OMG. Another movie with a baker? But this time the baker is a MAN?! What is the world coming to?
So. In A Gingerbread Romance, Tia Mowry-Hardrict plays Taylor, an architect who is given an assignment to participate in a life-sized gingerbread house contest. Taylor gets Adam (Duane Henry), a local baker, to be her partner. Along with his daughter, Brooke (Melody Nosipho Niemann), Adam teaches Taylor the ways of Christmas.
I am going to give the movie props for making the male lead the baker and the female lead the architect. (Yeah, we’ve already seen a female architect this season in A Majestic Christmas. Maybe it’s a new trope.) However, I have one giant problem with Gingerbread. I’m not sure if Mowry-Hardrict is uncomfortable with her mom bod or the director was trying to hide her second pregnancy (I’m not sure when the movie was filmed but she gave birth on May 5, 2018) but she spends the entire movie in either a cardigan, a jacket, or one giant sweater. (Yes, she has one giant sweater she wears without the jacket or cardigan. Everything else is covered up.) It was a little distracting to see everyone else wearing typical winter indoor wear and she has on a trenchcoat. As a matter of fact, it is what ruined the movie for me. It made it feel like there was some sort of judgement toward larger people. Which is annoying because she is absolutely not fat!
The rest of the movie was pretty bland. Taylor kept going on about how she travels so much and how she is an ARCHITECT so, therefore, she knows what she is talking about. And Adam repeatedly talks about how he wants to own his own bakery but the investors wouldn’t back him because he dropped out of culinary school. (I don’t think that’s how it works?) I suppose it’s awesome how Taylor includes Adam’s daughter in the project but it somehow feels contrary to her character. It’s more Tia and less Taylor.
If you are a fan of Tia Mowry-Hardrict, it isn’t a terrible watch. Just don’t expect an epic romance or even a decent story. It’s just meh.