Claire Coffee plays Holly Maddux, your typical, every day, lonely,
single, hot, blonde, workaholic Ad Executive living in the city. She may not realize how attractive she really
is because everyone at her Ad Agency is equally as stunning to include her best
friend Deena, played by Gabrielle Dennis and her assistant Meg, played by Annie
Quinn. And the men aren’t too shabby
either as staff photographer Milo, played by Jeff Ward will confirm. Claire and Milo are both assigned to a big
new client who needs a rush campaign by Christmas (which is fast
approaching). As the boss states, they
are two of his best employees and both are complete losers with no families or
social lives to interfere with them working near the holiday (although Milo does
meekly offer up that he has a dog).
So these two single, lonely, attractive coworkers are paired
up on the project and we can only fathom to guess where this might lead. Holly is the typical advertising executive
who believes in selling fantasy while Milo believes that fantasy is painfully
unattainable and wants to sell a more flawed campaign to the masses. Deena tells Holly to come to a club that
evening where she and her model boyfriend Marcos (Aletza Lopez) will be along
with all of the other beautiful people.
Holly invites Milo to go as her plus one but he declines since it’s not
really his scene. Milo is more of the
Seattle grunge era dressing, anguished artist, simplistic type of guy (with a dog). Claire arrives at the club where she meets
Deena and then watches Deena’s philandering boyfriend Marcos flirt with other
girls behind Deena’s back (I take that back because Deena actually knows about and
allows it???).
Feeling along and out of place at the club who should show
up but . . . MILO! Dressed as if he
stopped off on his way to Starbucks after a Pearl Jam concert. This club is the hottest in town but either
there is no dress code or the bouncers have a wide latitude on enforcement. Additionally, he didn’t arrive with Claire but
was allowed in anyways. She tells him to
take a selfie to prove he was at the super exclusive Ouvre nightclub but Milo,
the professional photographer, can’t accomplish this and ends up with a picture
of their hands holding as his phone falls to the floor. Milo and Claire spend the rest of the night
together and he walks her home. The next
day he calls her as she is coming to work because of a great new idea he has she
promptly says no (though she hasn’t heard it yet) and he says he’ll wait and
tell her when he arrives. She then promptly
slips and falls on the concrete sidewalk in front of a mannequin display of a
department store.
When she comes to, she is immediately greeted by Bo, played
by Captain Awesome himself (for those of you who watched the TV series Chuck)
Ryan McPartlin. Claire immediately falls
deep into Bo’s dreamy eyes and blindingly white smile. They flirt and she returns to work where she
is all giggling and gushing over Bo to Deena like a smitten schoolgirl. She gets a call from Bo and he immediately
asks her out on date. One thing I haven’t
mentioned so far is that the pair of mannequins in front of where Claire fell
is missing the male figure. These same
mannequins have been a focus in many shots and even were admired by Claire and
Deena during a prior shopping trip where she wished she could have the perfect
man (hint, hint). I’m not normally at
all interested in movies where wax figures come to life but I figured I would
give it a chance.
Claire and Bo spend quite a bit of time together (to the
detriment of the new ad campaign) leaving Milo to carry much of the workload
himself. Milo is not at all happy with
the situation and even expresses it to Deena who by now has caught Marco
cheating on her (did she finally put in her contacts and was half blind up
until now?) and is close to being single herself. At this point I can’t help but notice that
everyone at this agency is very groomed and well-dressed except for Milo, who
would have to upgrade his wardrobe to look as fashionable as the pizza delivery
guy (Maybe that’s one reason Claire doesn’t see you as dateable?). Claire goes to Bo’s large city loft/apartment
for dinner (how does a mannequin get an apartment . . . or come up with the
money to pay rent?) where for the first time we see things are not perfect when
she spills a glass of wine at dinner and he reacts oddly. Still she seems to be completely enamored and
under his ‘perfect’ spell.
At work it is all Milo and Claire, though she is still
ignoring most of his ideas, but after it is Claire and Bo to include a surprise
visit from Bo and his Parents to her apartment.
Bo’s parents are perfectly delightful to the extreme and the only thing
weird about them is when asked what they did for a living and they start making
mannequin poses in the dining room (Run Claire . . . just run). Romantically, Milo is the odd man out
although he does give Claire a very heartwarming and sentimental gift of all
her project Ads in a 3D Viewmaster. When
Claire and Milo head to their photo shoot for the new Jewelry campaign they
find the studio empty and dark as the shoot has been cancelled by Bo. Claire if furious, she finds and confronts Bo
who tells her that he arranged for a world-famous photographer to do the shoot
(instead of Milo) but he would only do it at Bo’s place, the photographer’s
former studio. Claire relents and the
shoot goes on that evening at Bo’s . . . at least until Bo’s ex (mannequin)
girlfriend arrives and trashes the place.
It was a matter of time as there were more shots of the lone, remaining
female mannequin in the store window as there were shots of the overall city.
Milo is angry and hurt that Claire used a different
photographer. She apologizes and he
tries to salvage what he can from the shoot.
He comes up with the perfect shot for the Ad and sends it to Claire just
before the company Christmas Party.
Claire goes with Bo, who has been planning their future life together
for a while now including a New Years Trip he springs tonight, while Deena and
Milo go alone. Bo’s crazy, ex-mannequin
ex-girlfriend shows up with Deena’s philandering ex-boyfriend Marcos. Deena convinces Milo go throw caution to the
win and go kiss Claire, however Bo steals the moment and delivers a kiss
instead. Milo leaves the party while
Claire breaks up with Bo. She chases him
out into the street where she calls to him and then falls in the road on her
head again.
Claire wakes up in a hospital room with Milo at her side. It seems that she had been unconscious for
two days and everything that had happened since her original fall was simply a
dream (rendering 70% of the movie now completely moot). Milo had pretended to be her husband so he
could stay with her the entire time (I hope he has roommates to take care of the
dog). The doctor tells Claire that she only
has a minor concussion but will need to stay 1 more night for observation (Are
you f**kin kidding me Doc? She LOST CONSCIOUSNESS
for TWO WHOLE DAYS!!! That’s a severe
concussion by just about any reasonable definition! Did you get your medical degree from a box of
‘Cocoa Krispies’?).
As you can imagine, Claire is now ‘super’ into Milo and, to
no one’s surprise, Milo doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest (or even wonder
why). When Claire finds out that the
shoot has already been completed, she is beside herself, she now wants the
flawed campaign that Milo advocated. She
gathers the team in her hospital room where she searches for a new image for
the Ad. In doing so she sets Meg up with
the Agency Tech guy she has secretly been crushing on and invited a guy from
the 5th floor (who Deena had hit it off with at the fantasy
Christmas Party) to bring a flower to Deena.
Of course, this is despite in the real world where Deena and Marcos
haven’t broken up (Girl, it was an unconscious DREAM, not a vision of the
future shown to you by Christmas ghosts.).
Claire insists they need a new image so they spend hours searching
through every image on Milo’s laptop until everyone goes home except Milo. Even he falls asleep next to Claire on her
hospital bed (how romantic) before Claire finds the perfect picture . . . the
one of them holding hands at Ouvre. This
becomes the new campaign and our last scene is of them walking down the street,
arm in arm and kissing while carolers walk buy (because . . . of course . . .
in New York City Christmas Carolers constantly wander around neighborhoods at
night like some juvenile street gang marking their territory.)
This movie has two things I hate. 1) Mannequins coming to life (creepy right?)
and 2) finding out much of what occurred in the movie is rendered pointless by
some time travel or dream sequence.
However, I loved the leads, I bought into their chemistry and who could
hate Ryan ‘Captain Awesome’ McPartlin. I
give this a 4 out of 5.
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