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Reviews
Legend of the Lost Locket (2024)
Strange and odd
I think about halfway through this movie, I decided it just didn't make sense. Our heroine hails from London, visits a small town in the NE USA to hunt for a lost locket half, and immediately breaks into the town hall at night looking for archives that should help her in her search. Of course, there are security alarms that tip off the town sheriff who arrives, arrests her, and then gets involved in the locket search. Make sense to you?
Then we get the feeling that someone is stalking our heroine and reading her private notes, probably learning about the locket and hoping to discover the valued item first. This "mystery" is pretty easily explained when the culprit is caught on another illegal (attic, this time) search & she confesses everything previously denied because of a bluffed fingerprint identification (which isn't true). After all is said and done, the locket is found (finally) & the sheriff and heroine somehow fall in love and she stays in the small town to start her antique business and be with her sheriff.
The production values are pretty good except for one glaring exception: lighting and camera work on black actors aren't up to the challenge. It is as though we really don't know how to photograph dark-skinned actors in such a way as to see their expressions and complexions realistically. Still makes no sense.
Blind Date Book Club (2024)
So close, almost there
I was hoping that this would not be a typical Hallmark treatment of a romantic involvement, that just maybe, there wouldn't be the cringe-worthy, embarrassing, and/or ludicrous made-up reason for why our hero/heroine might not be able to get together. All went really well until the last quarter of the show, when the established writer posing as an unknown neophyte was exposed by his attending the book club where his new book was roundly canned in front of an NPR reporter who recognized him. The plot line of our heroine caught between selling her bookstore and her possible return to selling real estate was just submerged under the weight of the author's embarrassment and exposure as a fraud. Overall, I wanted to like the love story but the crashing thud of the plot near the end made it a moot point. Who cares whether they get together or not?
Haunted Harmony Mysteries: Murder in G Major (2023)
What a load
Not sure where other reviewers are coming from, but this cute premise built on fantasy books has no connection to reality, much less to being called entertainment. Mysteries often have really strange plots and red herrings and surprise villains, but this "series" (let us hope NOT) overwhelms the category with the truly unbelievable.
A ghost that our musician detective is the only one who can see and talk with; an ending which looks like a wedding for two dead lovers headed for heaven (where Ghost1 takes a message from earth to the musician's father and brings back greetings from him); and lots of love triangles among the living (and dead) with even more insincere acting among the bunch.
Writing poor; acting almost non-existent; plot beyond thin; skip this and any future episodes if you value your time in the future. (I am.)
The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango (2023)
Not your usual detective story
This was absolutely fanciful, impossible, and seriously humorous for Hallmark to attempt a new angle on the mystery genre with a dancing detective! And not only for Lacey Chabert to go from zero to 120 in learning to dance (the tango!) after NEVER having danced once in her entire life, but to end this episode with the hope that her dance instructor partner and she might team up in other foreign locales to detect & dance their way through more adventures...
As other reviewers have averred, the Malta shots on location are the real attraction here, and I was thrilled with those shots (hoping that the dialogue would not start up too soon.) But the silly premise hangs over the whole enterprise and dooms this "series" to a poisoned ending, in spite of the fun relationship developing between our two stars.
Garage Sale Mysteries: Searched & Seized (2020)
Sad to see the series end, but...
I've finally gotten around to watching all the existing episodes of this series and, for the most part, it's been great fun. Except for some really obvious goofs, as in this episode, starting a trip to the "hideout" during strong daylight but arriving in the dead of night (after at most, a few minutes), the writing was usually cogent and the mystery held together pretty well. The perpetrators were always hard to figure out, given the many red herrings that were sprinkled throughout the hour plus, and the characters always fun and a joy to welcome back. One tiny regret: knowing that Lori's imprisonment would end the series, I held a secret hope that the writers would have her arrested at the end of this show as a conspirator in the counterfeiting ring. It would have been a major wrench in the gearbox, of course!