Stream It or Skip It: ‘The Professional Bridesmaid’ on Hallmark Casts Hunter King as a Bridal Party Problem Solver

Hallmark bounds into wedding season with The Professional Bridesmaid, a movie that marries two of Hallmark’s passions: romance and small businesses. Hunter King (A Royal Corgi Christmas) and Chandler Massey (A Tale of Two Christmases) team up for a springtime fling, but is this movie worth RSVPing to? Or should you quietly decline the invite?

THE PROFESSIONAL BRIDESMAID: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Hunter King plays Maggie Bailey, a professional bridesmaid — which is exactly what it sounds like. She’s hired as essentially a bridal party ringer, there to pick up all the slack and then some as the bride deal with her big day and compensate for any bridesmaids who are providing more headaches than help. She’s just finished a job and is prepping for vacay when her bestie, wedding planner Nora (Donna Benedicto), says she has the perfect gig for them: the wedding of Alexis Shepard (Francesca Bianchi), the mayor’s daughter. The cherry on top: Maggie can schmooze with some investors and hopefully get her professional bridesmaid gig funded all with a hearty recommendation from Mayor Shepard (Roark Critchlow). What could go wrong?

Enter: Chandler Massey as Henry Whittington, a scrappy political reporter whose paper folded and now he has to work for the flawlessly named website Columbuzz Digital (no notes). His first assignment: covering the mayor’s daughter Alexis’s wedding with daily posts about picking up the dress, choosing the wine, planning the bridal shower, all that stuff that Henry is very embarrassed to write. But if he does the job well, he’ll get carte blanche to write about local political happenings.

Now Maggie has to do her job while remaining undetected by the other bridesmaids, who all think she’s a sommelier from New York City named Maisie, she has to shake off suspicions from Henry and his investigative inclinations. That’s gonna be even tougher to do since the two of them are clearly a match — but is Henry going to still have feelings for Maisie when he finds out she’s really Maggie, bridesmaid for hire?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The perpetual bridesmaids gigs and journalism angle makes this feel like a remixed 27 Dresses.

Performance Worth Watching: Lillian Doucet-Roche (#Xmas) is gifted the role of Chloe, estranged and strange cousin-of-the-bride and she steals her scenes. There’s a real tightly-wound yet flighty mania simmering behind her eyes the instant Maggie/Maisie tries to take control of planning the bridal shower, and it makes Chloe the character to watch. Things that simmer tend to boil over!

Memorable Dialogue: I really loved Jillian Walchuck’s influencer bridesmaid Shannon reaching out to a designer for gowns and obliviously asking while texting, “We’re all sample size, right?”

Our Take: The Professional Bridesmaid continues Hallmark’s recent trend of making movies that are formulaic but still self-aware and — most importantly — fun. The Professional Bridesmaid is fun from minute one, when we first see Maggie zipping down the sidewalk on a scooter while in full bridesmaid regalia. Hunter King is instantly likable as Maggie, and she brings a real level-headed yet spirited vibe to a role that could have been low-key impossible to pull off considering the movie’s premise.

Maggie is a professional bridesmaid, and the movie doesn’t shy away from the weirdest part of the gig: Maggie is hired by the bride to basically infiltrate the bridal party, like a spy. Her job requires that the bride lie to, like, everybody about who this incredibly high-profile person is on her wedding day. It’s a ridiculous premise — can you imagine a bride wanting to keep a secret identity straight while also being a bride — but it’s one that the movie doesn’t shy away from. And instead of calling attention to how preposterous the job is, Hunter King sells this idea the more she’s on screen. She’s so on top of her character, a character who is on top of (almost) every problem, that you kinda shrug off all the contrivances. It’s a Hallmark movie!

The only place that The Professional Bridesmaid really falters is in its adherence to the Hallmark formula — and the formula is usually a feature of these movies, not a bug. But this premise is ridiculous and rich, and you can feel it pushing against the boundaries of what a Hallmark romcom usually is. This movie is filled with characters that are begging for more and more screentime, especially cousin Chloe, influencer Shannon, and Ruthie (Ecstasia Sanders), the bridesmaid who’s planning her wedding during Alexis’ wedding. These characters have so much comedic potential that you really want to see Maggie try to simultaneously placate and evade them while ensuring that all of the bridesmaid rituals happen. Instead, this is a Hallmark movie and Hallmark movies require multiple walk-and-talk scenes with the love interest (the affable and handsome Chandler Massey). Hallmark romcoms aren’t really ensemble comedies, even if The Professional Bridesmaid desperately needed to be one.

All that being said, spending more time with King and Massey isn’t a bad thing! They have natural chemistry… but man, I woulda loved to see more of these characters interacting. That’s the sign of a good Hallmark movie, though, when they leave you happily wanting more.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Professional Bridesmaid is a genuine romcom that feels ambitious for Hallmark.