Butlers in Love starring Stacey Farber, Corey Cott and Maxwell Caulfield.
Description: In a prestigious butler academy, passionate Emma and rebellious Henry train to become royal butlers where the competition is fierce and sparks fly.
I'm definitely taping this one. Looks cute.
ARGH!!!! RUN! Do not walk to your nearest TV remote and delete
Butlers in Love, which is a complete piece of time wasting crap. That was 2 hours of my life I will never get back.
Take the 2 minutes to read this post, if it saves you the 2 hours of watching this deplorable movie. An IMDb.com reviewer called it heinous. I agree with that description too. I'm not sure why I continued to plow through this garbage, I could see right away that the writing was a horrific abomination of beyond stupid, ill-researched writing.
I'm peeved that Hallmark "served" us up something so ill-conceived and ill-acted. I guess I just couldn't believe that this wouldn't be redeemed. And I'm annoyed I lived through it rather than simply turning it off.
Full disclosure: I used to work for a couple of the top, elite, high profile catering companies in NYC. I've mentioned it in the past where some of the guests were multi-billionaires like the Rockefellers, the Whitneys, the Vanderbilts, the Gettys, etc. One can do a DIS search for those posts. I have worked at extreme, high profile, prestigious events, so I know what I'm talking about here.
I just can't believe the writer did such a crapola job on even doing
minimal research and came up with such bad examples used for what the female lead didn't know or got confused on while at the butler school. For instance, she didn't know which way the knife blade lays on a table setting???? Seriously?
Seriously??? Even waiters at Dennys or IHOP know that the knife blade faces inward toward the plate.
Butlers generally do NOT carry 7 plates at once, without a tray. School and college cafeteria staff may do that. IF a butler/waiter of prestigious events has to pick up or set down 7 ultra-fine china plates at once, it SHOWS the owner can't AFFORD to hire enough help.
For
formal service dining, the waiters DO carry the plates on sterling silver trays. The more glitz shown the better. It is desired to show off how much silver the owner owns and how much staff he has available. They set the trays off to the side, then only pick up ONE plate in each hand. In coordinated fashion with the rest of the waiters around the table, they set the plates down in unison. Take a step over to the right, move the second plate from the left hand to the right hand, then set the plate down. They go back to the tray, pick up another two plates and repeat, until the full table is served. (This was correctly show this for the butlers final exam.)
The female character didn't know what a fish fork was. It only takes one time Googling to learn that a fish fork has a curved notch at the end of a tine to help pick out any fish bones one might find. The notch is there for a
logical reason. Same as wine glasses are placed above the knife, on the right side of the plate, as most people are right handed. Not hard to remember, unless one is a nitwit and doesn't Google.
Which leads me to: the female character wanted to be a butler since seeing a "Downton Abbey" type movie or show at age 10 and for the next 14 years, pined away at wanting to be a butler - but then never properly Googles and MEMORIZES the info above, nor what proper place settings for different occasions are, in those 14 years. And she doesn't practice them on her own, ahead of attending butler school. She also doesn't know how to iron or cook the simplest of dishes - which she did know was possibly necessary, depending on where she ended up working.
She made Daisy from Downton Abbey look like a brilliant genius in comparison. Daisy was ignorant due to her station in life, lack of education in the early seasons and lack of social interactions beyond other servants. And the actress playing her played her well. This character in
Butlers had none of those problems. And the actress playing her didn't have the screen presence to pull off playing her in a way we wanted to watch her, liked her, and were rooting for her.
The actress, Stacey Farber had no chemistry with the male lead, Corey Cott - who was CUTE. But, his character was all over the place, also badly written. His character is about 24. He's been in and out of prestigious schools like Harvard, Does well at them, yet can't tell mommy & daddy that he doesn't want to be a butler. A male lead with no backbone. Just what we want to see. Not! Even with that, Stacey Farber lacked the dynamic screen presence that a
romantic lead is supposed to have so that one wants to continue watching them. There was no magnetism, magic or chemistry as to why the male lead would be interested in her.
I can see that Corey Cott has the potential to be a romantic lead, with his looks, and previous Broadway theatre experience. But, he has to STOP doing Hallmark bombs. Once he gets typecast as doing the scripts that Andrew Walker, Tyler Hynes, Will Kemp, etc., wouldn't even be offered as the script quality is so insulting, he will never get better roles than their leftovers.
(Interestingly, since last night, Corey Cott and Maxwell Caulfield got moved off the IMDb's main page of cast credits to be NOW listed as "rest of the cast" where one has to click on to even find them listed.
They so wanted to be removed from being credited in this movie, even though they are the second and third leads.)
I said about a month ago that I kind of cringe when I see a description for a Lifetime movie with two unknown leads, that have only done supporting cast roles. There is usually a good reason why a supporting actor only gets those roles. And it usually signals a badly written script that they can't get better actors for. THIS movie is a perfect example. And this is worst than some of the worst Lifetime movies I've seen or turned off.
Two more things: at the end of the movie the leads are working in a 5-star hotel, and are both in uniform, openly KISSING in the banquet hall, in front of the rest of the staff, and where any one can walk in an see them. NEVER WOULD HAPPEN by junior staff at a 5-star hotel to be that unprofessional with pda like that.
What was the writer, Anna White, thinking? She wasn't, that's the crux. I took 2 minutes in a previous post to find fun trivia that a butler school is in western NY state. The "Butler Academy" named in the movie in Maryland IS there. Yet the writer didn't take the time to find out it's a MONTESSORI school for children. And, no, it isn't to raise children to be little butlers.
Watching on Netflix doesn't give former cast chatter during commercial breaks.
:
The IMDb.com lists each movie as having a release date back in December. Yet, they were not on Hallmark, Lifetime, nor Netflix. So, I went down a rabbit hole researching where these movies were being shown and found not only these two new movies, but about SEVEN more AND a new (to us) FREE streaming network that shows these other Hallmark-ish movies. 
Fun trivia:
The American course is $7,000. The Netherlands course is $16,400 U.S. dollars. The American course better have enough content to make it worth the price.
I watched them before Butlers, which probably made Butlers seem even worse. (I also saw a fourth afterward, As Gouda As It Gets.)
These really could have been Hallmark chosen movies.
