Un amour irrésistible

In our quest to watch every Hallmark movie ever made, my wife and I found this one on DVD from our local library.

She is a New York City lawyer, she and her mother are going through things of her deceased grandmother. (Played well by Shirley Jones, in a well-preserved deceased state, conversing with granddaughter.) Among the items are a letter to be delivered "by hand" to a person and address in a small fishing village in Maine.

Delivery of that letter opens lots of doors and windows, as she meets the man who is the heir to the letter, his great uncle who almost was the husband of the deceased grandmother. But they decided to take different paths. Knowing this and sizing up her own situation influences her decisions, will she go back to New York or will she stay?

(Part of the story is discovering a number of paintings her grandmother had done as a young woman, something her family had not been aware of.)

We enjoyed this movie, it pretty well follows the Hallmark formula and the actors create characters easy to care about.

Almost always enjoy movies with Alison Sweeney or Marc Blucas. There are some Hallmark actors that never disappoint and these two are on my list. What can I say about the movie? Great chemistry between Alison and Marc. Great cast, just enough humor to have me chuckling.

My only problem is the dart game Dead Presidents, I don't know how to play darts but shouldn't their target be a bill with a President on it? Benjamin Franklin was never a president dead or otherwise. I understand that they were playing for 100 dollars. They could have used two 50 dollar bills since Grant, a president, is actually on that bill. If the target doesn't have to be a president, then they should call the game something else.

Just saying and whew, got that off my chest.

Loved that she became a celebrity in the town as The Swimmer and the Karaoke scene, where she realizes that she no longer wants to be "living in somebody else's skin".. the whole movie was charming and just what I have come to expect from Alison and Marc.

If a sequel is not possible Hallmark at least needs to pair Marc and Alison in other movies, they are great together.

Read the book too, it is very good.

My local library offered up this DVD, originally a 2017 Hallmark TV movie. I'll readily admit it's not normal fare for me but I wanted to give it a try.

As one might expect it's sweet, poignant, predictable, and a little quirky. Alison Sweeney is very charismatic as Ellen, a NYC lawyer who travels to the small town of Beacon, Maine to deliver a mysterious letter from her recently deceased grandmother (Shirley Jones).

While trying to take photos from a rickety pier, Ellen falls into the water and is rescued by the dashing local Roy, who just happens to be the great nephew of the addressee of the letter. Marc Blucas ably portrays Roy and the chemistry between Ellen and Roy is believable. Oops! The complication is that Ellen has just been proposed to by Hayden (Kavan Smith), an aspiring politician.

With wonderful cinematography, I did get a good sense that I was in a small town in Maine. No regrets from me that I escaped for a while into this feel-good tale from Hallmark.

Any one of the three primary characters in the triangle, if they are on the bill I will give that movie a go. Marc Blucas has done several great roles for Hallmark and Allison Sweeney even more so, but Kavan Smith - anyone who can act so patient so constantly with Rosemary Coulter has got to be good.

Unfortunately I won't say this was the greatest role for any of those three, but Sweeney and Blucas did have chemistry and were good to watch. The story premise was somewhat fresh if not unique. Still there were no great highs or lows, nor were there any great surprises. The existing fiancé, in Smith, was hard to dislike but they did make it clear they weren't in sync.

Despite the intended excitement of the karaoke, I was a little disappointed.

This movie was a great surprise. Alison Sweeney was the actress from "Love on the Air". Absolutely loved her. Looked up her bio and she's been in 1800 episodes of Days of Our Lives. She was perfect. What a great role for Shirley Jones as the grandma. Marc Blucas from "Operation Christmas" was perfect as a construction worker. Kavan Smith from "When Calls the Heart" plays in a similar role. The crowd at the motel/inn was very well done and added so much to the movie. They gave our lead actress the nickname swimmer then got her to Karaoke "Foot Loose" (an excellent memorable scene). Now the blue berry plot did not make much sense and was a bit of a stretch, but this was a fun filled movie with true emotion.