Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop

Being an Anglophile, I was thrilled to see that this was filmed in England. I'm a sucker for a British Estate.

Anyway, I am glad I stuck with this. It started out a tad slowly but it held my interest. At first though I didn't even realize that Kelsey was playing the older version of the guardian who took over the young girl's tutelage after her parents' passing. I had to look at the IMDB cast credits to get it straight.

The lead actress playing the adult version (whose parents passed away) had a nice rapport with Kelsey. Her fascination with martial arts classes at the film's outset was confusing though. Apparently, it coincided with her education and interests reflected in the young girl's reading material shown early on.

Overall, it was a tidy little film that I feel could have been bolstered with more suspense and/or thrills to be a true "haunting." Kelsey was the only actor with whom I was familiar but the rest of the cast kept up with him.

Obviously intended to kickstart another TV 'cosy crime' series. Nathalie Cox is unfortunately both bland and cold as wealthy mystery solver Miss Willoughby, trained in military strategy and martial arts since childhood after the deaths of her parents (very 'Batman' - she even lives in a ridiculously large, isolated mansion); but co-lead Kelsey Grammer is as watchable as ever as her Alfred-like assistant/mentor, Robert. You'll probably see the solution to this paranormal head scratcher coming a mile away, but it passes the time well enough. Not sure I can see this becoming a hit franchise. 6/10.

This is a sweet little English mystery. It has some potential, but no surprises. I quite liked the actors.

Overall, the movie feels like it would be part of a series, yet not the FIRST one. I was puzzled by the many references to backstory not explained: antagonistic history with the psychiatrist, mentions of Miss Willoughby being a bit a sleuth, lack of details about the books she authored, the detective's reference to trouble often finding her. Initially, I thought there must have been a previous movie, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The lack of basic logic is hard to swallow. With a woman having hallucination and paranoia, who is also on medication, it seems like the first step would be to verify that the medication is what it should be. I'm also curious how such a well put together woman manages without a purse. She's wearing skin tight riding breaches. I suppose there are pockets in her jacket, although it's fairly tailored. Are the pockets large enough to hold keys, cell phone, hairbrush, extra makeup....the things we women usually carry around?

Before I watched this film, I thought it's going to be unbearable seemingly this is some kind of low budget film. But I was amazed to see it turned out to be a watchable film. Yes, the story is simple and so plain, but the director somehow managed to make it not to feel bored. I wasn't feeling bored while I was watching it even though I was kind of feeling sleepy. I woke up completely after 15 minutes of watching this film because it seemed to be interesting and I enjoyed the whole thing.

Anyway, it was fun and I kind of had good time with this film. Although this film is doing okay and watchable, if the story was better than now, it'd be more interesting and I might give it more stars.

Right, well initially I was lured in by this 2021 crime mystery's title. I mean, with it being titled "Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop", I figured that I would be in for something with some kind of haunting.

But imagine my surprise when I found out that what I was in for was something rather different. Yeah, "Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop" from writers Josh Ridgway and Kate Wood felt like a movie based on a cheap mystery novel. You know, the ones that come a dime a dozen and aimed at a slightly older audience. That is how this movie came off to me. So I was somewhat disappointed with it not having ghosts.

And I also have to say that the fact that Kelsey Grammer was on the cast list helped to win me over to sit down and watch the movie.

Director Brad Watson didn't really deliver a movie that fell all that much into my liking. Sure, a mystery movie is fine, but not if it feels like one of those cheap crime mysteries that you have tossed at you with the purchase of a weekly magazine. The storyline simply was too stereotypical, generic and predictable. And there weren't much of any suspense or thrills throughout the course of the movie.

Sure, it was fun to watch Nathalie Cox and Kelsey Grammer playing together in a movie again and at the same mansion nonetheless. They worked togethat at the very same location back in 2020 for the Christmas movie titled "Father Christmas". So that was a fun thing to witness, not that it had any influence on the storyline or anything.

The acting performances in the movie were good. But the storyline was just a tad too generic and mundane for my liking.

My rating of "Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop" lands on a four out of ten stars.