“Do You Know What Her Hashtag Is?” “Please, Norman, Let’s Not Go There.”
Once again, I let more time go between watching movies in the Signed, Sealed, Delivered franchise than I intended. But that turned out to be perfect since it mirrored the time for the characters and it let me watch From the Heart, a Valentines themed entry, in February. If only I could say I planned it that way.
For those uninitiated, this Hallmark series follows four members of the dead letter office in the Denver Post Office. They’ve dubbed themselves the POstables. What started out as a weekly series for 13 episodes has turned into a long running movie franchise as we follow the four characters as they slowly work toward romances. There’s also a new mystery of the movie for them to uncover.
When this movie opens, it’s been a few months since we last checked in with the POstables crew. Valentine’s is coming up, and Oliver O’Toole (Eric Mabius) has finally decided to ask out Shane McInerny (Kristin Booth). Being Oliver, he’s doing it via a hand written letter. Meanwhile, Rita Haywith (Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe) gets some surprising news, which threatens to upset her first Valentine’s Day with Norman Dorman (Geoff Gustafson).
Outside of their personal lives, Norman has been given a box of antique Valentines by his cousin. One of them might just hold the answer to an almost 200-year-old mystery of great importance to US history. Meanwhile, a letter has surfaced that was damaged when a mailbox exploded 15 years before. In it, a teenager is confessing to killing someone. And Oliver realizes his own connection to the letter. Can they figure out where to deliver it?
As you can see, these movies do tackle some serious themes and issues. As always, I appreciated how they did that. The characters in the case of the movie made some poor choices, but also took responsibility for them. While I wasn’t moved to tears as I often am with these movies, I was still moved as the story unfolded. Yes, the writing is that great.
With the last movie, I thought they’d wrapped up a storyline involving Rita that we’d been following since the series. Turns out I was wrong. I’m curious if this is something that will continue to follow her as the movies progress. And speaking of her, the actress was pregnant while this movie was filmed. They hid it pretty well, but it makes one particular line pretty funny.
As for as Oliver and Shane’s storyline goes, they took a trope I usually hate and managed to actually make it work. Yes, I still longed for a little actual conversation between characters to iron some of these things out, but it was fun watching what happened between them. And it provided a nice counterpoint to the serious letter they were working on. I also appreciated how some of the other storylines managed to connect to each other thematically.
The acting in this movie does suffer from a little low budget cheese. Or, maybe it’s the writing. Either way, this doesn’t apply to the main four. They have taken characters that could be weird and made them lovably quirky. For me, it was great catching up with these friends.
Which is why I don’t want it to be that long before I catch
up with them again in the next movie.
(No, really, I mean it this time.)
Whether you are already a fan or just now finding Signed, Sealed,
Delivered, you’ll enjoy From the Heart, whether you watch it around
Valentine’s Day or not.
Hmm. I'm not sure how well I would deal with low budget cheese. After a day of difficult children, I've been enjoying SOKO: Pottsdam on PBS. It's in German, and I've picked up about three words.
ReplyDeleteOh, I love the Signed, Sealed, and Delivered series of shows. I really grew to love the cast. I think I've seen almost all of them unless they added a new one in the last year or two.
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