game of love (2023) - it is with mixed emotions that i must report the all seeing eye of the hallmark consumer demographic panopticon has finally started to gaze back. here is a romcom for the geeks and gamers in the room. the big romantic kiss at the end happens in a boardgame store filled with copies of settlers of catan. it’s a whole new world.
the first thing we learn about the heroine of the movie is that her screen name is “gamergirl” on a competitive scrabble app - she also faces gamer related prejudice like being kicked out of a fancy restaurant for wearing a hoodie, converses and jeans. her dayjob is being the resident gamedesign auteur curmudgeon at a boardgame company, so imagine her bewilderment and disgust when the company announces the theme of their next game will be… LOVE?! and that she has to collaborate with the company’s peppy new marketing director to do it. as he helpfully announces “we have the marketing strategy - now you just have to make the game!” such a man could obviously never connect to her as much as acquaintances like FreeHugz her reliable online scrabble companion.
in order to research the concept of love they of course must go out together to fancy restaurants, get pulled up onstage by a relationship guru called Robbie Indigo who does the reddit direction of line leaning thing on them, reveal their pasts etc. they do play some boardgames - specifically to learn about team games they play a romantic session of the mind mgmt board game… i guess they also asked the same developer to be able to use their other titles as the fictional company’s games, which is why the movie offices are covered in posters for a licensed harrow county game. linked post confirms that it was shot in vancouver too… and this in spite of all the different establishing shots of the space needle etc… thats how they get you!!
hallmark movies are usually pretty anodyne but i did find this one a little more likeable and fun, less brutally mcmansion brained than most, an element which the imdb review community seemingly picked up on (the single tag on the movie’s page is “interracial romance”). there are some good shots, for example the boardgame testers sneeringly holding up a “not fun” placard in response to a muddled early draft, one of the main lady looking miserable at the gluten free bakery and one where she’s working at her desk seemingly by dragging around random stock pirate clipart.
at the end she has a sudden revelation about her new workmate… who says love can’t bloom on the scrabble fields
