With one set of holidays behind us and a couple on the horizon, we’re in the midst of what I would consider the Hallmark movie season. Though not all are strictly “Hallmark” movies, it is the time of year where a great deal of made for TV movies with similar themes flood networks that honestly have nothing better to show – particularly those aimed at “family”. These movies are easily identified by the fact they all have the same earmarks. First, they’re centered on a holiday or an event that happens to be family oriented. Second, their central plot (often the only plot) is generally based around that family dynamic one way or another. And third, the cast seems to have been slipped something before the cameras started rolling.

It’s never the cast’s fault, mind you – it’s just the way of the genre almost by default. Made cheaply and probably written on the back of literal Hallmark cards, these movies are the tried and true made for TV garbage that you watch only because you have nothing better to do. That’s not to say there isn’t an audience, there most certainly is, but most of that audience is either bored, lonely, or both. The few who don’t fill these requirements generally fit into the archetype that the characters themselves are based on. And even if you like some of them, you know, deep down, that they’re not exactly works of art. The scenarios rarely make sense, the characters are about as two dimensional as a greeting card, and any emotional weight is based primarily in how soft a target you happen to be.

And almost all of us know this. Though a few are fond of a couple of these, and others might have a straight up guilty pleasure of the bunch, we all know we’d rather be doing something else if we had the choice. An entire channel is devoted to these movies, and few would willingly watch it, but a dedicated, nostalgia driven fanbase keeps the thing afloat. Once, when about to watch one of these movies, my friend – an avid romance fan – asked me why I was looking to torture myself. Simply put: I was morbidly curious.

So, it raises a question: how can a business based entirely on human emotions have so little a grasp on how those emotions actually work (and how do we avoid the same mistakes)? Continue reading Why “Hallmark” Movies Suck →