“We’re Not That Murder Couple, Right? We Do Have Other Hobbies.”
I’ve been noting that Hallmark is releasing lots of mystery movies with new characters. Their latest movie was a rarity, a second movie with the characters they’ve introduced recently. We revisited The Cases of Mystery Lane with Death is Listening.
Alden and Birdie Case (Paul Campbell and Aimee Garcia) have gotten hooked on a true crime podcast hosted by Laurel St. James (Suzanne Ferris). She’s actually been in the true crime business for years, working on a serial killer case that happened 30 years ago and remains unsolved. However, as Laurel is going to work on a podcast where she plans to reveal the truth about this notorious killer, someone kills her.
Officer Newton (Matt Hamilton) realizes that he is in over his head, so he hires the Cases as consultants to help him on the case. He’s envisioning listening through the library of outtakes and unused footage from Laurel’s podcast to see if they can find anything, but they take that to mean they can jump into other aspects of the case. Will they solve it?
Alden and Birdie were having marital problems in the first movie. I was very happy to see that their new appreciation for each other stuck and they were still happy to be together. I would have been disappointed if they were fighting again here. Don’t misunderstand, they aren’t perfectly communicating still, but they are working at it.
On the other hand, the movie tries too hard to be funny. This is especially the case when it comes to Alden, who is over the top goofy too much of the time. So much so that he isn’t funny. There are some very great lines and exchanges, so some of the humor did work for me. I just wish it weren’t trying quite so hard.
What about the mystery? It was good and kept me entertained. I didn’t see all the twists coming. Having said that, I did spot the killer early, but I had to see if I was right.
Since the movie is on the goofy side, it is hard to say we got to know the characters super well, but we did get to know them a little better here. I do like them. The suspects aren’t on screen that much, so it is hard to say we knew them well, but Alden, Birdie, and Newton are enough to keep the movie entertaining. And this isn’t a knock on anyone’s acting; they are doing the best they can with the script they had.
And the ending? I hope there’s a third movie in the works because I want to know what that scene was all about.
Overall, I did have fun with Death is Listening. I hope this is a trend and we start to see more sequels to some of Hallmark’s new mystery franchises.
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