Everything Puppies - Hallmark

Was this week’s movie for real?! We have a naive, young entrepreneur who goes up against a bad guy in the big corporate world who really hams it up. And of course there were some cute puppies and dogs that were fun to watch, too. There’s a lot more to unpack with this one so 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. On May 18th we watched Everything Puppies, starring Pascale Lamothe-Kipnes anad Stephen Huszar.

I have never seen Pascale Lamothe-Kipnes before, and that’s because I only know of one other movie she’s done for Hallmark. I intentionally skipped Never Been Chris’d last year because the reviews were so bad! Stephen Huszar, on the other hand, had a small role near the end of Chesapeake Shores. He didn’t make a huge impression on me one way or another in that series, so I looked him up and realized he has made a lot of Christmas movies for Hallmark, including Time for Us to Come Home for Christmas with Lacey Chabert! That was one of the better ones.

So, after showing us lots of cute puppies and dogs playing and running around in the intro, the story opens with Scarlett, played by Pascale Lamothe-Kipnes, working away in her kitchen. It turns out this is her work kitchen. She’s baking something in the oven but they also show us some sketches of other dog-related items with measurements and specs, like this dog house, for example. Oh, and did you notice the age of that stove? That looks like it came right out of the 70s! I kind of like that it’s still going!

At the end of the day we see her pulling into a driveway of a house where there’s a sign in front that reads Picket Fence Puppies. Inside, she greets her dad in the kitchen who’s sitting near a beautiful and pregnant dog, Maggie, who’s resting comfortably off to the side in her dog bed.  When Scarlett reaches down to pet her she points out that she has only a couple more weeks to go. Also in the room is a litter of puppies playing around with some toys that are apparently some of Scarlett’s other creations, like a light-up ball. Clearly, she’s an inventor of dog toys and, as we’re about to find out, dog treats. The puppies love them and Scarlett’s dad tells her she should really try to get these into stores. And that sets up the premise of this movie.

Next we see her entering a really cute boutique and pet cafe called Chew-That. Her good friend Gina, played by Kathryn Davis, is the owner, and Scarlett’s all excited to tell her about these new treats. Now based on Gina’s reaction it would appear she has tried to sell her other products before and that hasn’t gone well. I will give kudos to Scarlett for her persistence, though. 

Something that surprised me is that Gina owns her own store and she has still tried to help Scarlett pitch her products to her competitors. That’s a good friend right there. And she does it again here, too, with the new dog treats.

Although something else I started to notice was that Scarlett, in my opinion, tends to make hasty decisions. For example, she’s made only one batch of this new treat and tested it on one litter of puppies and one dog. And just like that she’s ready to go all out and try to market them to all the big companies. Have you ever seen Shark Tank?  Very rarely does that ever work.  I’m just saying that I wouldn’t want to market something like this without some more thorough testing, like in Gina’s shop, for a while. We know Gina will carry it! And I just don’t like unexpected surprises. Like later on, for example, when they take Maggie to the vet because she doesn’t appear to be feeling well my first thought was, “Oh no, is she having a bad reaction to the dog treats?” It turns out, no, she wasn’t, but that’s just me.

Anyway, that’s not how Scarlett operates. She hasn’t even thought of a name or a logo for these, yet. And she’s going all out on that one batch! 

Well, clearly, some time does pass because in the next scene Gina unveils the new packaging and brand name to us, the viewer, as well as to Scarlett.  I’m surprised she went ahead with ordering the packaging without Scarlett even knowing what the name was going to be. But I guess they needed to show Scarlett’s surprise and amazement right along with us here. 

Okay, they spend one full day making pitches to 6 different pet supply and grocery stores and they all turn her down. Apparently the big exclusive pet food company that they sell is called Pup Chuck. They’re the only game in town and boy, if that’s not a disgusting sounding name…

The next day they make one more pitch to a newer chain of stores called Paws and Wellness that’s looking to expand nationwide. Now this next scene almost made me turn it off. Scarlett made a big, loud scene knocking some birdseed over onto the floor. I’ve said it before but I’m just over Hallmark putting scenes like this in so many of their movies now. I mean it’s so obvious she intentionally swung her purse up and around to slam it right into that birdseed. But I stuck with it anyway.

Here she meets Alex, played by Stephen Huszar. They go back to his office to discuss the product and it was here where I was surprised by her untested claims and out-right lie to his direct question about extensive testing. I was even more surprised when she turned around and contradicted herself in the next sentence. But, luckily for her, he agrees to take some home and test them out with his own dog, Mosie.

Next we’re at the Pup Chuck corporate office where we meet the evil corporate bad-guy, Paul, played by Darrin Baker. I thought he did a wonderful job with this character. All he cares about is profit. Profit, profit, profit! He really hammed it up with this one and I actually found it humorous.

Come to think of it, Scarlett’s character was hammed up just as much, but in the completely opposite direction. Like when she said she was giving her dog a spa treatment while she was brushing her. That’s when she got the call from Alex wanting to order 100 boxes. Great! As she and Gina are hurrying to make them, of course they start dreaming of growing and expanding very quickly. Nothing wrong with dreaming big.

And like every Hallmark best friend, Gina has to talk about Scarlett’s bad history with love, her poor judgment in men, and tell her how much chemistry she felt between Scarlett and Alex. That was a little forced for me, but expected nonetheless.

This next scene, I think, was meant to be a chance for Scarlett and Alex to bond a little bit. And I’m not entirely sure why, but I found it a bit awkward. Maybe it was Scarlett’s bragging, or the dialog, or the way they bounced back and forth between talking business and flirting. I don’t know, it just didn’t feel natural. I mean Alex came right out and told her he was interested in her, but she seemed more giddy over the fact that he’s helping her grow her business. She never once showed an interest in wanting to get to know him in this scene. But let’s continue.

After coffee they went to a rock-climbing gym where I think they bonded a little bit more and Alex tells Scarlett she can trust him. They also talk about work-life balance. Something that comes up a few times.

Now after the rock-climbing we’re introduced to yet another character, Michelle. She’s the regional manager of Paws and Wellness. Alex showed up to meet with her to try to convince her to listen to Scarlett’s pitch for the dog treats. That’s when we find out they used to date and Michelle hasn’t given up hope on their relationship. Now, the first time I heard this awful dialogue my initial instinct was, who says these things?!  But stick with me here because I was very close to making my own discovery.

Speaking of “who says these things,” Scarlett and Alex ran into each other at a dog park, and Scarlett made it a point to tell him, unsolicited by the way, that not only did she design this dog park, she has all these other amazing accomplishments and all these other plans for which she went on and on about. Her character is just too self-absorbed for my liking. And again what’s with this dialog?!  

Ah! But that’s when I figured out that this movie cannot possibly take itself seriously, and once I stopped trying to take it seriously, I gained a whole new perspective. I mean come on, confidence is one thing, but this was so over the top. It has to be a spoof! A spoof of typical Hallmark rom-coms, complete with cute puppies and all! Maybe it’s not over the top like Haul Out the Holly with Lacey Chabert. That movie was fun because it was obvious they had a blast making fun of Hallmark Christmas movies. And while the humor in Everything Puppies was a little more subtle than that, they’re not your face about it, it’s still definitely a spoof. At least that’s how I see it through my glasses! And that’s how I finally enjoyed it a little bit. 

Now back to Scarlett and Alex. They went on a date with their dogs to a classic movie screening in the park. It was actually pretty cute until…I wanted to call her out when she picked up her phone in the middle of her conversation with Alex. This, after Gina had specifically told her how romantic her first date with her husband had been when he didn’t look at his phone even once during their date. AND, they even showed us how Alex intentionally ignored a call for the very same reason when they had met for coffee earlier. I wanted to yell at her, “Show him the same respect, please!!!!”  And somehow Alex spun it into a lesson on work-life balance, but clearly she is not interested in him AT ALL.

Which is a little contradictory in the next scene when she and Gina are meeting with Michelle. They’re pitching their product to her and at the end Gina says “Oh, we” love Alex and Scarlett follows up with, "Yes, I love Alex" and it becomes a really awkward situation when they leave.

But before that happens, Michelle said she would agree to place the dog treats in a third of their stores with a possibility of expanding them to more if they do well. There was no mention of a contract at this point but, after this meeting Scarlett orders a bunch of new equipment and even hires additional staff to keep up with this new demand. And then guess what…

I’m actually not going to spend much more time talking about Scarlett and Alex’s romance because she was all over the map giving him so many mixed signals. Like when he gave her a chef’s hat and she asked “how do I look?” and he said “you look great” and he was then compelled to correct himself and instead say “you look official.” Only then did she thank him. That was awkward. And in the very same scene she asked him out to dinner to celebrate herself, I mean her business, and she got all bent out of shape when he couldn’t go because he was having dinner with Michelle. Watching Scarlett was exhausting!  

And poor Alex, he’s surrounded by women who only want to talk about themselves and what they love and how great they are. Not one of them actually seems to care about Alex and who he is or what he likes. I felt kind of sorry for him.

Now at this point we were about half-way through the movie and this is where Paul’s character really comes into play. When he finds out that his Pup Chuck brand is losing a bit of shelf space in the stores he does NOT take it well. And again, it’s actually quite funny when you don’t take them seriously. Paul, insists, "I want what we have now!" And he threatens to sick his corporate attorneys on Pups Palate and even get the FDA involved in a lengthy, expensive investigation, so Michelle caves and pulls Scarlett’s dog treats off the shelves. 

When Michelle breaks the news to Alex this is where we find out there was a stipulation in the agreement that allowed her to cancel the contract within 72 hours. So remember when I said Scarlett was naive? She jumped the gun and got herself into a financial mess.

So after Michelle called Scarlett directly to break the news to her, what does Scarlett do? She storms into Alex’s store and proceeds to blame Alex! I mean this is so bad it’s hilarious!

And of course no matter how bad things get in a Hallmark movie, you can always make it better with cute puppies! I can’t make this stuff up!

So it gets even worse when Scarlett takes some of Gina’s BAD advice and they park a table in front of the Paws and Wellness store to sell her dog treats to their customers before they can go into the store. Do you think they got permission to be there? No, of course not. She also didn’t think about the awful position she just put Alex in because he knew that if he allowed this to continue he could lose his job. So while I don’t blame him one bit for notifying Michelle about this little setup, Scarlett sure did!

He said he was recording a little taste test that Scarlett did to show Michelle why he thought they should put her dog treats back on the shelves. You know I actually liked this taste test scene. It was really cute! I just think she needed to do all this BEFORE she tried to market them to all these stores. And of course Scarlett doesn’t believe anything Alex has to say anymore because he’s the one who sent the video to Michelle, who in turn made him send it to the board. I just can’t figure out why Paul, the evil bad guy from Pup Chuck, was notified as well.

So Paul and Michelle show up and not only do they make her leave the premises but they got her fined for pulling this little stunt. A little extreme for sure, but of course this is all Alex’s fault again! Nope, I still can’t make this stuff up!

I mean come on! Back when I was selling my own candles do you think Yankee Candle or Bath and Body Works would have let me show up, unannounced, and park a table in front of their stores to steal their customers and sell them my candles instead? 

Next we see Scarlett brushing off Alex when he came to talk to her, saying, "I wish you would have told me you were coming.” You mean like you told Alex you were planning to show up in front of his store and get him in trouble with corporate?! 

Well after their big fight, Alex still kept coming back for more. And I won’t tell you how, but the two of them working together helped save her business, they got their glorious moment to tell Paul to basically shove it, and they all lived happily ever after. 

Well, to me Everything Puppies was a cute filler movie. There was nothing magical about it. You know it wasn’t really even a love story. Their romance was way at the bottom of the list of priorities in this one. None of these characters were really to be taken seriously, and once I came to that realization, I found there to be an element of fun in it. Fun of making fun of it! But hey, that’s what a spoof is.

And if I’m wrong and this was actually made to be a serious Hallmark romcom, well then I just had a whole lot of fun making fun of how bad it was. Either way, I half-way enjoyed it! 

So I think I’ll go right down the middle and give this 2½ out of 5. It would have only been a 1 if it weren’t for the occasional cute puppy scenes and the level of comedy I found once I stopped taking it seriously.

So how about you?  What did you think of Everything Puppies?  While the IMDB ratings are not good, they’re a little better than they have been for a few weeks now. Just not by much.

Well, that was more fun than I thought it would be! Coming up next week is a sequel to Big Sky River called The Bridal Path, starring When Calls the Heart’s Kavan Smith. And then it will be June! Can you believe that? June starts off a new theme they’re calling Passport to Love, not to be confused with the movie of the same name that Great American Family put out back in February. The first premiere to launch in June is called For Love & Honey, and it stars one of my favorites, Andrew Walker.

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:  Everything Puppies - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: Everything Puppies