Legend of the Lost Locket - Hallmark

Before this week's movie premiered on Saturday night, I watched the two stars on Facebook live and they were quite fascinating together. I learned some interesting tidbits about them as well as their involvement in making this movie, which was more than just starring in it.  I highly recommend watching it, and it’s available on their YouTube page, so I’ll put a link to that down below.

Hi, I’m Stephanie and welcome to the Magical Movie Club where, like you, I love to watch and chat about Hallmark movies. This week we watched Legend of the Lost Locket, which premiered on Hallmark Channel on April 13th and stars Natasha Burnett and Viv Leacock. 

I thought it was fun last week to see Erin Krakow, from When Calls the Heart, starring in a new Hallmark movie. And this week they did it again! Not Erin Krakow, but both stars, Natasha Burnett and Viv Leacock are two more of my favorites from When Calls the Heart. They play Joseph and Minnie Canfield on the series and they’re just wonderful together. This week they not only starred in the movie, they were also executive producers.

So, let’s talk about Legend of the Lost Locket!  The movie opens with a scene going back to  the early 1800s in Sussex, England. Wilma, a young woman from a family of noble standing, has fallen in love with James, a carpenter. Her father is against their union so James tells her he’s leaving Sussex to make his fortune elsewhere and to prove himself worthy of her. That’s when Wilma decides to split a locket she’s wearing in two and gives half of it to James to keep.  He leaves while she remains standing out in the light rain, looking at the portrait of James in her remaining half of the locket.  

And, apparently, the locket has even more history than just James and Wilma. When Wilma gave it to James she said it was originally a gift to Queen Elizabeth from Sir Robert Dudley, her one true love. 

I’ve already taken a peek at some reviews and one of them commented on the same thing I’m about to mention. And that is while I agree that scene was important to understand the history of the locket and the importance of how and why half of it went missing, but the acting in that scene…mmm…no. It was pretty bad. But, it only lasted a minute and a half. 

In the very next scene we’re back to today, and Amelia, played by Natasha Burnett, is holding half of that same locket - the half with James’ portrait. She was also studying some related pictures on the wall including the other half of the locket that contains Wilma’s portrait. That half has been missing for two centuries. At that same moment her assistant, Rebecca, walks in and comments on how they’re still years away from being able to expand the business, which is  Amelia’s antiques store in London.

Amelia gets excited because she thinks she has finally found some clues as to where the other half of that locket might be. One of those clues is a manifest from a ship that sailed from Liverpool to Boston in May 1822. She shows it to her assistant who points out a name that’s highlighted, Jacob Jamieson, who happened to be a carpenter. Amelia also hands her a copy of a furniture magazine in which there’s an article written about Jacob Jamieson. Rebecca goes on to read that he became known in Boston for making high quality, handmade furniture. But the most significant part of the article is that he also bought a parcel of land in Massachusetts and founded the town of Wilmaton. Amelia’s convinced this can’t all be a coincidence. Her theory is that the original James Jacobs came to America and changed his name to Jacob Jamieson. And Wilmaton must hold the secret of the missing half of that locket.

Amelia heads to Wilmaton with her mother’s research book in hand. Apparently it had been her mother’s dream to find the other half of Queen Elizabeth’s “True Love Locket.”  But sadly, she never lived long enough to see it.

Now if there’s one thing I’ve found all too often in Hallmark movies, is that rental cars seem to break down a lot and it always takes a few days to fix them because they have to wait on parts to be ordered. Why these rental car companies don’t just provide a replacement car I’ll never know.  Oh well, this one is no exception. Amelia’s driving down a country road headed into Wilmaton when we hear a loud thud underneath the car and she pulls over to the side of the road. Enter Marcus, played by Viv Leacock. He happens to be driving by and pulls over to offer her some assistance. Notice he’s dressed in plain clothes. That is to not give away the fact that he happens to be the town sheriff. Naturally, she doesn’t trust a stranger on the side of the road to help her and she prefers to wait for roadside assistance.

Of course Amelia quickly finds out what it’s really like in small towns like this. When Jack, the tow truck driver, arrives he and Marcus clearly know each other. And since the car will need to be towed, Marcus offers to give Amelia a ride into town. She still doesn’t know who he is, though, and hesitates to accept his offer. Fortunately, Jack convinces her that it’s okay to go with Marcus, and once he drops her off where she’s staying she actually seems impressed by his willingness to help a stranger.

She also doesn't know yet that she’s staying at his sister Francine’s B&B. Right away Amelia notices the hand-carved flowers on the stairway. When she asks about the age of the house, Francine’s daughter Hannah steps in to give her the history. She was pretty cute.

And once Amelia was shown her room where she’d be staying, she started making notes on a copy of a town map, including the Town Archives, the Library, and a note to ask about Living Descendants.

So, in the next scene…by the way, did I mention this was a small town? Amelia pops into a diner and who does she meet behind the counter but Jack, the tow truck driver. Apparently, he also likes to bake! He appears to be a Jack of all Trades?!

While she’s there in the diner meeting some of the ladies from the Wilmaton Tourism Board, one of whom, Claudia the librarian, seemed quite negative and uncharacteristically unimpressed by the town, Amelia shows off her antiques dealer skills by picking up what looks to be an ordinary salt shaker, which she calls a sugar sifter, and recites all sorts of historical facts about its worth. That was a bit over-the-top for me, but I understand the point they were trying to get across is that Amelia is a very skilled antiques dealer. Before she knows it, the next morning the entire town is lined up at the diner for an impromptu appraisal session, Antiques Roadshow style!

Before that happens, though, Marcus shows up and offers to walk with her to the town archives. It’s during their pleasant walk through town that he reveals that Francine is his sister. Notice she looks a little relieved after hearing that? As they continue their walk Amelia is also intrigued when they come across an old, empty store-front for lease that used to be an antiques shop. Marcus explains how much the town has changed since he was a boy and a lot of people have left as the jobs dried up, and this empty storefront is just one example.

And then they arrive at the town hall. It’s a rather beautiful building that’s also the mayor’s office and where the archives are kept. Now, it’s here where we meet Poppy. And let me just say that I found the quality of the acting in this movie to be somewhat hit-and-miss. Natasha Burnett and Viv Leacock were fantastic. But Poppy’s character…definitely a miss in my book.  I already don’t like that Poppy was supposed to be taken completely by surprise after Amelia walked across the room wearing some kind of heels on a hardwood floor to meet her, but I’ll let you decide. I also suppose the script-writing in this particular scene was just bad.  I understand they needed a reason to introduce Poppy’s background information to us, but for her to instantly divulge so much information about herself with very little prompting from Amelia, felt so unnatural to me! But yes, I suppose we needed to know that she’s the mayor’s girlfriend and she sells old things. 

Oh, and did I mention who the mayor is? Another favorite from When Calls the Heart. Hrothgar Mathews who plays Ned Yost, the owner of the mercantile!  For as much as I didn’t care for Poppy’s character in this movie, I thought Hrothgar Mathews as the mayor was absolutely a perfect choice! I loved him. And his character was just ideal for a small town mayor. No offense to real small town mayors…

Unfortunately, the mayor won’t let her in to see the archives. He says they’re closed due to budget cuts. We hear a lot about budget cuts in this movie. We also find out there’s to be a ball coming up for Wilmaton’s 200th Anniversary. Poppy invites Amelia to come and that’s when the scene ends with Poppy and the mayor bickering over, among other things, the misspelling of Wilmaton with two Ls on the invitation. That ends up causing a delay in getting the invitations out because they’ll have to be reprinted.

Now, I’m still on the fence about what happened in the next scene. Since Amelia wasn’t allowed to see the archives what did she do next? Oh, she broke into them overnight. Doesn’t everyone? Well, that’s when we, and Amelia, finally find out that Marcus is the sheriff. And yep, Amelia winds up behind bars. Ultimately, she gets off with just a ticket and heads back to the B&B where she gets to know Francine’s story a little better. But before she went up to bed she noticed that her map, you know the one with her notes on it, was missing from her purse. It turns out it wasn’t actually missing, but it was no longer tucked inside her mother’s journal. That was a little disturbing to think that someone might have been going through her purse.

Well, the next day after she finished all of the impromptu appraisals at the diner, she and Francine came up with a plan to host an antiques fair the day after the founders ball, to try to help turn the town into an “antique-lover’s dream” as she called it. When Amelia goes to ask the Mayor for the permits to host the fair, she also suggests she can sell out the rest of the remaining tickets to the founder’s ball to her contacts in the antiques industry. All she asks for in return is access to the town archives. 

The next morning Marcus accompanies Amelia to the archives and what does she find inside the box from the early days of the town’s founding?  Absolutely nothing! And from that point on that’s where the mystery and intrigue really took off.

It took awhile for Marcus to trust Amelia, he first suspected she might have already taken them when she broke in the night before.  And Amelia was about to give up at that point, because without finding the town’s archives she didn’t know where else to look. But that’s when Francine told her about Enid, the last descendant of the town’s founder, Jacob Jamieson. 

Enid was great, she was sweet and funny. I actually recognized her as Granny from Once Upon a Time, another one of my favorite TV series. There were two important takeaways from meeting Enid. One was a sewing sampler she showed them. This was a small piece of fabric with a poem embroidered on it by Jane. If you remember, Jane was Jacob Jamieson’s wife. That poem ultimately becomes their key to finding the locket. But they also learned that there’s still a lot of Jacob’s old furniture stored at a river house. So Amelia and Marcus head over to the river house next to see what they might find there.

I don’t want to go into too much more detail since this is a mystery and I really shouldn’t give everything away this time, but another important clue they find at the river house is an old painting covered in smoke damage. After having it partially restored things start falling into place.

Amelia and Marcus even go to the ball together which is convenient because they wanted to get into the Mayor’s house to search around and, possibly, lure the real culprit out from hiding. By the way, I’d love to know where, or how, Amelia found such a perfect dress to wear to the ball. But I’m going to chalk that up to it being Hollywood. Even though I don’t think Hallmark films in Hollywood. You know I mean, don’t you?

Actually, there’s one more scene I’m going to just accept for the same reason, and that’s near the very end when Marcus and Amelia were standing outside by the river. Notice it’s raining behind them. You can even see all the drops on the water, but I kept looking at their hair and their faces, and they’re completely dry with no umbrella. Hmmm.

What was great about this movie, though, is that it was more than just a mystery, or a treasure hunt. It was a love story for Marcus and Amelia, too. Those two actors already have chemistry on screen on When Calls the Heart, and it shows in this movie, too. From the very beginning they were intrigued by one another, and they slowly kept getting closer as the movie progressed. There was even that moment at the end when the locket was found and I could just feel what Marcus was feeling at the realization that that meant Amelia would be going back home to London.

But don’t worry, it’s Hallmark so you know they’ll have their happy ending. And on top of that, I really liked the ending. Everything wrapped up well, for everyone actually, and nothing felt forced to me. If you recall last week I was slightly disappointed with the ending of Blind Date Book Club. That was not the case with this one. And on that note, I’ll give this one a 4 out of 5. It was absolutely enjoyable and I will definitely watch it again. But I can’t quite give it a 5 because a couple of the supporting actors did not meet my expectations. That, and to me there were a couple of scenes where I thought the script itself needed some improvement. So, I dropped my rating by ½ for each of these reasons.

How about you?  What did you think of this week's movie?  I would love to know what you thought of it, too, so please share your thoughts about the movie in the comments below.

Well, I think that wraps up my review of Legend of the Lost Locket.  Coming up next week we’ll be watching the premiere of Falling in Love in Niagara and the following week, Sarah Drew is back with a new movie called, Branching Out. If you remember she was the star of Guiding Emily. And I can’t wait to see her again!

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:  Legend of the Lost Locket - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: Legend of the Lost Locket

Facebook Live Interview: Legend of the Lost Locket Live