A Lifelong Love - Hallmark

A Lifelong Love was released early on their paid channel, Hallmark Movies Now, and that worked out for me because I needed some time to finish it, and also to reflect on what I was going to say about it. A good Hallmark movie certainly needs a solid story at the very least. But how about the directing, the acting and even the quality of the script (or teleplay)? These are all important. And, as usual, I have a lot to say about this week’s movie so let’s dive right in and talk about it!  

Hi, I’m Stephanie and welcome to the Magical Movie Club where, like you, I love to watch and chat about Hallmark movies. On May 4th we watched the Hallmark Channel premiere of A Lifelong Love, starring Andrea Brooks and Patch May. 

So far this spring we’ve seen a couple of movies starring the cast from When Calls the Heart, including Erin Krakow, Natasha Burnett and Viv Leacock. We’ve also even seen some supporting cast members show up like Johannah Newmarch and Hrothgar Mathews. This week Hallmark showed us one more with a supporting cast member, Andrea Brooks, with her taking the lead this time.  On When Calls the Heart she plays nurse-turned-doctor Faith Carter. I think she’s delightful in that role, but is she ready to hold her own as a lead character in this movie? We’re also introduced to Patch May. I searched for him on the Hallmark app and nothing else came up. 

So, let’s talk about A Lifelong Love!  The movie opens in black-and-white with a flashback scene going back to the early 1960s. A young couple in a diner is dancing to a tune playing on a jukebox. A soft, older male voice narrates the poetic story as he remembers his first love and says goodbye to her as he was leaving to join the service.

As we transition to the current day we see that the narrator was in-fact reading a poem written by his granddaughter, Annika, played by Andrea Brooks. She wrote the poem about her grandfather’s real-life experience and references posting it online on her social media page, Capturing Romance. We also learn that she’s planning to meet with a publisher about publishing a book including her work over the past decade.

As the conversation with her grandfather continues she’s shocked to learn that the love story referenced in that poem she wrote is not about her grandmother.  Apparently, his young love interest from the poem was his first love who did not wait for him to return from the service. When he returned four years later she was already married.

However, he also learned that her husband passed away about 10 years ago. He has tried to find her but never had any luck. And this is where Annika gets excited about the challenge of trying to find her grandfather’s first, long-lost love.

In the next scene we meet Ryan, played by Patch May. He’s talking to his niece in an apartment living room that also includes a computer desk and studio lighting. I recognize those umbrellas!

They’re talking about his photography portfolio. He can’t find it anywhere and his niece suggests he check his suitcase, where yes, that’s where it was! She says she “possesses standard inductive reasoning abilities” like she learned from the Golden Glass House mystery novels. The mentioning of those books pops up from time-to-time all throughout the movie so keep that in mind.

And now Annika is meeting with a representative from the publisher’s office, not the owner she was expecting to see, and she’s not exactly winning him over with the idea of publishing her anthology. While he is impressed with her social media following, as a publisher his concern is that an anthology isn’t marketable. He’s most definitely not the warm and fuzzy type. And he could certainly learn a thing or two about human interaction. But I can’t deny he may have a good point here.  (When he agrees with her that a lot of people would love her work, but not if they never read her book.)

After Annika’s meeting was abruptly dismissed, she texts her manager to meet her in the lobby of the building. She’s actually walking and texting at the same time when, in classic Hallmark style, she and Ryan collide. It’s funny, normally I would have something to say about walking and texting at the same time, but in this case did anyone else notice how Ryan was the one who appears to have made a beeline right into her? 

We find out here that the two already know each other. As Ryan points out they haven’t seen each other since…(she left him on one knee back in college). Apparently, he’s meeting with the same publisher to discuss a possible book of his own street photography. And it’s pretty obvious just how jealous she is that he’s more famous and more likely to win over this publisher. She finally works herself up over it and decides to storm back into his office in the middle of Ryan’s meeting. 

Let me just say that while I think that was totally inappropriate, I can see that move was necessary to set up what was to be the plot of the movie. You’ll see what I mean next.

To Annika’s surprise this publisher is no more impressed with a book of photography than one of poetry. What he’s looking for is something he can market that’s not just another coffee table book of photos. Perhaps a love story or a mystery! That’s when Ryan reminds Annika about their conversation in the lobby, the part about finding her grandfather’s long-lost love. And this gets the publisher’s attention. So much so, in fact, that he suggests the two of them write a book together about their journey to find her.

He wants Annika to write poems chronicling the love stories of the people they meet along the way. And Ryan is to document it all with photos. Now the catch is they need to post teasers on her Capturing Romance social media page, provide frequent updates to the publisher, and wrap it all up within two weeks! Yes, two weeks. No idea how realistic that is, but again, we wouldn’t have a movie without that detail.

Back out in the lobby the two of them discuss it further and decide to give it a go. Ryan also talks about his 12-year-niece who's staying with him while her parents are going through a separation. And this is the second time we hear about the Golden Glass House mystery novels.

So they pitch the idea to her grandfather, Abe, and to his niece, Ellie, and the four of them collaborate on this adventure to find Ruth Barlow. Abe starts searching for addresses through his old Christmas card file, Ryan and Ellie scour the internet for the name Ruth Barlow, and Annika says she will go find her "color-coded sticky notes!" 

After they’ve gathered some research, the first Ruth Barlow they meet works at a flower shop. It turns out she’s not the right one, but she is excited to share her love story for the research.

But before they can talk to her they have some time to kill. And the two of them tend to bicker a lot because, well not only do they have a history together, but they also have completely different approaches to how they work. Ryan is more laid back and lets inspiration come to him. Annika needs to deliberately schedule time to work. And to her, writing poems is all work, not necessarily any passion.

Over the course of the movie they meet some delightful Ruth Barlows who are excited to share their love stories, and Ryan captures every moment with his photography.

Annika, however, really struggles throughout the entire movie. She lacks self-confidence. They interviewed 15 people on the first day which means she needs to write 15 poems that night, and as she points out, she’s used to writing 15 poems in a year. Ryan tries really hard to get her to improv a bit, something he called Slam Poetry. I think of it as writing from the heart, not entirely from her head. She comes up with something, and reluctantly posts it on her blog even though she’s not comfortable with it, and the next morning Ryan points out that her readers love it. 

After a week has passed, and they’re no closer to finding the real Ruth Barlow, we see Ellie and Abe fixing dinner together. Once again, the subject of the Golden Glass House mystery novels comes up. Honestly, I was feeling like they were kind of forcing this on us by now. But when Annika and Ryan show up at dinnertime Ellie has an idea of her own. They had exhausted their search for Ruth Barlows nearby. So Ellie suggested they drive out to Abe’s hometown of Woodland Oaks, which is where he and Ruth met each other all those years ago. That wasn’t going to be an easy task, though, because he mentioned he looked in the white pages (I didn’t even know there still was a white pages) and found 256 Ruth Barlows!

The four of them set out to Woodland Oaks. Although I will say Ryan shouldn’t necessarily have followed his own instinct to NOT book a hotel before they all packed up and drove out there for the weekend. But it worked out well anyway with them staying at the historic, and haunted Troubador Inn! And as they walk in Ellie comments, “This is exactly like Golden Glass House.” In the next scene they even show us Ryan putting down a copy of one of the books on the bed as the camera zooms in on it a bit.

The next morning their plan was to stop by the county clerk’s office, where they picked up a copy of a file on the real Ruth Barlow. Even though it’s the weekend. Are county clerk’s offices open on weekends? I’m sorry, I digress. And Ellie is looking forward to seeing the diner where Abe and Ruth used to go all the time. You know, the one from the opening flashback scene.

It turns out the jukebox is still there and the same song they danced to all those years ago is still in it. The problem I have with this next scene is the four of them all danced to the song and clearly, the editing was way off. A LOT of people complained about that in their reviews online, too. There’s just no correlation between their dancing and the rhythm of the song that we hear.

But once they sit down and open up the file we start to learn more about what happened to Ruth. We know, for example, that she sold her home that she and her husband had shared ten years ago and she moved away. They also discover she had created an LLC at about that same time. I won’t tell you the name of the LLC, though. Just know it was still a mystery because it didn’t sound anything like her actual name.

Meanwhile the bond between Annika and Ryan gradually grows stronger. That is until things blow up when Ryan finds out that Annika hasn’t been truthful with him about submitting regular updates to the publisher, which they were required to do. She’s been hanging onto the hope that her manager would be able to convince the publisher to grant them an extension. Not only did that not work out, but the publisher pulled out of the project. 

Sometimes I’ve accused Hallmark of blowing a minor crisis out of proportion near the end, but this time I think this fight between them was entirely justified.

After the big fight everyone was packing up getting ready to go back home and Ellie sat down to start the second book in the Golden Glass House mystery series. And that’s when all the pieces started to fall into place. With this new-found inspiration they pushed through to find Ruth Barlow, and I’ll leave the rest of the ending up to you to see.

So now this is a good time to bring up some other aspects of this movie. You know, like the quality of the acting. I’m so sorry to have to say this, but it was sub-par to say the least. There were long pauses between dialogue. The lines felt forced. I think the best way I can describe it is I felt like they were merely reading or reciting their lines. None of it felt real to me.

Could it be a result of the script? When I looked it up I found there were 3 different writers being credited for this story. And I didn’t recognize any of their other works, so maybe? I also looked up the director. His name is Nicholas Humphries. But there, too, I haven’t seen any other works by him, either. As a matter of fact, I noticed the IMDB ratings of this director’s last 14 projects, and his average rating is a 5.3. This movie is sitting at 5.6 so I’m sorry to say that seems to fall right in line with this director’s other works. 

I didn’t want to be so disappointed, because the idea of this love story was really quite good. But the execution, well it certainly left something to be desired!

So that brings me to my age-old question, was it magical? It should have been, but it took me a few tries to finish watching this movie. There was no energy on screen. And without energy, there’s just no magic. Not for me, that is. So on that note, I’ll give this one a 2½ out of 5. 2½ is for the quality of the story and the character development. But realistically, I don’t see myself watching it again. 

Well, I think that wraps up my review this week.  Coming up next week we’ll be watching the premiere of A Whitewater Romance, starring Ben Hollingsworth and Cindy Busby. After that is another new one called Everything Puppies. And it features another star from When Calls the Heart, Kavan Smith.

As always, thank you so much for being here and being a part of the Magical Movie Club. We'll be back next week to chat more about our favorite magical movies!  

Hallmark Channel's Original Preview:  A Lifelong Love - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: A Lifelong Love