Hallmark Watch: The Stars Between Us (2026)

Watched:  03/03/2026

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Robison

I didn't used to post on Hallmark movies I put on as time-fillers, but I'm trying to be accurate.  I kind of watched this while looking up other things.

Why we watched this boiled down to neither of us being in the mood for anything challenging as we dealt with other things, and I'd already stated that I am watching basketball Wednesday night, so as this was highly ranked at Ye Olde Hallmark, this is what we landed on.

It stars Sarah Drew, who is a big name on TV in shows I don't watch (Grey's Anatomy, for example), and Matt Long who I know from Mad Men a few years back.  But those are just the folks on the poster.  This movie has a B-romance plot featuring Donna Benedicto (who is in a million things) and Noah Paul.  

The basic gist of the film is that seven years prior, Kim (Drew) met Malcolm (Long) briefly at an Eclipse party.  He was there as an astronomer, and she was there for vague reasons with a fiance.  They met and had an instant connection as they talked for what seemed to be about ten minutes before she ran off to her late-arriving fiance.  

Seven years later, Kim is working at a TV station in the news department, divorced, living with her mom and has a kid in tow when she lands an on-camera assignment to cover the eclipse.  This will make or break her career.

Weirdly, despite marriage and the passage of seven years, she's still thinking about a guy she talked to once in a field.  He is, of course, unbeknownst to her, heading back to that field to do more of same.  He's also now faculty somewhere working on publishing his book, I guess so he can get on tenure track.  He's aware a former faculty he worked with is at the eclipse, too, and he hopes to get the guy's support for publishing his book. 

I don't want to write about the movie.  It was dumb.  It didn't know at all how academic publishing works even though that was a major plot point, and is highly-knowable if you use Google.  And the ending was, I am sure, clever on paper, but made me want to bounce tennis balls off the foreheads of the characters.  

It is not often I end a movie bellowing "booooo!" at the screen, but here I did.  Five thumbs down.  It is a movie about the Moon literally getting between us and a star.  The title is dumb AF.

Also, Donna Benedicto is in lots of these in supporting roles.  She should be a lead.  She's better than half of Hallmark's current roster of swappable stars and has a personality.