Love & Jane - Hallmark

Love & Jane premiered on Hallmark Channel on February 10th and stars Alison Sweeney and Benjamin Ayres. Directed by David Weaver. This was the sixth new movie release for Hallmark for 2024 and the second of the Jane Austen-themed series for the month of February. 

I don't think Alison Sweeney or Benjamin Ayres really need any introduction. They are both wonderful actors and have each been in some great Hallmark movies before. Cranberry Christmas is one of my favorites, which stars Benjamin Ayres. And although I can't single out any of my favorite Christmas movies with Alison Sweeney, she was wonderful in the Wedding Veil series as well as the Hannah Swenson mysteries. What surprised me most during the opening credits was I recognized the director's name, David Weaver. He also happened to write this one. I looked him up and it turns out he also directed Christmas Town and A Christmas to Remember, two movies I very much enjoyed!

Love & Jane opens up with Lily, played by Alison Sweeney, rushing out the door to go to a Jane Austen book club meeting. Just before she walks into the building she discovers she accidentally left her copy of Pride & Prejudice at home so she runs next door to a bookstore to pick up another copy. Here is where she meets Trevor, played by Benjamin Ayres. He works in the bookstore and grabs the only copy of the book off the shelf at the same time as Lily reaches for it. Unfortunately, he breaks the news to her that an online customer just bought the book a moment earlier and offers to order her a new one. Lily is very upset with him because she doesn't like the rule that an online shopper trumps an in-person shopper who is ready and willing to buy the book herself.

Now let's stop here for a moment. While I understand her frustration, I want to point out that I thought Trevor was actually polite about it and apologetic to her for the situation. While I may or may not agree with the store policy he was enforcing, at no point did I find him rude or disagreeable or a horrible person. Okay, I suppose he didn’t have to say that someone had just purchased the book “exactly one minute ago.” That was unnecessary and no good was going to come of his saying that to her.  But Lily, on the other hand, storms off and immediately tells her best friend, "I encountered the most disagreeable man on the way here." Honestly, that seemed like a stretch and a bit unwarranted, and made me not like her character right out the gate. Not a good way to start a movie, IMHO.

Next she starts the Jane Austen book club meeting where we now learn that she's the club president. Unfortunately, that scene was uncomfortable to watch as Lily didn't seem to know what she was doing. She put a newcomer on the spot with some questions and there were too many moments of awkward silence.

On a brief side note, I found it cute that they named the pub owner Mr. Wickham. But I didn't understand why since he was such a nice, sincere character, which was in stark contrast to the Mr. Wickham in Pride & Prejudice. I'm probably way over-thinking this, but it felt like this character name was just added into the movie without any purpose.

While we’re still on character development we next meet Martin, Lily's boyfriend, who announces he has just gotten a promotion that will take him away to Chicago and he wants Lily to marry him and go with him. He offers to take her to Europe like she’s always wanted and he wants to give her a chance to finally finish the book she’s been working on. But, she turns him down, saying she didn't like the feeling that he was trying to rescue her from her own life. Other than the fact that he kind of likes to make decisions for her, like the drink choice, he didn’t seem all that bad to me. But of course it wouldn't be much of a story if she had said yes.

At this point in the movie I was already starting to feel like every scenario was "forced." I've mentioned a few times in previous reviews that I don't like situations that appear forced in the sense that the writers needed to come up with a conflict just for the sake of creating a conflict and couldn't come up with anything very creative. Almost like they were following a recipe and just threw in an ingredient because they had it on hand but it didn't improve the dish in any way.  We were only 11 minutes into the movie and it felt to me like David Weaver was already in a big hurry to finish writing this one by just checking things off his list.

Anyway, back to Lily.  She went home after she left Martin and fell asleep as she was making a wish that she could somehow get some advice directly from Jane Austen. When she woke up the next morning Jane Austen, herself, was staring her in the face! That didn’t last long, though, as she disappeared pretty quickly after Lily woke up.

Later that day she meets Trevor again. It turns out he not only works in the bookstore, he now owns it. Apparently he has some money from a successful website he developed where people create and share their favorite lists of things. And it just so happens Lily works for an ad agency that's trying to get his business. Naturally, Lily is not happy about this.

She's even less happy to hear that she is being tasked with coming up with some concepts for getting the account. Her boss recognizes that she runs a book club and feels she is the best option to work on a campaign to save the bookstore. Lily, though, was confident that Trevor had no real intention of saving the bookstore. She thought he only bought it to boost traffic to his website.

Back to Jane Austen. When she returned the next evening I believe she saw Lily as nervous and uncomfortable as I did.  Kendra Anderson portrayed her beautifully! And for the rest of the movie she pops up whenever and wherever Lily needs her.

In one scene Jane tries to teach Lily how to dance. Take a moment and look at this scene.

This is Lily's home. It’s obvious her style is not very modern. And up to this point she has made it very clear that she hates the internet. I have no objection to this being her character, to an extent I actually enjoyed this. But when Jane Austen asked her to play some music I was surprised to hear Lily speak to her smart speaker. Basically, the movie's version of Amazon Alexa or calling Hey Google. That just didn't seem to fit her MO to me.

We were 30 minutes into the movie now and I posted online that I was still trying to figure out where the story was going. Yes, I was enjoying Lily's interaction with Jane Austen. But I had no idea where the story was headed. I mean it was cute watching Jane teach Lily how to dance but to what purpose? Unless maybe this was Jane's way of helping Lily to compose herself and not act so skittish all the time. Spoiler alert - that didn’t work!

An hour into it and I still didn't know the point of this story. Her best friend and coworker had romance issues, but that wasn't the main story. Although I enjoyed how Lily helped bring them together and that, in turn, helped inspire her to finish her book, that wasn't the main story. Lily was stuck on campaign ideas, but was that the main story? She and Trevor bantered from time-to-time, which was fun, but I still didn't know where they were headed. And Jane popped up from time-to-time and was always fun, but she wasn't the main story, either. I felt quite lost with this one.  And by this time, an hour and 22 minutes into the movie, I was really over Lily's jumpiness. 

At least the very next scene finally started to focus on Lily and Trevor's love story. Maybe I would have been more patient with this one if I actually liked Lily's character, but as I've already said, I was not impressed. And I was hoping after they had a very nice evening walking together that my opinion of her would change, but sadly, that was not the case as she bumped into someone…yet again, in the very next scene.

For the life of me I don't know why David Weaver thought this was an endearing characteristic in a leading lady. I mean, she wasn't as bad as Betty in Betty's Bad Luck in Love, but I'm starting to wonder if Hallmark thinks all leading ladies should be in need of therapy! Personally, I don't care for it and I hope they move away from this trend.

The final scene with Trevor was sweet, but a little disconnected like the rest of the movie. It was as if suddenly Trevor's character had drastically changed and they both professed their deep feelings for one another. I know, I've said this before, but it felt forced. Like suddenly they realized they were running out of time and needed to wrap things up quickly. There was no build-up to a big conflict. The only real conflict began and ended within maybe five minutes. Honestly, I didn't see the point of it by then.

I'll admit the final scenes with Jane and then with Trevor were somewhat enjoyable. And that's probably because Lily was no longer acting like a Nervous Nellie, which I very much needed. But even then it came about rather suddenly.

Okay, I've said enough and now I've come to the difficult part of deciding what rating I should give it. Was it magical? I so wanted this one to be but no, it just wasn’t. Would I have it playing in the background if it were on again? Maybe? I guess since I can't fully rule that out I'll reluctantly give it a 2. I'm very disappointed that 2 is all I can honestly give it.

Maybe since I loved Paging Mr. Darcy so much I need to move away from the Jane Austen movies and devote next week's review to Great American Family's Passport to Love. I'll consider that and let you know which one it will be!

So what did you think? As always, please share your own thoughts and opinions on this movie in the comments below. I'm interested to find out how many of you agree with me and how many think I'm being way too harsh on this one.

And, as always, thank you so much for joining me for this week's Magical Movie Club review.  We'll be back next week to chat more about our favorite Magical Movies! 

Hallmark's Original Preview: Love & Jane - Hallmark Preview

Sneak Peek Video: Love & Jane - Hallmark Sneak Peek

Hallmark Channel Movie site:  Love & Jane - Hallmark Channel Movie Site

Article Behind the Scenes: Filming Love & Jane