Gilded Newport Mysteries: Murder at the Breakers

I was so looking forward to this as I am a fan of Hallmark mysteries and have been very impressed with their period works like "Three Beds, Two Bathrooms and One Ghost" (with the incredible Madeline West) and "A Biltmore Christmas". But, this movie is a huge failure.

The entire cast (except for Nanny) is awful, with the lead actress sleepwalking her way through the role. The lead detective looks like a surfer dude and the third component of this "love triangle" is a complete bore. Add to that a story with horrible pacing and some unbelievably sophomoric detective work. I finally fast-forwarded to the last 10 minutes to find out whodunit because I couldn't take it anymore.

Hallmark, you've been warned. If this really is the first episode of a series, recast the main leads and for crying out loud, enough with the dopey curls!

Hallmark did a wonderful job with A Biltmore Christmas, filming on location at the Biltmore in NC. I was sad to find out watching this movie, they did not even bothered to film it at the Breakers. Such a magnificent site to see in person. That would have been a saving grace for this bland and slow paced movie. Instead they filmed at the well played out castle in Canada. Aka Lex Luther's house in Smallville and a bunch of other shows.

I saw this series of books at the gift shops at those famous Newport mansion and they are on my list to read. Definitely so now after reading the other reviews that mention how good the books are compared to this movie.

I looked forward to this group of Hallmark movies. I was so disappointed to see them ignoring historical truths of the time. I don't think different races mixed in higher social settings.

The clothes didn't fit right and were of the wrong fabric. Baggy full length gloves , baggy bodices, even the men's jackets and shirts were baggy.

The female hairstyles had curls dangling onto the face. In this time, hair was put up and didn't usually have curls hanging on the face. If curls were present, the were next to the ears, not in face.

Houses could have been wonderful but instead looked cheap and had the wrong floor coverings.

The plot wasn't bad but the directing and production aspects left it wanting.

I think these mysteries have big potential but can't be done on the "cheap".

I hope if there are more of the movies developed from one of my favorite book series the characters will be stronger. I am not happy with the actors that are playing most of these parts. I know people say all the time that it doesn't know how we imagined these characters to be. If more are made, when nothing has changed, I won't be watching more of these movies. Hopefully they just need to get into the parts better. Emma's character in the books are much stronger. I'm sure it isn't the actors problem as much as it is the writers. I guess I just expected more. I expected more from Hallmark movies and mysteries.

Does Hallmark not hire professionals to write and direct their movies? I found the script to be typical and extremely lazy. The continuity of emotion was all over the place... it just didn't make sense at times and left me scratching my head and rolling my eyes... and it was obvious it was to create drama that just wasn't realistic at all. The main character's dialect was that of a high school teenager from Southern California in2024 while the accent of her main love interest was like he was a part of the British royal family itself.

Racism sucks and we all hate the way it was in the past, but for a historical piece it was just not realistic at all.

And finally why is the main character the ONLY ONE who does ANY investigating? It's like every one of the other investigators are completely incompetent.