A Bit Too Convoluted
I’d gotten out of the habit of checking for new Hallmark mystery movies last year, so I missed one (still watching for reruns of it), and I barely caught Francesca Quinn, PI in time to record it. Even so, I didn’t wind up getting it watched until New Year’s Day. While it is nice to see a potential new franchise, this movie tried to cram in too much.
Francesca “Frankie” Quinn (Mallory Jansen) is distraught when she returns to the scene of a party to find her fiancé, Carl (Derek Kun) dead. The two had fought that night, and Frankie had left the party early. When Carl’s sister, Sheryl (Lindsay Nance), hires Frankie to figure out what was going on, she quickly agrees, even if it means working with her ex, Detective Wynton Rousseau (Dylan Bruce). Will the two figure out what happened?
The problem with the plot is actually obvious almost right away. We get a prologue that explains what happened with the characters a couple of years before. And there’s a lot to get in and relationships to follow crammed into that time. It’s just a bit much. Honestly, that should have been the first movie in the franchise instead of making this the introduction to the characters. I think, if that had happened, we would have followed it more. And, there are some good twists that would have made for an awesome movie all by itself.
This part doesn’t take too long, and we quickly get to Carl’s murder. We are given three suspects, and Frankie starts digging in for what she can find. I was tracking this part of the movie pretty well. There were some twists that really made me want to know what was going on, too.
It’s when we reach the climax that things got too complicated. Again. They pull some things out of thin air in order to reach the ending. It worked, but it just felt convoluted purely for the sake of being convoluted. And, honestly, the motive felt weak, with many of the clues feeling forced. Or maybe that was just me.
Another part was that I could never really warm up to the characters. The narration from Frankie didn’t help at all; in fact, it was part of what kept me at a distance. The characters just didn’t seem to have the emotional connection to the story to make me care about the outcome. And the romantic sub-plot didn’t help at all here. Again, I think it might have worked if this hadn’t been the first time we’d met these characters.
I think part of that came from the actors as well. Yes, this is a Hallmark movie, but even by those standards, there were several performances that were flat. It didn’t help that a couple of the characters were very cliched, so the actors didn’t have much to do with them.
I said earlier this was the potential start of a new franchise. Considering I haven’t seen any more movies from the other new franchises we saw at Hallmark last year, I’m not thinking we will see more of Frankie. If that’s the case, this movie wraps things up well.
Francesca Quinn, PI is a movie that Hallmark Mystery fans will want to watch. But anyone else can pass it on by.
I watched the movie yesterday evening, and was quickly hooked - such that I stayed up way after my bedtime. Watching the beginning, I believed that it was a recap from a preceding movie - rather confirming your thoughts that it should actually have been a preceding movie - and the Uncle Bill backstory further strengthens this idea. Unlike you, however, I warmed both to Frankie and to Wyn, and should certainly like to see more of them. I also liked the fact that the characters were written to major on taking action rather than just talking: the whole production felt 'dynamic'. Although the tracking shots of Minneapolis and St Paul were somewhat clichéd, they were also very attractive and nicely shot.
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