For Love & Honey - Hallmark

I’m trying to figure out what kind of movie this was this week. Was it a love story? A mystery? How about a PSA? There was plenty going on this week and as usual I’ve got a lot to say about this one 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 June 1st we watched For Love & Honey, starring Andrew Walker and a newcomer to Hallmark, Margaret Clunie.

Andrew Walker probably needs no introduction. He has been in many Hallmark movies and mysteries over the years and has worked with some of my favorites like Nikki DeLoach, Autumn Reeser, and Lacey Chabert, to name just a few. But I suspect the first movie that probably comes to most Hallmark movie fans’ minds is Three Wise Men and a Baby. Margaret Clunie, as I just mentioned, is a newcomer to Hallmark. I don’t know much about other than she is from England so the accent is hers.

For Love and Honey is set in Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean just south of Sicily. In the opening scenes, aside from the stunning scenery, we’re bounced back and forth between Eva, played by Margaret Clunie, who’s riding a motor scooter across the island, and Austen, Andrew Walker’s character, giving a lecture in a university classroom. I will say the scooter scene was interesting because for the rest of the entire movie she drives an old truck that becomes essential to the story. But, you’ll see in a moment why the scooter was necessary for the opening.

The topic of Austen’s lecture is a 17th century Jesuit priest by the name of Jacques de Beauvoir, who traveled to America in 1630 but stopped in Malta along the way. His time in Malta was significant but there were some incomplete references in his diary notes about his time there, such as a diagram of a box. The significance of this box, and the role it played in the prosperity that he apparently brought with him to the new world, becomes important to the movie. We’ll get to those details more in a bit.

The next scene is one that we see in almost all new Hallmark movies these days, what do they call it, the “Meet Cute?” Eva is now riding through some very narrow streets in the town of Port Grace and Austen walks out right in front of her while he’s looking at his phone. She swerves sharply and skids to the ground to avoid hitting him. That should have been quite painful. Although he does immediately apologize, she snaps at him for not watching where he was going and he snaps right back accusing her of speeding, and before we know it she’s throwing insults at him. This collision scene has been seriously overdone in recent Hallmark movies and I would love to see something more original by now. Especially because at exactly 4 minutes into the movie I had already decided she made a rather negative first impression. And the way Eva ended up ranting on about that meeting in the next scene, it was a cookie-cutter replica of the beginnings of Falling in Love in Niagara.  

In another scene she’s talking to a group of locals, including the Beekeeper’s Alliance and the mayor of Port Grace, about a shortage of food for the bees and suggests planting bee-friendly wildflower gardens all over the town. The mayor then mentions the first Annual Port Grace Honey Festival is coming up this weekend and asks for volunteers to form a subcommittee to come up with a marquee event. Really? The festival is literally days away and only now is he coming up with this? Well, as he leaves he tries to coerce Eva and/or her sister Chloe, into volunteering to head this up. Although Chloe isn’t a major character, we do learn over the course of the movie that she is very creative at planning and organizing events like this.  

Next, over at the library Eva has been asked to help remove some bees that are getting inside. They call it a "bee-mergency?" That’s because Eva, as we’ll soon find out, runs the family’s long standing apiary, a beekeeping business, and happens to be an expert on bees and honey. Apparently her mother ran it for years but Eva took over when her mother passed away a year ago. It has actually been struggling recently and even though Chloe has a lot of ideas to help it out, such as theme tours, Eva dismisses them all as she is already overwhelmed as it is. 

When she arrives at the library, her friend Luna now points out that she’s still driving the old truck. The fact that earlier she got right back on the scooter to drive away is an indication it wasn’t too damaged in the fall. So when and why did she suddenly switch to the truck? Anyway, it’s not critical to the story. Luna segues right on to the also cookie-cutter script about Eva’s lack of a love life and how she hasn’t had anyone serious in her life since, “insert last boyfriend’s name here.” That’s also getting a bit too repetitive nowadays.

However, the library is where Eva and Austen meet once again. You see Austen is the one bothered by bees flying around him while he’s trying to do some archaeological research. And of course Eva yells at him for swatting at one of the bees. I actually loved his reaction when he saw who it was! "Are you following me?!"

But, also like the beginning of Falling in Love in Niagara, I was bothered by Eva’s petty, childish behavior toward him as she intentionally pushed one of his research books off the desk onto the floor as she was leaving. I promise you I’m doing my best to not go off on another rant about this type of awful behavior from Hallmark’s leading ladies, because that would simply be unladylike myself, and I’m trying to be better than that. But you know how I feel when I see this! 

After Eva seals up the hole in the wall with some tissues and Scotch tape, which I noticed she calls “cello” tape, Austen jumps to his feet because there’s a bee crawling on his desk. To be more precise, it’s crawling on a 400-year-old census he was studying and when she scoops it up with the bee on it she looks at Austen like she absolutely couldn’t care less about what happens to the census. She treats it like a piece of scrap paper which was seriously disrespectful in my opinion. She’s so smug and arrogant around him. Granted, he didn’t have to egg her on, either, which clearly he enjoyed doing sometimes.  

Well, when they went outside to follow the bee to search for its hive, they found it in a corner of a wall that turned out to be a significant archeological find. That must be why she had to drag out the old census with the bee, because if she hadn’t, Austen wouldn’t have followed her over there and he wouldn’t have noticed the wall.

I will say I was fascinated by some of the history we learned in this movie about Malta. Like when Eva mentioned the building may have once been either Roman or Punic or Greek or Phoenician. That's how I learned that Malta is a conglomerate of all these different cultures over thousands of years.

Well, later in the day Eva removed the hive and put it in a wooden box. And as she was scraping the wall Austen walked up behind her to see how she was doing. Well, she was startled and snapped at him again. Fortunately he didn’t care one bit about that because he was focused on what she was uncovering with her scraping. Aside from the fact that the plaster, or whatever that was on the surface, crumbled away remarkably easily, what was unexpectedly uncovered was a fresco, basically an ancient mural, painted on the wall. He was absolutely ecstatic about this discovery and hugs her with all his excitement.

The secret of this fresco, and whether or not it has anything to do with Jacques de Beauvoir’s diary, becomes the theme of the movie and the mystery to be solved.

The argument that ensues next is whether or not he has the right to study the fresco while Eva argues the need to continue removing the straggler bees that will undoubtedly return. Fortunately, the mayor is actually quite reasonable with his solution to allow both to do their work simultaneously for the moment. 

Now, I can’t figure out how much time has passed, but I’m guessing some time must have passed, because when Austen arrives at the Apiary to meet with Eva to begin working with her on the fresco, she says she won’t be available for a few hours because a tour is about to start. And we know from the first conversation Eva had with her sister at the beginning of the movie that Chloe just thought of the idea of opening the Apiary for tours. Obviously this sort of thing takes some planning and advertising to bring in guests for a tour.  I don’t know, let’s continue.

Since Austen has to wait anyway he decides to join the tour, against Eva’s wishes. At this point I think she’s being disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable, but Austen really wants to study that fresco and she’s her ticket to do so, so he puts up with her.  

I have to say I’m glad he did because the little bit of Malta’s history that they shared with us, the viewer, during her tour of the Pacifika Grove Apiary, I found quite fascinating. And it was so much nicer to see Eva smile for once, as opposed to constantly scowling at and bickering with Austen, when she was talking about something she was passionate about.

The movie also showed us a lot about real bees and their significance in Malta. I’m going on face-value here so I do hope there’s some truth to what they showed us in the movie.

When they finally got back over to the fresco Eva suggested the buildings depicted in the picture could be an ancient map of Malta, and being familiar with Malta, she has some ideas as to what the buildings might be. But when Austen asked her to accompany him on his journey to try to figure this all out she got all snippy again. Well, she was at first but she caved when he promised her it would be fun.

The next day, the day they were to start on their adventure together, the Mayor shows up to begin discussing the marquee event for the festival. So clearly I was wrong about the passage of time. Apparently it has only been one day since the start of the movie. That impromptu tour of the Apiary that Eva gave to those honeymoon couples was apparently already planned by her sister. I’m just not so sure she told Eva about it before. Oh well, let’s continue.

Fortunately for the mayor, Chloe was chock full of ideas for the festival which left Eva available to head out with Austen.

At their first stop they explored the inside of a cave and came upon a drawing of a bird. Eva recognized the bird as a honey guide bird, which she said were used to guide their ancestors to ancient bee colonies. Clearly, every single aspect of this movie is going to be all about the importance of bees. I was already starting to find it to be a little too much. Not that there’s anything wrong with learning about them and their importance. But I was ready to start seeing some character development more than a documentary on bees.

Although, they did tease us with a hint of a romance developing when they stopped to do a taste-testing and Austen helped Eva with tying her apron.

After that they went on their way to look for a tower depicted in the fresco, and that’s when her truck broke down so of course they had to stay out there for the night. That, too, has been way overdone by Hallmark. And, by the way, this segued into another lesson on this history of Malta. Again, I enjoyed some of the history, it was just too much. 

We were halfway through the movie at this point and I was ready for their story to begin. Fortunately, it did. In the second half we learned a little bit about each of their childhoods, they talked about their previous marriages, and all while discussing the mystery of the ancient map, they did share their first kiss. 

The next day, though, she dismissed it as just a kiss and didn’t mean anything. And that was pretty much all there was in terms of any romance developing here. The rest was all about bees, Malta’s history and the meaning of this fresco.

The festival day arrived and it looked like a success. Everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun dancing and shopping. Eva’s booth sold lots of honey and Austen helped her out. Something I noticed for the first time was when Austen told her about a battery that he needed for an infrared gun to study the fresco and how it had just arrived while the festival was going on, Eva was genuinely excited to go with him to see what it might reveal. It took her an hour and a half into this movie before she finally showed the slightest bit of interest in going on this venture with him. Let’s face it up until now she’s only been interested in saving her bees. Nothing else has mattered.

So what it revealed was a group of three bee maidens. And yes, of course she’s interested! If you haven’t figured out by now everything about this journey has something to do with bees.

Well, all good things seemed to come to an end when the Maltese government stepped in and took over the project from Austen. He had become frustrated with their lack of progress at this point and said something to Eva he really shouldn’t have, “I wasted so much time with you.” And here I thought Eva was harsh sometimes!

So, Eva said goodbye and returned to the festival that was still going on. Now, when I watch these movies I look for character growth and I did see some changes in Eva here, but not about her relationship, or lack thereof, with Austen. No, when she returned to the festival she realized she had been underestimating her sister’s contributions to the Apiary all this time and she offered to make her an equal partner in running the family business. That was one of the best moments of this whole movie because I genuinely like Chloe. She was the saving grace of this movie for me.

And if I do say so, the little romance we saw between her sister and the mayor was really sweet!

As the story was winding down Eva was talking to one of the townsfolk, Paolo, and he started to tell her a story about the Old Honey Road. It turns out there’s actually something about honey and Malta’s history that she’s never heard of! As she’s listening to this story she has an epiphany and calls Austen just before he leaves the island.

You’ve probably guessed by now that the solution to the mystery is all about BEES! So of course Eva is interested again because, well, I think she tends to be a little self-absorbed and arrogant.

So, what happened to Austen and Eva’s romance? Austen left Malta to go home to Michigan. And Eva gave him a kiss on the cheek (and said I’m really glad I met you). Can’t you just feel the chemistry there? Nope…  

And then a month later they were all back to living their normal lives when Austen came back to Malta because his work brought him there, not Eva. And when she saw him, and he told her about why he returned, what did she say? “You know you could have texted.” Yep, there’s some serious chemistry now. Come on! Where’s the emotion? Where are the goosebumps? Non-existent. And even he said, “I just figured I’d come tell you in person. 

This movie had absolutely no romance between these two. None. To me, the best Hallmark movies usually show us how the two of them can’t bear the thought of living without each other and that their lives together are better than they are separately.  Did anyone feel like that happened here with Eva and Austen? Because I sure didn’t see it or feel it. No, this was a mediocre mystery and a two-hour long documentary on the history of Malta the importance of bees. 

For the history lessons and the behind-the-scenes look at bees and honey I’ll give this a 2½ out of 5. I actually do like some of those scenes, just not to the detriment of the romance and the character growth. You know, with Andrew Walker in this one it really should have been much better. But their romance was dull. Dull, dull, dull.

So how about you?  What did you think of this one?  Just based on the IMDB ratings, they’re sitting at a 6.5 right now, so I have a feeling my opinion might not be the popular one this week, and that’s okay. If you enjoyed this one more than I did I would love to chat about it more. 

Well I think that wraps up my review of For Love & Honey. Next week kicks will be the second premiere in the Passport to Love series called Savoring Paris starring Bethany Joy Lenz. And after that we’ll be watching A Greek Recipe for Romance.

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:  For Love & Honey - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: For Love & Honey