Ashley Williams Shines in OCTOBER KISS

Stop me if you’ve heard this story idea: workaholic single parent with out of control kids hires attractive nanny, kids hate nanny at first before becoming attached, parent and nanny fall in love.

Yes, the plot of October Kiss is a familiar one. This isn’t even the first Hallmark Channel movie to use it. But it is the best to date.

Ashley Williams stars as Poppy Summerall, the requisite free spirited nanny, and Sam Jaeger stars as Ryan Lawson, the workaholic single father. Hannah Cheramy and Kiefer O’Reilly co-star as the unruly children, Zoe and Zach, and Miranda Frigon is Abigail, the other woman vying for Ryan’s affections (you’ll remember her from last year’s Hallmark holiday movie, A Cookie Cutter Christmas, where she was also trying to win the hero away from Erin Krakow).

We begin our story with Poppy bailing on teaching a yoga class, then realizing tossing pizza dough is not her forte, then ditching blind date who was moving just a bit too fast. Fear of commitment? Check. Thanks to some exposition-y girl talk with her big sister, we learn that Poppy takes after their flighty mother. Poppy is not pleased with this analysis and determines to find what’s right for her. After successfully interacting with her bickering nephews, Poppy realizes that working with children might be her thing.

On a recommendation from her sister, Poppy takes a temporary job as a nanny to Ryan’s two children while he works on a presentation to secure a major deal. In a nice update for 2015, Ryan is a workaholic at a tech company, and he actually has a kind of cool fictional app that could be functional in real life. But back to the romance/bonding with the kids.

Of course Zoe and Zach dislike Poppy at first. She’ll never replace their dead mother (a hallmark of Hallmark movies), and she’s with them so their dad can not be with them. Yes, we’re getting another lesson in the importance of spending time with our children, without the distraction of cell phones and work, but this lesson is delivered with a lighter hand and a greater understanding of the realities of today than we usually get. Still, the moral is clear: family is more important than work.

Poppy does win over the children, despite a hungry goat and a fear of spiders. Halloween plays a huge role in October Kiss, giving the set designer a chance to break out the Pinterest boards and go to town decorating. Speaking of the set designer, props to Renata Couture for making the Lawson’s house look like people actually live there.

The autumnal setting also gives us the opportunity for some great wardrobe options on everyone. From Poppy’s gorgeous boots and cute flannels to Ryan’s snuggly sweaters to the children’s layers, I feel inspired to update my closet.

In the romance department, Poppy and Ryan are instantly at ease with each other, but Ryan is being pursued by someone else and Poppy is just there for the job. As she bonds with the children, she also begins to bond with Ryan, seeing past the phone-addicted workaholic to the man who loves his children and needs a gentle reminder about priorities. Theirs is a romance full of laughter and butterflies-in-the-stomach moments of awareness that builds to our inevitable happy, ending.

From my perspective, the success of October Kiss rests on the capable shoulders of Ashley Williams. An accomplished actress with a long list of credits, she could have played Poppy in her sleep, but she is wide awake and fully invested here. Her warmth and energy radiate through every scene she’s in, and the lack is noticeable when she’s not on screen. Every other cast member is more at ease and natural when she’s in the scene with them, whether or not they are interacting with her. It’s a rare gift for an actor to make everyone else better just by being in the same room, but Williams has it.

Jaeger also deserves credit for helping his young cast mates look at ease on screen. A veteran of NBC’s Parenthood, Jaeger has a lot of experience working with children, and it shows in how he interacts with his on-screen children. There’s one scene in particular, when Zach snuggles up next to Ryan in bed, that shows such a natural ease and comfort with each other that I had no trouble buying that these three were a family.

The cast also has better than average material to work with in October Kiss. Written by MacKenzie Austin, the banter between Poppy and Ryan is sharp but not cutting; the children are precocious but not annoying; and the emotional moments, for the most part, have enough weight for character development but aren’t so heavyhanded as to invite eyerolling.

Director Lynne Stopkewich handles her material and actors beautifully, guiding them from the emotional beats to the lighthearted moments with ease.

My only real caveat here is that the final act is slightly underwhelming. After a lively, warm, witty build up, the resolution falls just a little flat. It’s still rewarding and heartwarming, but it’s also rather generic whereas the rest of October Kiss rises above the genre into something special.

October Kiss premieres Saturday, October 17 at 9/8c on The Hallmark Channel.