The Baker's Son (2021 TV Movie) User Reviews

A bit quirky

[Jackbv123 · 7/10 · 14 June 2021]

This movie follows the common premise of a man not realizing that his female best friend is or at least should be the love of his life. It does it, however, with a ridiculous story where Matt's bread becomes magically delicious when he's in love, but that is OK because it isn't meant to be taken seriously. I feel like the whole movie was tongue in cheek.

That only slightly lessened my dislike for Matt's narcissism. It certainly was all about Matt and Annie calls him on it briefly at one point. But up until that point, and when he inevitably repents, he is a total jerk.

It gets a little twisty toward the end and the last segment is total chaos but kind of cute and maybe a little funny.

Brant Daugherty and Eloise Mumford have that easy friendship vibe going but I wouldn't call it chemistry because after Matt meets the dancer, he treats Annie so badly.

Despite my contempt for Matt, the quirkiness of the movie appealed to me.

While I know how messy this was, I still liked it.

[MIssM19 · 6/10 · 14 June 2021]

Annie owns a coffee shop and loves painting. Matt is a baker and works at the family bakery with his father. They are best friends and have been since they were children. When a ballet company arrives in town and Matt becomes infatuated with the main dancer, the town seizes the opportunity to bring more tourism.

I'm kind of torn about this movie. I love the general concept, I have seen the actors before and enjoyed them, I love the small town vibe and specially, I love the best friends to lovers trope. But... it didn't live up to my expectations. I was expecting best friends slowly realising they love each other, instead I got a man who seemed genuinely in love with a girl who wasn't the lead and who, of course, didn't realise what was in front of him until he was about to lose it, and a woman willing to fly to another country rather than facing her feelings towards a man who has been by her side her whole life.

Which leads me to the following point: while I knew this would end well, there is a funny twist almost at the end, and you have no idea what's happening in the last 15 minutes because the storyline is going so fast. It was chaotic.

That being said, I actually enjoyed the movie. Brant and Eloise had great chemistry. I know I was supposed to be rooting for them to be together (and I was) but the characters seemed to have an amazing friendship, one of the kind that could prove that a man and a woman can be just friends. It would be great to watch them work together with another script.

Seriously tho, I actually liked it.

Kind of cute and quirky

[ELashes · 6/10 · 7 September 2021]

At least neither main character was a party planner or a corporate busy bee who buys out family owned shops. Everyone who is scoffing at the idea of magic bread needs to go watch Like Water For Chocolate.

Better than other movies of its kind

[fandomfatale · 7/10 · 27 June 2021]

The bread thing was kind of silly but not too silly for me. I liked a few things about this movie, like the various characters from the town and the way the love story plays out, not following the typical formula. There were a few genuinely funny moments, and comedy usually isn't a strength of these types of movies. I watch a lot of these Hallmark romances. Often I don't finish them. I did watch this one right up until the end. But it's not quite good enough to watch again.

A Sweet Story with a Good Cast

[icu_rns · 13 June 2021]

I enjoyed this movie! It had Hallmark's positive romantic vibes, but the story was a little more involved. The cast was good overall, with a quirky character or two. I especially enjoyed Eloise Mumford and Nathaniel Arcand (who isn't on IMDB's cast list at the time of writing this). I wish Hallmark would use these two actors more in future movies. I would watch this again, and recommend it to others!

I apologize in advance for such a shallow review.

[rebekahrox · 7/10 · 14 June 2021]

Eloise Mumford was in my one of my worst reviewed movies of 2018 but it totally was not her fault. I like her, as well as her co-lead, Brant Daugherty. He's not a favorite of mine, but he gets the job done. The friends to lovers plot was good, and I didn't mind the magical bad bread-good bread-bad bread plot line. It was something a little different from Hallmark. I liked the setting and Brenda Crichlow always does a great job. I even thought the mayor was funny.

Here comes the shallow part.

What the heck was with Eloise's lank hair and harsh make up? Her hair was a dull mousy brown and looked like it was chopped off with an ax. And her make-up! What was she trying to convey there? Or hide? Did she get a rash? She is a natural beauty and probably needs only subtle highlights. It aged her at least 10 years. Her foundation seemed to crack at every laughline and crinkle. Terrible choice of lip color through much of the movie, and too much eye stuff. Make-up tip #1: Bold Lip or Dramatic eyes, but not both. And as usual, Hallmark actresses do red carpet level make-up for an ordinary workday at an ordinary modest job. Eloise's look was a bad choice and totally fixable. I would not comment otherwise.

P. S. Upon further investigation, I see her hair was probably due to her role as Trudy Cooper in The Right Stuff. So maybe I was a tad too harsh. About her hair.

The key to good French bread...Love!

[cgvsluis · 4/10 · 4 August 2021]

This is a classic "realizing you are in love with your best friend" hallmark romance. Our main characters are played by Eloise Mumford and Brant Daugherty, both of Fifty Shades of Grey franchise fame. They play Annie and Matt childhood friends living in a small fictional island town in Washington (which can I say as someone who grew up in a small island Washington town, there are so many cute island towns to choose from...why not film an actual Washington town and use it?) Matt is the town baker, a job he has taken over from his French father and Annie runs a local small restaurant that she took over from her parents. The underlying theme is to find and pursue your passion...including putting passion in to what you do. Annie gives Matt some tough love telling him that his bread could be better and that he needs to put his passion in to his baking, which Matt does but then mistakenly thinks his inspiration is a ballerina that has been practicing on the island. The amazing bread that is created saves the struggling town as it brings in tourists thanks to a local seattle news broadcast. And the rest is history!

One inaccuracy that I would like to correct...all small island towns here in Washington have swimming and water safety as a mandatory course for kids in school, so for Matt to be an adult who grew up on the island...he would have had to leave during those grade school years, in order to not know how to swim. I didn't know anyone who didn't know how to swim until I moved to the city of Seattle!

(On another note I must be watching the wrong kind of French films because none of the ones I have seen end that way...Irreversible and Umbrellas of Cherbourg, to name two.)

Overall sweet enjoyable hallmark film, light and breezy with a fun supporting cast.

You had me at Baker!

[ginasharp · 8/10 · 19 June 2021]

This movie was fun and quirky mixed in with a little magic! I just love the HMM that have a little fantastical feel too them. The baking scenes were really nice. Lots of cute, funny lines that made me giggle. I would've given it a 10 but the ending few scenes felt a little awkward for me. Lol But ALWAYS love when there is no dead spouse, or old flame that didn't work out - so big plus for me! Worth a summer watch!

Actors needed better material

[crosemnnc · 6/10 · 15 July 2021]

The leads in this movie were great. The chemistry was there. The acting was there. But the story was pretty bad. With better material this could have been a great movie.

I liked it

[rhonnie-43139 · 10/10 · 1 August 2021]

I liked this movie because it was cute. The main characters were entertaining and I liked the story. I also liked the setting and supporting cast. I was hungry for French bread after watching it😂. I will watch it again.

Magic Bread, Really?

[spikeluvr · 5/10 · 13 June 2021]

I was hoping to like this movie. I like the lead actors and what's not to like about a bakery? That's about the only thing I liked about the movie. Magic bread is a silly premise for a movie. And the lead female's utterly childish behavior is counterproductive to the plot development. She's supposed to be slowly realizing she's in love with her best friend. Instead she acts like a childish, vindictive high school girlfriend. The older baker's fake French accent is excruciating to listen to. For the first half of the movie Brenda Crichlow does an imitation of the Queen instead of playing a convincing upper class matron. Whenever she's supposed to play a boss or a wealthy woman she sticks her nose up in the air and pretends she's a benevolent monarch a la Edna Mae Oliver. She's normally a good actress so I blame the director. The ending was as preposterous as the entire plot. Hallmark needs better writers!

One of the better Hallmark movies

[Avidviewer-02847 · 7/10 · 15 June 2021]

Hallmark stepped back from its usual soapy formulaic scripts with this one. Sure it's a rom-com but the two leads have chemistry and it's funny. I never have a problem with Hallmark locations and this one was great. Their scripts usually stink but not this one, not perfect but better.

Eloise Mumford and Brant Daugherty are good together, sure scene by scene there are some scens that don't make it. Usually Hallmark over emphasizes the female lead and the male is just window dressing, but here Daughterty gets some equal treatment which makes it more successful. Reminded me of "Shakespeare in Love", Shakespeare just needed a romantic muse to be productive.

okay but not great

[taylornan0909 · 7/10 · 15 June 2021]

I thought this was a dumb story line for a movie but I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I like Eloise Mumford but as one reviewer stated WTH was up with her hair. Eloise and Brant have great chemistry and I liked the ending of the movie.

the bread

[Kirpianuscus · 15 March 2024]

I liked, not ignoring its so many sins. For the flavor of fairy tale, for the romance - more that proposed by Serge Houde and Brenda Crichlow, for bread and for atmosphere of small town, for charming spring air , not the last, for Eloise Mumford and Brant Daughterty .

A pure nice Hallmark, reminding, in simple manner, so familiar truths.

Two friends from childhood, the film night, the coffeee shop of her, his bakery a quasy eccentric maire and a father at the second youth, a very interesting and pretty useful dog and a story seductive for few fine spices to original, pretty boring, Hallmark recipe. In short, almost...lovely.

It's about bread

[MickyG333 · 7/10 · 28 February 2023]

7.4 stars.

Shocking news, the title is perfect because "The Baker's Son" is about bread. Who would have conceived that they could make a movie theme about the quality of bread coming out of a bakery in a small island town in Washington? This story is about a woman who owns a restaurant who is best friends with the baker's son and they have many ups and downs and twists and turns in their relationship, but don't forget they are only "best friends". Maybe she wants more, but he obviously doesn't. Or, perhaps by some stretch of the imagination he wants more, but the writers are very careful in making sure that he has absolutely no clue of his true feelings. Authentic situation? Not a chance. Good romantic story? Not really. Entertaining film? So-so. Good acting? Eloise Mumford is one of my favorites, please don't waste her talents by placing her in the position of sloppy seconds to another cut-rate female. She is the prize, she is to be on a pedestal for all to admire, and don't you dare think otherwise.

I was forced to multitask while watching this

[bmiller59 · 5/10 · 17 June 2021]

Boring and no chemistry between the leads. The preview was far better than the movie.

Nice enough

[tmccheyne · 7/10 · 16 April 2022]

Nicole the ballet dancer is far too tall.

You can't feed bread to dancers lol.

Most bakers are up cooking at 5am in the morning, so unbelievable to think he would stay up so late.

Totally predictable otherwise.

Barely watchable

[johne-55952 · 4/10 · 14 June 2021]

Not sure why folks are writing flattering reviews while apologizing for it. This really is quite terrible even on the Hallmark movie spectrum. The writing is particularly bad., At some point we just stopped listening. Probably should have just turned the radio on....

The acting wasn't too bad and the actors wire pleasant. The only thing to recommend it the scenery. They found a piece of Vancouver area coastline that I hadn't seen in other Hallmark shows.

Please make this into a series!

[psalteress-00487 · 10/10 · 14 June 2021]

Fell in love with this premise within the first 10 minutes! Great setting, characters, humor, diverse cast, etc. A winning combination that I would tune in for weekly!

Worth watching (thanks to Eloise Mumford); but someone should have pushed Matt into the water

[MichaelByTheSea · 7/10 · 6 October 2022]

I just watched this again, but this time I had it on in the background while I was distracted by other things. That's because I knew it was just OK and not one of Hallmark's best. But it is worth a watch. For me, that's almost entirely because of Eloise Mumford (who just shined in a great Hallmark movie called Presence of Love). She's easily one of my favorite Hallmark stars. She's beautiful and talented and she made Annie the most believable character in the movie. Mumford played Annie as sparkling, charming and lovable, but she also effectively conveyed Annie's angst, uncertainty and heartbreak.

The cute island town was nice, but the mayor was a bit over the top (who grabs and eats food from the plate of a stranger without asking??). If the success or failure of the town turns on whether Matt's bread is any good, well, they might want to elect a new mayor. And the magic infused bread story line was... tough to swallow, at least as it was presented.

The biggest problem, however, was Matt, played by Brant Daughterty (who I liked in A Royal Runaway Romance). Jackbv123 did a good IMDb review of the movie ("a bit quirky") that conveys exactly what I hated about Matt. His character was completely self obsessed and very irritating.

And it was asking way too much of the audience to buy into the premise that he only saw Annie as a friend. He would have had to have been gay not to have fallen madly in love with Annie once his hormones started acting up during his teen years. That "friends to lovers" trope would have, should have, played out for them a long long time ago (unless they were separated, and then found and only recently lost other partners).

Instead, Matt is presented as a clueless doofus who inexplicably "falls in love" with another woman who's only on the island for a few weeks. Really? Yeah, she was pretty but not like Annie. And yeah, she was nice, but not like Annie. Love? Really?

But the movie did have some charm. The big scene at the end was presumably an homage to the scene with Colin Firth in Love Actually. And It went a long way in somewhat repairing the movie's complete lack of credibility (like the fact that island boy Matt didn't know how to swim).

And thanks to Eloise Mumford, I may one day watch this again. Did I mention I loved her in Presence of Love?

Could not finish watching

[wdjdhj · 3/10 · 17 June 2021]

I love Hallmark movies, and I thought this one would be fun to watch. I found myself playing solitaire on my phone while trying to plow through it. I finally couldn't bear it any longer and turned it off. The scenery was beautiful, and it had a great cast, but I just couldn't get into the story. :(

Doesn't hit the sweet spot

[TheLittleSongbird · 4/10 · 27 January 2022]

There is absolutely no bias against Hallmark. They have made plenty of above average and more films, and that is including this year. They have also done quite a number of below average and less ones. 'The Baker's Son' did sound quite cute, despite being a scenario that felt done to death with Hallmark long before this was dreamt up and that the setting is one re-visited a lot. Have liked both leads in other things, although the filmographies for both are hit and miss.

For me, 'The Baker's Son' is one of the misses for both of them. Not the performances, but the film. There were some surprisingly good Hallmark films this year, which is remarkable considering the circumstances, but 'The Baker's Son' somehow doesn't hit the spot. It is not a terrible film as such and it does have good things. But it also has major shortcomings that sadly outweigh the good things in quality and quantity. Worth a one time watch for Hallmark's completest sake, but not much more than that.

Eloise Mumford and Brant Daugherty do their best with what they're given and inject some charm. They do have some nice chemistry together, when their characters aren't so frustrating. Brenda Crichlow steals every scene she's in.

Production values are also beautiful, especially the scenery. Some of the tongue in cheek humour is amusing.

Not much else works on the other hand. Most of the 2021 Hallmark films thus far have delivered on competent supporting casts, with a few exceptions. 'The Baker's Son' is one of the exceptions, other than Crichlow they are all irritating caricatures. Didn't find myself caring for the characters all that much, the supporting characters irritate, Annie could have had more personality and shouldn't have behaved so childishly that much and Matt's decision making and motivations are indecisively all over the place. The music is forgettable at best and the direction is routine.

Moments of amusing tongue in cheek humour aside, the script felt forced a lot of the time as well as excessively cheesy, the sentimental moments occasionally over-sweet. The story is very predictable, things mapping out pretty much exactly what one expects, and there are times where not an awful lot happens which makes too much of it bland. Most of the time, the film's events and the film itself move way too fast. With the final third being total contrived chaos, even the too pat resolution.

Concluding, pretty lacklustre. 4/10.

Baguettes, Bakeries, & Beautiful Scenery

[jlbsword · 9/10 · 14 June 2021]

I enjoyed this movie, not for the acting, which was fine, or the story line which was somewhat predictable, but because it was filmed in the charming little town of Chemainus on Vancouver Island. The cafe is the Willow Street Cafe, and was not changed at all, or the Main Street, full of cute little shops. But what Chemainus is really known for are the spectacular murals on all of the buildings. They depict the history & growth of this area, so were not shown as it would not fit with a US town. It was nice to see Brent Daugherty as the male lead. I also liked him in Just for the Summer. But not so with the female lead. Just not very likeable and looked much older than the male lead. And that hairdo looked like it was cut with a chain saw. The townspeople were good, especially the mayor. The location saved this movie for me. And the bread!

The Baker's Son

[studioAT · 8/10 · 11 January 2023]

This is a very rare thing indeed - a genuinely funny Hallmark film.

Now, they're normally mildly amusing and gentle fare, but this ends up being laugh out loud funny. I don't know why Hallmark went in this direction, but I'd encourage them to do it more often, because with the right people in the roles this really works.

I thought this was a charming and well-played out affair, with some nice moments.

It makes a nice change from the normal formula that the channel deploy time and time again, and overall proved to be a great deal of fun.

So well done Hallmark, this was one of your better outings.

It was ok

[mrcapra · 5/10 · 22 June 2021]

I am always interested in a movie with Brant Daugherty so I watched The Baker's Son and was disappointed. The relationship between Matt and Annie was promising. I really liked Eloise Mumford but characters like the mayor and the sheriff were irritating, even Matt's father. The end was cute but not worth the journey to get there. I'll check out the next movie with Daugherty or Mumford and hope for better.