Shifting Gears - Hallmark

After a few weeks of reruns, Hallmark finally released another new movie this year called “Shifting Gears.” As I was watching it I was reminded of two other movies that I just love.  I'll share which ones and you can decide if you see the same things, too. As always I have a lot to say about 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 not only watching Hallmark movies but chatting about them, too. This week we watched Shifting Gears, which premiered on Hallmark Channel on March 23rd and stars Katherine Barrell and Tyler Hynes. I don’t know about you but I was excited to see Hallmark finally releasing brand new movies again on Saturday nights after a few weeks of "reruns" so to speak.

Tyler Hynes is a popular Hallmark favorite. He’s been in a lot of their Christmas movies, including Three Wise Men and a Baby - that was a fun one, Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas and On the 12th Date of Christmas. That’s one I haven’t seen, yet, but it’s on my list.  

Katherine Barrell is not as widely known, although I recognized her as a replacement character in the last two seasons of Good Witch. Sadly, I thought that series was already sliding a bit when they brought her on and personally, I wasn't impressed with her character. It looks like she was also in one of the Godwink Christmas movies, Miracle of Love, but the reviews on that are not great. So pairing her with Tyler Hynes might be a bold move on Hallmark's part but let’s take a look. 

The movie opens with a montage of scenes of Jessica, played by Katherine Barrell, restoring an old car. Of course we don’t see who’s doing all the work until they show us this over-dramatic helmet removal which will undoubtedly become a GIF pretty soon, if it isn’t already!

Later, Jess is still in the garage, looking at her phone commenting on pictures of what might be men on a dating app, but no, she’s oohing and aahing over photos of classic cars. And just like pretty much every Hallmark movie ever made her best friend, Teri, played by Kristin Booth, is trying to convince her to get back out and find romance again.

Next we see Luke, played by Tyler Hynes, pulling over on his motorcycle on the side of the road, taking off his own helmet and wearing a crisp white dress shirt, to help a stranded motorist. Luke comments that, despite the white shirt, he dabbles a bit in auto repairs and only dresses like this because he has to.  But I want to point out that when he drove off after splicing that radiator hose, his shirt was spotless. I’m just saying because look at him in the next scene.

He’s walking in the door of what looks like the corporate office of Tune Up Wiz, and his shirt is still spotless. Until…just before he walks into a meeting he looks at his shirt and NOW it’s a greasy mess. Oh well, I’ll go along with it and pretend it was messy the whole time. It turns out he’s the VP of corporate strategy of his family’s business, run by his father, and by helping that motorist he missed the strategy meeting and his dad is not happy with him. His dad is grooming him to run the business with him and does not want him spending so much time under a hood anymore.

On their way out of the meeting they stop to look at a Strategic Acquisition map on the wall where Luke sees Barro’s Auto is one of the businesses that Tune Up Wiz is looking into acquiring. In Luke’s conversation with his dad he hints at the fact that there’s some history between them and Barro’s and he’s clearly not comfortable seeing them on that map.

Speaking of Barro’s Auto, the next scene with Jess shows us a bit more about her character. She’s preparing for a class she’s teaching to women about basic auto repairs. Clearly, Jess knows a lot about cars, both repairing and restoring them, and she’s quite passionate about them. But she suffers from a horrible case of stage fright. She looks like a deer caught in the headlights as soon as she has to speak in front of anyone. 

So, let me just speak on the side here for a moment. When I saw this I wasn’t sure I was going to like her character. On the one hand, she seriously felt a need to prove herself in the automotive industry. Which, by now, her work should have spoken for itself. But she was so terrified in front of this class, and later on in the movie, which we’ll get to in a bit, that I thought maybe it was just a bit overdone. And I’m guessing that was the director’s choice. Not how I would have made this movie. But maybe that’s something that resonated with you?  But stick with me here, it does get better.

Her father pulls up with an old car that needs restoration and her face lights up at the possibilities. While she’s admiring the car, her father gets a disturbing call. He later tells Jess that the landlord wants the full-year’s rent up front, which they don’t have, and he’s been struggling to even get a loan. It turns out they haven’t much time to come up with the payment before they’ll be forced to close the business.

Luke, on the other hand, is lamenting in a bar with his best friend, Pete, about how unhappy he is working behind a desk. He doesn’t know how to say, “No” to his dad, but he would much rather be getting his hands dirty in the garage.  His father is obviously more interested in having him run the business-side and help the company to keep growing. His plan to do so is by acquiring other companies, which is not necessarily atypical in the business world. 

Keep in mind we were only 9 minutes into the movie so far and they’ve done a good job introducing the characters to us. Jess and Luke haven’t even run into each other, yet.  

Actually, on another side note, take a look at this image of Luke talking to Pete. This movie has its moments that reminded me of You’ve Got Mail, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Not exactly, but certainly there were some similarities.  I’ll point out some others as the story progresses. 

They finally do run into each other when Jess walks into the bar with Teri just as Luke is about to leave, but he drops his keys and Jess finds them.  The exchange between them was also reminiscent of You’ve Got mail in the sense that she’s a little bitter toward him and points out the fancy car that he drives and that it’s unusual that he should be over on “her” side of town. Incidentally, I know the Jane Austen theme was last month, but You’ve Got Mail is a modern take on Pride and Prejudice. Meg Ryan’s character even references the fact that that’s her favorite book. And yes, this movie has its moments like this where Jess could be Elizabeth and Luke, Mr. Darcy.  

It’s also here in the bar where Jess tells Teri their backstory. Back when she and Luke were in college Luke’s grandfather wanted both of their dads to be partners and take over Tune Up Wiz. But Luke’s dad refused and Jess’s dad was blind-sided by that news and, apparently, Luke knew of his dad’s plans to drop out of the partnership deal and he didn’t say anything to Jess. She felt betrayed by Luke and broke things off with him. And clearly, she had harbored resentment toward him ever since.

So, now that we know all the characters and their back-story, here’s where the premise of this movie kicks off. The next day, Jess is back in the garage working on a car when a man walks in by the name of Wayne Larouche. Apparently he’s a famous car guy who used to have his own TV show. Jess is a bit star-struck by him since he walked into her little auto repair shop. He showed up with a camera crew to ask her to be a contestant on a new competition show he’s working on called American High Gear. Apparently she had once restored a car for a friend of his and he was thoroughly impressed by her work. Not to mention he loves the fact that she’s a woman and that would draw even more interest in the show. And the top prize is $50,000.00.

At first she declines because of her fear of being on camera. But that later changes when she finds out about that phone call her dad had earlier about the landlord raising the rent demanding full payment for the year up front. So far in the movie when she’s first approached about the competition show she doesn’t know about the rent, yet.

She also doesn’t know that Luke will end up being a contestant himself. Did I mention Jess has a lot of pent up anger toward him? Yeah, every time she runs into him he tries being cordial and friendly but she wants nothing to do with him at all. 

So, she decides to do the competition after all, and on the first day that she reports to the show that’s when she finds out that Luke is going to be in the competition, too. And then, when Wayne Larouch sees how she reacts to that news he puts two-and-two together and realizes they used to date. And with that news he gets very excited and calls it Television Gold! Jess and Luke continue to banter in front of the other contestants and this was one of my favorite lines of the movie, “Is this show about car restoration or couple’s therapy?!”

At the beginning of the competition she has another horrible moment of stage fright, which she needs to overcome to be able to continue on with the show. And gradually over the course of the next hour she does warm up to Luke. I’m not going to give away the ending, but there was a moment when I had no idea how they were going to have their happy ending. 

As a matter of fact, when I was first watching the premiere on Saturday night I had fun again live-tweeting about it and interacting with Hallmark Channel. I commented on the fact that I didn’t know how they would have their happy ending, and I loved Hallmark’s reply, “Can this relationship be restored?” Aha, see what they did there?! As you can see I have a lot of fun with this. As a matter of fact, if you’re ever watching these movies when they premiere on Saturday nights I would welcome you to join the watch party with me on Twitter.

By the time we got near the ending I was starting to think that this movie also reminded me a bit of Cranberry Christmas. That’s another one of my favorites. And I was really hoping that, like Cranberry Christmas, they would find their way back to each other and also be able to do what they loved together, but at the same time each doing what they especially love doing that's uniquely their own. I hope that makes sense!  I guess what I'm trying to say is they each have their own niche and they should compliment each other instead of fighting.  And yes, they do have their happy ending. Because hey, it’s Hallmark! That's what I love about Hallmark movies.

So, I found myself enjoying this movie more the second time through, especially once I had time to think about the You’ve Got Mail connections.  The only thing I didn’t care for was Jess’s stage fright and her serious insecurity complex.  That bothered me a bit and I’m not sure if I can fully explain why. There were too many scenes themed around giving Jess pep talks when one would have been enough. Especially from Luke. And I kept thinking about and comparing her to Meg Ryan bantering with Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail and I realized I would have enjoyed Jess and Luke bantering a little more if she didn’t have that scared look in her eyes quite so much. And also Meg Ryan’s character, like Jess, missed her mom, but she didn’t break down about it as though she didn’t know how to function without her. I could have done without that scene in this one as well.

But having said all that, I still really like this movie.  The competition was fun, the overall story was very good, and I loved the ending. The ending of this was every bit as good as the ending in Cranberry Christmas.  As a matter of fact, I believe Switching Gears was a great blend of You’ve Got Mail vs. Cranberry Christmas.  So I would certainly watch it again and, with that, I’ll give it an overall rating of 4 out 5.

So what did you think?  Sometimes I peek at the reviews online before I finish my own, but not this week.  I’m not going to look at them until I’m finished here.

And on that note, I think that wraps up my review of Shifting Gears.  I’m excited that the next several weeks on the schedule we’ll continue with all new Hallmark movies. Let’s see, coming up next week is a brand new Easter movie called An Easter Bloom. And the week after that is Blind Date Book Club with Erin Krakow from When Calls the Heart, and Robert Buckley from Chesapeake Shores. You know I’ll be watching them live, and live-posting on Twitter at the same time. I’m having a lot of fun with that so please join me and we’ll have sort-of a movie-watching party together! 

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:  Shifting Gears - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: Shifting Gears