Why do I find this Hallmark Channel TV movie so good? In part because this story about a jazz trumpeter who starts teaching high school music hits a lot of my buttons. Mostly, I think, because the script by Wayne Lemon and direction by Eriq Lasalle starts with people doing things. They play the trumpet or get into fights or run away or simply look uncomfortable. This is a movie, after all, not a radio play and for it to be good, it needs to be visually interesting. Things have to move. Happily they do.
There are some problems with this movie, including the clichés it falls into. Eddie Cibrian is a jazz musician, so he wears a Miles Davis sort of beard, but he does look good in it; the school is threatened with being closed, and of course the band he starts is needed to help save it. However, this one is pretty much a model of how to take your standard Hallmark plot and do it very right.
There are some problems with this movie, including the clichés it falls into. Eddie Cibrian is a jazz musician, so he wears a Miles Davis sort of beard, but he does look good in it; the school is threatened with being closed, and of course the band he starts is needed to help save it. However, this one is pretty much a model of how to take your standard Hallmark plot and do it very right.