“A Splash of Love” Hallmark Movie Review

📸: Hallmark Gold Crown

I give this movie 6 out of 10 vomits

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

🟢 Plot 🟢

A PhD student expands her studies to include the whales of the Pacific Northwest. There she meets a whale watching tour guide and they soon find themselves bonding over more than just Orcas.

🟢 The Stars 🟢

Rhiannon Fish – Chloe

Benjamin Hollingsworth – Ben

🟢 Non Spoiler Spew 🟢

I had really high hopes going into this movie. When I saw that the plot of this movie was about doing an Orca research I was impressed. Hallmark doing a movie about how we can help sea life?! I’m game! But then I quickly realized it was not about that at all. Yes, I know Hallmark is all about love, but I thought they would throw in some learning about sea life as well.

This movie came out the door strong too. Once I started to realize that Chloe’s character was doing nothing to help better Orca’s lives the movie started to go downhill for me. Hallmark truly missed out on a chance to do something great here. Not only to bring awareness to sea life, but this would open them up to a whole range of other stories to tell.

What was also bad about this movie was the lack of chemistry between our two leads. You could tell they totally had the friendship chemistry down, but I did not feel the romantic chemistry. No one looked at each other with googily eyes. And there were no accidental touching of hands. NOTHING. Nothing that made it feel like a high school crush kind of deal. I did like the actors as a duo. So I say put them in another movie so they can try it again! Their chemistry reflected the title of this movie, “A Splash of Love”.

Benjamin Hollingsworth character, Ben, did not make much sense to me. In the movie he has a whale watching business, but the character seemed to now know much about whales. I have been on whale watching tours before and those people have done their research. It only makes sense for them to do so if you are going to have a business around whales. So the choice for him not to know much really bothered me.

Rhiannon Fish did a bit of over acting in my opinion. I am no expert in acting, but you can tell when someone is overdoing it. And she over did it. There were just some choices she made that were just not believable. Just like the character Ben, I also did not understand the personality choice for Chloe. They wrote her as a VERY timid for someone who wants to do research on Orca’s. Going into this field and wanting to do deep research on them she should know what this job will ask of her. So for her to be scared of hiking or putting research equipment on a boat.

Overall, the movie was still enjoyable to watch. I know it seems like I am hating on it, but I did enjoy it, but it had potential to be so much more than what it was. At the end of the day it did have its funny moments and the movie did focus a tiny bit on Orca’s, so that was nice.

I really hope Hallmark tries this plotline again so they can really flush out the details to make it a love story, but also teaching people about how to protect sea life.

🔴 Summary Spoiler Spew 🔴

We start off with Chloe being presented the opportunity for a grant to study Orca’s. 

I thought this part was funny because Chloe’s professor presented her with this grant and told her se was the only one for it. Then 10 minutes later Chloe agrees to take the grant and asks her professor if it is still available. Like bro, you JUST talked to her and she said you were the only one. OF COURSE the grant is still available. So that part made me chuckle a bit.

Chloe is hoping that her boyfriend Marcus is going to ask her to move in together because she saw a receipt for an extra set of keys. This is something she wants because they do not see each other a lot since they are both PhD students. Instead of moving in together he presented that they share an office so they can spend more time together. 

My jaw was on the floor when I saw that Marcus proposed that they share an office. Chloe gets flustered then she takes this as her cue to leave and take the grant. But I can see that Marcus was coming from a good place.

On the way to Chloe’s destination her rental smart car breaks down. She gets out of her car to check out her map on how to get where she is going because her phone has no service. A truck stops by and Ben comes out and helps Chloe get to her Bed n Breakfast.

The whole interaction between Chloe and Ben was SUPER awkward. Chloe got all kinds of weird when Ben stopped to help her. I understand stranger danger, but this was just beyond weird. She totally blew him off and did not want to say much about her situation. Like I said, I get stranger danger, but this was weird and it’s a movie. So she could have relaxed a bit.

This Bed n Breakfast that Chloe is staying at is SUPER NICE! I want to find one that is just like this. It was beautiful and right there on the ocean. What is weird though is that it seems like only Chloe is staying there. Put some extras in the background! It looks like a ghost town.

Chloe’s grant is to see what is happening with the Orca’s migration pattern. With these findings they will use the information to better help the Orca’s to travel safely. They also want to inform people of Orca’s that way they can better help them.

Chloe gets on her rental boat and Ben sees that she needs help. She tells him that she’s got it and help is not needed. This made ZERO SENSE to me because she has never been on a boat before. I did not understand why she would lie about something like that. This is not something you should lie about.

One part here that made me roll my eyes was that when Chloe was on the boat another boat drove by and splashed her with water. The next scene she was DRENCHED in water and the inn keeper gave her two blankets. She was just splashed.

Chloe finally accepts help from Ben and he takes her out on his small boat. He lets Chloe know there are 3 Orca pods, but one pod, the Echo pod, is missing. It is unfortunate about the Echo pod missing because Chloe needs information on all three pods for her research to be a success.

Chloe and Ben find the Echo pod EXTREMELY fast. This bothered me because I thought this was going to be a main plot point of the movie. To find the pod and see why their migration changed. To see what us humans are doing to make this happen. But NOPE. Chloe finds them super fast and then also finds out fast that one of the female Orca’s is pregnant. So this is why their migration changed.

During the time of Chloe’s week long research grant, she does help the inn keeper, Mary, because May is throwing an annual surf n turf party that attracts a lot of tourists. She enlists the help of Ben and Chloe because with a storm that came in all of the guests are stuck at another place that is about 4 hours away. Mary wants Ben and Chloe to go in his boat through this one very dangerous path to get all the guests there.

One thing I could not understand was why Chloe’s research was only 1 week long. I really do not think that there are research grants that are only 1 week long.

With Mary, she really just butts herself into Chloe’s life. Everyday she went into her room unannounced and brought her coffee and would sit on the couch. I get she is being friendly, but yeesh.

I could not believe that Mary asked Ben and Chloe to get her guests. Yes I know she did not ask them outright. But how the heck could you ask people to put their life on the line for you to be able to throw a party?

Ben tells Chloe how he feels and that she makes him a better person.

I did not understand this AT ALL. They have had zero chemistry this whole time. He also did not change any business model for his whale watching business. It just made no sense. Ben did not change at all.

Towards the end Marcus shows up as a romantic gesture to take Chloe out on the lake to go whale watching. He tells Ben that he is Chloe’s boyfriend and you can tell Ben is sad to see that he is there.

I did not like this interaction between Marcus and Ben because they really did a 180 on Marcus. He was sweet in the beginning. Then all of a sudden he was a jerk and entitled. Made zero sense.

Marcus meets up with Chloe and then they break up. 

I thought this was super rude because Chloe had this whole time to break up with Marcus. She would even ignore his phone calls because she wanted to be with Ben. When they broke up Marcus took it very well. He did not even get a chance to rest. He flew there, Chloe dumped him, then he flew right back home.

One thing I do like about Hallmark breakups is that they are clean. There is no hostility between couples. They quickly say how they feel then they go separate ways. These breakups should honestly be taught to people because if they had classes on this people would be able to handle breakups a bit easier. I know this is easier said then done, but it is a nice starting place.

After Marcus shows up Ben is upset and leaves to go whale watching without Chloe. Ben then calls out over the radio that he is stranded. Chloe and two of Ben’s friends go out to find him. When they find him Chloe and Ben get together and tell each other how they feel. 

The funny thing about this scene was that Chloe said the waters were choppy and they needed to find Ben fast. When the camera panned out you could see that the waters were super calm.

Seeing the baby Orca was a super cute way to end the movie.

Also, it was shocking to see that Hallmark upgraded from a quick Hallmark kiss to a full on make out session 👌