Stream It or Skip It: ‘Come Fly with Me’ on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Casts Heather Hemmens as an Air Force Pilot Wooed by Niall Matter

Romance takes flight on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries with Come Fly with Me, a romance with a just a touch of the network’s trademark drama. Hallmark mainstays Heather Hemmens and Niall Matter star as single, working parents — and their daughters are determined to play matchmaker. Does Come Fly with Me ever get off the ground, or does it stay on the tarmac for hours leaving you stranded without air conditioning?

COME FLY WITH ME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Heather Hemmens (A Pinch of Portugal) plays Emma “Blitz” Fitzgerald, a USAF pilot who’s just taken on a new position with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds, America’s premier aerobatic team. This new assignment will keep Emma and her daughter Lucy (The Power’s Pietra Castro) in Las Vegas, and near Emma’s mom Carol (Family Law’s Lossen Chambers) for a couple of years.

Niall Matter (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries) plays Paul, the owner of an outdoors gear store who — you guessed it — is also a single parent to a tween (Circuit Breakers‘ Georgia Acken). And since this tween, Alice, is obsessed with aviation and has Carol as a doctor… You see where this is going? When kids Alice and Lucy hit it off, Paul and Emma are suddenly thrown together — and they hit it off, too. That’s when Alice and Lucy come up with a plan, while doing some indoor camping in Paul’s store: if they can get Emma to marry Paul, maybe Emma and Lucy won’t have to move away in two years. Hey, crazier plots have been hatched in Hallmark movies!

But this being a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries movie, there are some serious problems to solve. Will Emma let her drive to be the best aerobat (which apparently is a term) keep her from committing to a relationship with Paul? And then there’s Alice’s congenital heart condition, a problem that Dr. Carol’s keeping an eye on but will surely keep aspiring pilot Alice grounded. If she’s not gonna fly, can she at least get a new mom and sister?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is The Parent Trap meets all of the airbase flashback scenes from Captain Marvel and overlaid with the Hallmark filter.

Performance Worth Watching: Georgia Acken is the real standout. She manages to tell an entire life story (albeit a shorter one, because she’s a child) with just a sigh. The scene where she gets a little winded helping her dad sort stock and tells Lucy about her heart surgery is a real standout, as is the way Acken generally plays Alice as a passionate kid who truly does not want her dumb old heart to stand in her way. You feel for the kid!

Memorable Dialogue: Paul after his first time up in a jet: “I felt like my face was gonna slide off!”

Our Take: What I assume is Hallmark’s methodology of finding visually interesting locations and/or professions and then building a movie around them continues to yield movies that feel at least a step above what I’d consider Hallmark’s average. Come Fly with Me is billed as a romance between an Air Force pilot (Hemmens) and a Niall Matter-lookin’ guy (Matter), and the movie absolutely delivers on that. There are enough aerial shots, especially from cockpit and P.O.V. cams, that should make Come Fly with Me worth it if your primary interest is “hell yeah, jets.”

Fortunately for those who decide to get cozy on the couch to this Friday night movie, the romance and characters that flesh out the movie’s non-airborne scenes are classic Hallmark, through and through. Hemmens and Matter play the usual driven-yet-convivial leads that we’re used to seeing in these movies. They live the kind of Hallmark existence where only one or two problems exist at a time, in this case Emma’s need to tighten up her part of the routine and also Alice’s heart condition. Everything else is great, from Emma’s all-male squadron to the guy who set up an in-store display at Paul’s shop. “Please let Ricky know that I love what he did with this display!” — we will never meet Ricky, but darnit, we know he’s good at his job.

What makes Come Fly with Me feel unique and what piqued my interest aside from all the fighter jet flyovers has to be the kids, Lucy and Alice. Their immediate best friendship, and the way they interact with each other’s parents, takes Come Fly with Me just a little further. For instance, we get a scene where the kids give Paul and Emma 90-second makeovers for a TikTok challenge. Just Hallmark acknowledging that TikTok exists feels like the network taking a barrel roll into the modern era.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Come Fly with Me isn’t breaking any new ground for the Hallmark movie, but it is fun to just watch one of these movies soar.