Stream It or Skip It: ‘Making Waves’ on Hallmark, Where Holland Roden Tries to Sign Corey Cott to a Nashville Record Label

Hallmark’s Making Waves brings another summertime tradition into the Hallmark movie canon: the summer music festival. Holland Roden stars as a music label rep who is on a mission to sign a hot band — a hot band whose lead singer turns out to be her high school crush (Corey Cott). But does Making Waves hit all the right notes, or is the whole movie out of tune?

MAKING WAVES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Holland Roden (Teen Wolf) plays Amelia, a new agent at Nashville’s Dreamitreal Records (you read that right) who is very much not an assistant. Yes, she’s still getting coffee for her boss Lydia (Devil in Ohio’s Marci T. House), but she’s on the verge of heading up her very own indie division at Dreamitreal — and she’s got the perfect band to start with: the Figure 8’s. It just so happens that Figure 8’s are playing the Making Waves Music Festival back in Amelia’s hometown of Outer Banks, North Carolina. This is perfect! She knows the town, knows where the bands hang out, and she can stay at the inn owned by her high school bestie Sam (Tegan Moss, Christmas Bedtime Stories). There’s only one catch: while the Figure 8’s have a pretty big following on social media, their identities remain a mystery.

Once in Outer Banks, Amelia checks in with Sam… and it’s very clear that these two have only kept in touch via Facebook likes over the last 10 years. She hits up a local bar where visiting bands like to hang out and do impromptu sets, and that’s when she runs into another blast from the past: Will (The Good Fight’s Corey Cott). Amelia and Sam were close but they never made their true feelings known. It turns out that Will’s still keeping a secret, because he’s the lead singer of the Figure 8’s! Will Amelia’s rekindled feelings cloud her judgment? Can Amelia convince Will’s band to go for a more pop sound to please Lydia? And as if those problems weren’t big enough, there’s a big development company buying up all the land — including parts of the bar and inn!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: To say that Making Waves reminds me of classic romcoms like High Fidelity and That Thing You Do! would be a bit of a stretch… but I also can’t think of any other romances that are so concerned with music fandom and selling out.

Performance Worth Watching: Marci T. House steals another movie away from the leads with her performance as the high-maintenance, high-functioning disaster person that is Lydia. She compliments a stranger’s toe socks, takes a personal massager to her neck in front of employees, answers all spam calls — and then there’s this exchange:

• Amelia (on phone): “Are you okay?”
• Lydia (on phone): “No! I’m drinking office coffee!”

Memorable Dialogue: “After I graduated [from] TSU…”

Okay, the “office coffee” joke is the real winner here, but I have to take a moment because that detail stood out to me as a Tennessean. It’s established that Dreamitreal is located in Nashville, and Amelia says that she went to TSU. That’s either Tennessee State University or maybe Texas Southern University — both of which are HBCUs. I think what Amelia meant to say was that she went to MTSU, which is a public university with one of the most notable recording industry programs in the entire country. If Amelia lived in North Carolina and wanted to pursue a serious career in music, not as a musician of any sort, then she would absolutely go to MTSU.

Why, yes, I was a mass communications major at MTSU. Why do you ask?

Our Take: The risks that Hallmark movies are able to take outside of the holiday season continue to astound me. It’s not like we haven’t already seen Hallmark movies about millennials that actually feel kinda hip (Gen Z: you’re next). #Xmas and Wedding Season are two that spring to mind. But — and I can’t believe it — it turns out that Hallmark has more variations to explore in the millennials in love trend. This time around, we have a cast of characters who are passionate about music — and not, like, ballet or ballroom dancing or jazz or what we usually see in holiday movies. These are characters who like, for lack of a better term, rock and roll, baby.

Okay, they all specifically like the kind of indie rock that was ushered in with a “hey” and a “ho” by the Lumineers in 2012. But still — we have a leading lady who talks about being gifted Joni Mitchell’s Blue when she was 12, and friends who reminisce about being under 21 and hanging out outside of concert venues to hear the bands that they couldn’t get in to see. Add that to the fact that the Figure 8’s actually do sound like a real band and you have a Hallmark romance that feels… kinda hip? I mean, the movie opens with a shot of Amelia’s vinyl collection. It’s very hip, for Hallmark.

Making Waves also has an atmosphere to it, a southern vibe that feels unlike what we usually get in these movies. It’s not the South, exactly. It’s the coastal south, where dive bars dot the beach and boardwalks take you to old carnivals. Just the fact that the movie is set at a music festival feels fresh. It’s a side of summer that we don’t see dramatized enough, outside of Pawnee, Indiana.

With a late summer music festival on the North Carolina coast as the backdrop, and all of the characters united by a sincere interest in modern music (and not, like, bracelets or catering), Making Waves feels unique while still feeling like Hallmark. If you’re the kind of viewer who cheers when the tropes pop up, you’ll be pumping your fist when a “we gotta save the small business” rallying cry is made.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Making Waves isn’t just a cover of the usual Hallmark tune. It adds its own personal, dare I say cool, flair to the formula we love.