Keeping Up with the Randalls (2011) Kayla Ewell, Thad Luckinbill, Marion Ross, Roma Downey Movie Review

Keeping Up with the Randalls (2011)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Keeping Up with the Randalls (2011)

A Randall Family Reunion

Professionally and personally things are going well for children's fashion designer Alicia Crosby (Kayla Ewell), so well her boyfriend Will Randall (Thad Luckinbill) decides to take her home to meet his family. The thing is that home is not Los Angeles and not only do they expect Will to return home soon to take over the family business but when the Randall's come together they hold a mini sports day. With sports not being Alicia's thing she finds herself having to compete against Will's family in a series of mini events and struggling to impress.

I've often mentioned how Hallmark movies seem to be made on a loop so every year they seem to reuse the same ideas from the year before. There is though one exception for me and that is the meet the parents storyline as whilst often used it feels less frequently done than many of these other story ideas. That leads me to "Keeping Up with the Randalls" one of those meet the parents movie with Alicia meeting her boyfriends family for the first time and finding herself struggling to fit in with every attempt to impress failing abysmally. In fact "Keeping Up with the Randalls" is such a typical meet the parents story that even Will's ex girlfriend is involved.

Now as I always say, these Hallmark movies are made for a specific sort of audience who actually watch because they don't want to be challenged by what they watch and don't want to be offended either. Technically "Keeping Up with the Randalls" is one of those movies and ticks all those boxes when it comes to the family having a few secrets and so on but unfortunately something is missing. That something is chemistry as whilst the actors have the right looks it just feels that everyone is doing there own thing. The one exception is Marion Ross who brings some much needed quirks and humour to the role of Will's grandma.

What this all boils down to is that "Keeping Up with the Randalls" goes through the meet the family storyline, ticking boxes along the way but it never quite comes to life and becomes more than just actors going through the motions.


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