s coming up in 6 weeks and mentioned the grand prize is $20,000.00. Amanda’s concern is that she's a farmer, not a florist, and says that that’s why they’re a pick your own flower farm.

Now, stopping here for a moment, I have two questions so far. One is going back to Gladys in the coffee shop. Remember how she said she misses seeing the dedication arrangements from their farm in the church lobby? Amanda said that was really her dad’s thing. If that’s so, then the farm was more than just about growing and having customers pick their own flowers. How is it then that she never learned anything about floral arranging from her dad? Maybe I’m being too picky, but it just seems to me when you’re that close to your parents you pick up on little things like that from just spending time with them.

Also, there’s the comment about the competition being in 6 weeks. When they showed us that calendar, we saw that the frost was supposed to be over by March 1st and the premise of this whole movie is that it’s past that date and it’s still too cold for the flowers to bloom. And it even shows that Easter is March 31st this year. So if it’s already well into March, why would an Easter Floral competition be 6 weeks away? Seriously, is anyone going to care about an Easter competition a month AFTER Easter? I mean I’m concerned enough as it is about this video getting any views because it won’t go up until close to a week after the holiday.

Sometimes I feel like maybe a story was written in a hurry when some of the details either don’t add up or they gloss over some really important points that need further exploration. I’ve only pointed out a couple in this movie so far and there are others. Let’s continue.

Lori offers to teach Amanda everything she needs to know to be able to compete this year and says, “Who knows, we may even dethrone Queen Constance.” She goes on to tell her that Constance has won this competition 10 years in a row.

So now the fact that she said Constance has won 10 years in a row would imply that Lori has been coming back to compete against her in this town. Which brings up another question.  If the Raymond farm is the Number One flower farm in Virginia, as the plaque on the wall would indicate, how is it that Amanda never once met Constance or Lori, nor had she ever heard of them or this competition prior to this morning?  

I find it hard to believe that anyone running a farm this successfully over the years doesn’t seem to know anyone in the industry, especially local florists. Not to mention one who had been winning this competition year after year!  Okay, I know Amanda didn’t actually run it but it’s been her family business her entire life. At this point I just had to assume that Amanda had been away for a long time and knew absolutely nothing about the farm.

But see, it’s details like these that just made me feel like this story was rushed and not well thought out.

Well, at first Amanda turns down Lori’s offer. But she changes her mind after her mom’s application for a loan was denied by the bank. Her mom did mention they’d had slow sales for the last couple of years. That helped answer one of my questions from earlier about the state of the farm.

So the competition now becomes the premise of the movie. Amanda meets with Lori, who seems to have an exquisite flower studio already in her new house. And even though Lori had suggested they could practice with silk flowers, I noticed on that first day that Amanda was trimming real flowers and putting them in water. I’m going to assume these flowers were all grown and shipped from other parts of the country? Or maybe someone else has a greenhouse? I have no idea if that’s possible. I just thought it would have been nice if they had mentioned something about where all these flowers came from. 

Now, having said all that, I really did enjoy the journey that Lori took her on to learn the 5 principles of floral design, which are harmony, contrast, purpose, balance, and love. Although she doesn’t actually tell her about love - she leaves that one for Amanda to figure out on her own. 

They had a nice first day together learning about harmony, even after a rough start at the church. But it was here where Amanda met Derrick again and she learned that he was Lori’s son and the new pastor at the church.

Unfortunately, the afternoon back at home was a little rough when her mother showed her a foreclosure notice on the house. That’s when Amanda said she wished she had moved back home when her dad asked her, so that maybe she would have learned more about the business.  But that’s as far as that conversation went. I’d still like to know where did Amanda move to, what was she doing, and when, in fact did she come back? I replayed several scenes over and over looking for answers but never found any. That was very frustrating.

Also a little confusing was a conversation she had the next day back at the coffee shop. Gladys was commenting about the new floral arrangements on the tables. Amanda mentioned she was practicing for the competition and using silk flowers. So, we saw her using real flowers earlier and now she’s using silk? Now, the good news about this conversation is Gladys offered to help pay for the flowers for her to be able to practice with. But wouldn’t that mean that Lori had already just spent a bunch of money on silk flowers? I don’t know, maybe Lori already had a bunch of silk flowers on hand. They really didn’t say one way or another.

As for Gladys offering to pay for the flowers, I almost wonder if wasn’t just rooting for Amanda to be able to save the farm. Do you suppose she’s also tired of Constance winning year after year? I mean, Constance didn’t appear to be nice to anybody! And did you hear the clapping, or lack thereof, after she won the garden basket for the Easter raffle? How sad was that?!

As a matter of fact, the rest of the movie touches on this and some other relationships. For instance, apparently, Lori and Constance used to be best friends and had a falling out years ago.  We also find out that Derrick, who loves being adventurous and everything about being outdoors, has a deep dark secret that’s been haunting him for years, too. And it’s true, with this movie being sponsored by Dayspring, they don’t shy away from discussing God and prayer, and faith which, personally, I appreciated very much. Especially at Easter time.

I like how they showed that everyone’s relationship with God was different. But that having faith in God, as challenging and difficult as that can be sometimes, eventually helped everyone to heal by the end. And I don’t know that we hear that often enough today.

A little later I was happy to see some fun Easter celebrations as well. The movie needed that at this point. And for fun they had an egg race at the church. Lori even made this into a lesson for Amanda’s floral design.

Now fast-forwarding to the end. I don’t necessarily want to give everything away, but I feel I have to talk about it this time. I think the overall story was wonderful where Lori’s lessons for Amanda were concerned. They were creative and fun and sometimes had nothing at all to do with flowers, kind of like in Karate Kid - you know, “wax on, wax off!”  And as I mentioned already, I also liked how they introduced God and faith and prayer in this movie. But there were still some parts that fell short for me, and the ending was one of them. 

No, I didn’t expect someone with only 6 weeks’ worth of lessons to show up and beat a 10x winner in this competition. So that was okay.  But I didn’t like that Amanda and her mother had to accept, basically, a charity donation to save the farm. And I really wrestled with this because I think the message they were trying to convey was how much Constance changed. But for some reason it still felt like a let-down to me.

And yes, Amanda did ultimately come up with a new business plan to keep the farm going from that point on, but that was random and seemingly came out of nowhere. Where did that idea for a one-stop wedding venue come from? I didn’t feel like there was any logical transition here which means it felt forced to me. The only hint at this idea was from a brief look at a magazine framed on the wall earlier. I wish they had incorporated the idea of wedding planning into other aspects of the movie so that this would have felt like a more natural transition. But they never gave us any idea that she was thinking about anything other than just winning this competition. 

As for the love story with Amanda and Derrick, it was sweet, I felt some chemistry between them. But I can’t say that I felt any strong emotions in this one like I sometimes do in the really good ones. 

So, having said all this, what do I really think of this movie? I think overall I liked it, I didn’t love it. So the best rating I can give this is a 3 out of 5.

How about you?  What did you think of An Easter Bloom?  I couldn’t help but peek at some other reviews online and I’ve seen some varying reactions so far. Some similar to mine, some vastly different opinions. Feel free to share yours in the comments below.

Well, I think that wraps up my review of An Easter Bloom.  I am sorry this came out a little late. Coming up next is Blind Date Book Club. Somehow I just have a feeling that one will be really good. After that will be a recap and review of Legend of the Lost Locket, which is another one with stars from When Calls The Heart. I’m excited about the next couple of weeks!

 As always, thank you so much for being here and being a part of the Magical Movie Club. We'll be back next week to chat more about our favorite magical movies!  

Hallmark Channel's Original Preview:  An Easter Bloom - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: An Easter Bloom