Now that the Countdown to Christmas is over, Hallmark’s latest grouping of themed romance movies have arrived under the “Winter Escape” umbrella. One of the first films to arrive under that theme is Polar Opposites, the story of a woman who heads to Antarctica when she believes her penguin researcher father is in distress. On the way, she meets a cute engineer who helps her get to the research station to find her dad, and in the process, the two fall for each other.
POLAR OPPOSITES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Snow-capped mountains and ice floes and penguins marching. We must be in Antarctica! A researcher, Ian Rivera, observes the penguins from a distance when, tragically, a piece of ice breaks off and something bad happens (off camera) to the penguin he was watching.
The Gist: Emma (Rhiannon Fish) is that penguin researcher’s daughter. After the ice shelf breaks off, she receives a barely intelligible call from his satellite phone and, though she can’t understand what he’s saying, she interprets it to be an emergency. She immediately starts to make plans to go see him at his research base in Antarctica, leaving her life as a courtroom sketch artist behind. (Emma wishes she could lead a more fulfilling artistic life, but honestly, “courtroom artist falling in love at the county jail” is the real movie I want to watch.)
In order to get to her dad, first Emma has to get to Buenos Aires, where a ship traveling to Antarctica is set to depart. Emma makes it to the ship, but without the appropriate papers and permits, she’s not allowed to board. That’s when she spots a different research team and decides to try and blend in with them and stowaway as part of their group. While wandering over by their things, she meets Andy (Markian Tarasiuk), an engineer leading the team, who introduces himself. Somehow she finagles her way on board, evading the ship’s captain, Ingrid.
Emma has no plan and no idea how long it takes to get to Antarctica, so she holes up in a linen closet trying to hide from the crew and Googles how long the trip is. (Spoiler, it’s ten days!) When she runs into Andy again, he assumes she’s a part of his crew since, you know, that’s what she told him in order to get on board, but she comes clean and admits she lied just to get to her father. Andy is furious because this could get him, not just Emma, in trouble. Andy agrees to house Emma in his room for the duration of the trip to keep her hidden fro Ingrid, but with just a few days left, Emma gets cabin fever.
She ventures out of the cabin and is spotted by Ingrid, and even though she evades capture, it puts everyone in the ship’s crew on high alert for a stowaway. In spite of that, she makes it to Antarctica and her dad’s research station, but Peg, the woman who manages the station, says she hasn’t seen him for days. They lend Emma a snowmobile to go look for her dad, but Andy, who will be living at the research station, too, insists on going with her.
The pair do indeed find Ian, who is shocked to see Emma there. She tells him how worried she was for him after receiving his despairing emergency phone call, and that’s when he explains, embarrassed, that the emergency is that one of his beloved penguins, Lola, is stranded on an ice floe that broke off from the mainland. If she swims to shore, she might get eaten by a killer whale, so Ian has been trying to rescue her to no avail. It may not seem like an emergency to some, but to Ian, who has spent his life immersed with these animals, losing Lola would be devastating. That’s when engineer Andy springs into action, experimenting with new techniques and building a device that will pull the ice floe to shore to reunite Lola wither her mate, Hugo. And, as a result, Emma and Andy realize maybe they’re pretty good life-mates, too.
Our Take: Polar Opposites is a clever but misleading title, because from the moment they meet, Emma and Andy are a match. Instead of making them foes or mismatched personalities, they actually seem perfect for each other, both are decent and kind and simply unlucky in love. The obstacle they have to overcome is simply concealing Emma from the ship’s crew as she makes her way to Antarctica – after that, it feels like they’re pretty much free to be a couple. It’s not quite so simple, because Ingrid still poses a problem (not only is she on the hunt for Emma the stowaway on her ship, but she also has a crush on Andy – she remains a presence throughout the movie because her ship is docked by the research station). But truly, there’s very little conflict or reason to keep the two protagonists from getting together once they’re off the ship.
The film’s subplot about reuniting two penguins is a sweet analogy for the broader romance, and while there’s nothing wrong with any of it, it feels free of really any drama or compelling plot, aside from wondering how they’ll rescue the animal. While everyone in the cast has that warm, genial Hallmark thing going for them, ultimately the film feels safe and bland, at best a laundry-folding distraction.
Parting Shot: In an epilogue, it’s four months later and Emma, presumably having secured all the correct permits this time, is back at the research station with Andy. She sits outside with Andy while she sketches a drawing of a baby penguin, Lola’s baby in fact, and names him Ian after her father. “Good luck out there, Ian. Don’t worry, one day you’ll find your match, too,” she tells the little penguin.
Performance Worth Watching: Honestly, I’m just here for the penguins.
Memorable Dialogue: “My dad told me it was built by British explorers,” Emma says when she and Andy locate her father’s remote cabin in the middle of Antarctica. “I think it makes him fgeel like Shackleton.”
“Better than Robert Scott!” Andy responds. If you, like me, have not brushed up on your Antarctic explorers lately, Ernest Shackleton was an explorer who visited Antarctica four times, most notably surviving on a remote island for nearly a year in 1915 after his ship was crushed by ice. Explorer Robert Scott met a worse fate when, in 1912, he and several of his team died returning from an expedition to the South Pole. You’ve gotta love a Hallmark movie that teaches you something!
Our Call: This was a tough call to make because there’s nothing inherently bad or wrong with Polar Opposites, but there’s also not a lot to it. While I think most Hallmark fans will enjoy it, I think it would be safe to SKIP IT.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Polar Opposites’ on the Hallmark Channel, A Romance About A Woman Who Falls For A Researcher On A Trip To Antarctica appeared first on Decider.
