The Groomsmen: First Look (2024)

Director: Ron Oliver

Starring: B.J. Britt, Jonathan Bennett, Tyler Hynes

A pediatrician and an overseas doctor, meet at a wedding in Philadelphia, but the long distance, family, and their friends may hinder their budding romance.

Let’s face it, Hallmark movies are cheesy and the premise often feels like an episode from a daily soap rather than a movie. ‘The Groomsmen: First Look’ dishes up more cheese than I could swallow, and this really isn’t a good script.

It all started with a wedding. Pete, Jackson and Danny have been best friends for a long time. Peter, a doctor, meets Chelsea, a doctor, at the wedding. There’s fireworks between them and soon enough they are madly in love, only she lives on the other side of the world.

Well, it’s Hallmark after all, so you know our love birds are destined to work things out to be together, but getting there is what bothered me. Nothing here felt realistic or even remotely believable. I mean, they make wedding plans without making plans – if you know what I mean. Pete meets Chelsea’s parents and they discuss everything about the wedding, except how they’re going to make it work considering they live on opposite ends of the world, and neither of them intend leaving their job.

It felt like the script was written by a teenager with no knowledge of the adult world, and I therefore couldn’t get into the movie or connect with the characters. And I definitely did not find it romantic. I usually rather enjoy the (cheesy) Hallmark movies, but this was just a bit too much cheese – and overacting – for me and too little (believable) substance.

Would I watch it again? No.