Because when I think of Christmas, I naturally think about a steaming pile of Mario Lopez’s Fried Chicken
For a film directed by some random person named Jean (because the titles omit their last name), a Recipe For Seduction is quite frankly, a recipe for disaster. A Lifetime Christmas-time Fried Chicken romance movie starring Mario Lopez as Colonel Harlan Sanders, I’m not entirely certain who this movie is for, and frankly, I don’t really care. Because it’s funny enough as an extended KFC commercial and even funnier with just how well it works as a Lifetime movie. One that hits the Lifetime formula oddly spot on. With a short 15 minutes of pure blissful ridiculousness, A Recipe For Seduction is a surprising story about seduction, overcoming adversity, and the colonel’s famous fried chicken recipe.
Fair warning, this is a KFC sponsored film. So the opening scenes, naturally, feature an unnecessary long table dinner party equipped with silverware and desperate actors, all smiling to desperately to be seen next to the fried chicken panoramic shots. And even though not a single actor actually eats any of the KFC, I do believe this kind of spectacle would make Donald Trump proud, as it’s a dinner party filled with fast food and loads of uncomfortable people pretending to enjoy being there.
It’s here at this moment, where we learn about the evil millionaire Billy, along with and his reluctant to marry partner, Jessica. An heiress (played by Justine Alpert) looking for love and finding it in the new chef, Harlan Sanders. A man who cannot be bought with money and who’d like to earn his wealth his way: by becoming famous for his fried chicken secret recipe. It is a story about wealth, integrity, romance, and fried chicken. For a lifetime drama, you can do worse.
Overall, this movie is a fun way to waste 15 minutes if you like laughing at excessive corporate themed entertainment ventures as much as I do. Probably the biggest plot hole of this movie, beyond why it even exists in the first place, is where the conflict actually lies within the story. Because for all this conniving and talk about marriage for love, I’m not 100% certain why Jessica can’t marry Harlan in the first place? As apparently mom was more than down to get dirty with Billy and compose some bizarrely nefarious scheme to marry her daughter despite being in a romance with her hopeful son-in-law.
But maybe that’ll be addressed in the sequel.
