Movie Review: Signed, Sealed, Delivered - A Tale of Three Letters

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Interesting (if predictable) mysteries of the letters

Cons: Oliver and Shane’s storyline didn’t feel like them

The Bottom Lines:

Working through letters

While building relationship

As always, it’s good

“Well, Let’s Get This Over With.” “That’s the Spirit.”

It was in 2022 that I finally started watching the Signed, Sealed, Delivered franchise.  While I took my time getting through the movies (like one a year, how embarrassing), I took the lack of any new movies to mean that they were finished with the franchise.  Imagine my surprise when I saw a new movie pop up in 2024.  Now that I’ve almost caught up to it, I found that one aspect with this movie bothered me, but overall, I enjoyed A Tale of Three Letters.

While it’s been three years for us since we last checked in on the POstables, it’s been a matter of months for them.  (Six month, if I heard one line of dialogue correctly.)  Oliver (Eric Mabius) and Shane (Kristin Booth) are just getting back from their extended honeymoon.  Meanwhile, Rita (Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe) and Norman (Geoff Gustafson) are working on adopting.  That is, if Norman can stop being distracted by the baby of Charley (Rhiannon Fish), the single mother they’ve invited into their home, so he can finish filling out the paper work.

Oliver and Shane return to find that the POstables have received the letters from the Great Mailbox Breach of 2017.  There was a bomb scare in a mailbox outside a high school.  While it turned out there wasn’t a bomb inside, the letters got misrouted and messed up.  Oliver is happy to be diving back into work on such a challenging case.  Three letters in particular are worse than the others.  Can they figure out how to deliver them?

Let’s start with what didn’t work for me.  Shane and Oliver are settling back into normal life as a married couple.  And they started getting irritated over everything the other person does.  Okay, I get that.  But it seemed extreme for how little time they’ve been home.  Not only that, but it felt like they were out of character.  Over the franchise, we’ve watched them get to know each other and fall in love.  Their behavior at the end of the movie felt much more like the behavior I would have expected all along from them.  I feel like there was another way to tell this story without compromising the characters and the relationship we’ve watched over the course of these movies.

The letters themselves?  They were entertaining.  I figured a few things out along the way before the team did, but that was mainly because I knew they were in a movie.  I had fun getting from the beginning to the end as always.  And yes, I teared up.  Maybe not quite as much as I might have in other movies, but there were still some very touching moments.

As always, the acting was fantastic.  My complaint above had little to do with the actors and everything to do with the writing.  They bring the characters to life with ease and continue to make us love them.  Considering how eccentric they are, that’s saying something.

A Tale of Three Letters might not become a fan favorite in the franchise, but it is nice to see the characters again.  Considering where this movie ended, I’m very curious to see where things go with the next in the franchise.