I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding
Happy Valentine's Day, y'all! In honor of the occasion, Hallmark has seen fit to lift their moratorium on Jane Austen-inspired movies. As someone who has made it his mission to watch and review every feature adaptation of her work, I can speak with some authority about the fact that there was a truly unsettling profusion of the things, racking up a cool half-dozen or so titles between 2016's Unleashing Mr. Darcy (calm down, it's about a dog show) and 2019's Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen.
Since then, however, there has hardly been a peep. 2021's Playing Cupid is allegedly an adaptation of Emma, but hell if I've been able to find a shred of evidence that it could possibly be such a thing. Even counting that title, three years without a Hallmark Jane Austen adaptation is a long time. Chronologically, at least.
Anyway, at long last, throughout February, Hallmark is unleashing a riotous proliferation of four new movies adapting or inspired by the works of Jane Austen (ie. the two books they always do - Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility). Every two weeks or so, I'm going to drop a new review of one of these movies, starting - naturally - at the beginning: the February 3rd release of Paging Mr. Darcy.
Tragically, this is not a movie set in the 1990s. Rather, the title is a pun on... pages? In a book? I guess? It's not misguided at the After Ever Happy level of brain-melting codswallop, but it's an astoundingly harebrained title nevertheless.
I guess there are pages in the movie, though. Somewhere. It's set at the Jane Austen League of America Annual Conference and Ball, where Austen scholar Eloise Cavendish (Mallory Jansen) is giving the keynote address, hoping to catch the ear of the venerable Dr. Victoria Jennings (Carolyn Scott) and get a prestigious Princeton professorship in the process. She takes things too seriously and only wants to analyze Austen without dressing up and having fun.
But when she finds out that Dr. Jennings loves all the goofy trappings of the conference, she has to fake that she likes them too. And who better to teach her than the conference's resident Mr. Darcy cosplayer Sam Lee (Will Kemp), to whom she has previously been an absolute pill for basically no reason? Sam seems very down to fall in love with Eloise, so the pride and the prejudice all fall onto her, but you can see where this is all going.
So, here's the thing about Hallmark movies. They are deeply, intentionally generic, but almost always in each movie there is exactly one Lynchian nightmare scene that sneaks in and makes the whole experience feel off-kilter and unusual. Paging Mr. Darcy lacks the Lynch scene, which should be a stake through its heart from the beginning. But honestly... it makes up for it by being actually kind of good?
Obviously, we're grading on a scale here. It ain't When Harry Met Sally. Like any Hallmark movie, it was cobbled together from first takes on overlit stages with an almost callous disregard to ever presenting an image that might be inherently pleasing to gaze upon in and of itself.
With this type of material, it's almost always up to the cast to keep the audience engaged. And somehow, Paging Mr. Darcy has assembled a pair of charismatic leads, which might be the first time this has ever happened in a Hallmark movie. Usually, it's one lead or the other. If you're lucky.
But no, Mallory Jansen provides a completely grounded and vibrant character, efficiently letting you know everything you need to know about Eloise with voice, physicality, and all those good things. Will Kemp is likewise no slouch, delivering comic lines as if they're actually funny and - horror of horrors - actually wringing a few laughs out of them in the process. Carolyn Scott and J.D. Leslie (as Eloise's former student) are also delivering in their supporting roles. Really, the only weak link is Lillian Doucet-Roche, who goes too broad, playing Eloise's lovelorn sister Mia as a garish and repellent cartoon caricature.
The movie is also not a half-bad representation of characters who know a hell of a lot about Jane Austen. Most of the time, I'm convinced that these Hallmark Austen screenwriters haven't even cracked the Cliff's Notes of the texts they're dealing with. However, there are solid references to some close readings of Pride & Prejudice and mentions of - God forbid - other books by Austen including Mansfield Park, which is a text I was quite certain nobody in the vicinity of the Hallmark office had ever even heard of.
This can probably only be considered a positive aspect of the movie if you've sat through, say, Christmas at Pemberley Manor and Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe during one single harrowing 2018 Christmas like I did. But hey, knowing the material you're adapting, however loosely, should count for something.
But let's not be too hasty in our praise. The movie still dabbles in its fair share of cheap Hallmark goofiness, including a montage where the prospective couple is meant to prepare dessert for 120 conferencegoers and clearly makes enough for like 30, at most. And the scene where Eloise, who is, I will remind you, a Jane Austen scholar, highlights the opening line of Pride & Prejudice like she hadn't already memorized it decades ago.
It also flags something fierce at the beginning of the third act, something it never really recovers from. However, a half-decent script being performed by two full-decent leads is nothing to shake a stick at, especially because things could always be way worse. This is something that I gravely fear we're about to learn next time when we cover the "Jane Austen is a ghost cupid" movie Love & Jane. But until then, allow me to express how ardently I vibed with Paging Mr. Darcy.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about ‘80s slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Since then, however, there has hardly been a peep. 2021's Playing Cupid is allegedly an adaptation of Emma, but hell if I've been able to find a shred of evidence that it could possibly be such a thing. Even counting that title, three years without a Hallmark Jane Austen adaptation is a long time. Chronologically, at least.
Anyway, at long last, throughout February, Hallmark is unleashing a riotous proliferation of four new movies adapting or inspired by the works of Jane Austen (ie. the two books they always do - Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility). Every two weeks or so, I'm going to drop a new review of one of these movies, starting - naturally - at the beginning: the February 3rd release of Paging Mr. Darcy.
Tragically, this is not a movie set in the 1990s. Rather, the title is a pun on... pages? In a book? I guess? It's not misguided at the After Ever Happy level of brain-melting codswallop, but it's an astoundingly harebrained title nevertheless.
I guess there are pages in the movie, though. Somewhere. It's set at the Jane Austen League of America Annual Conference and Ball, where Austen scholar Eloise Cavendish (Mallory Jansen) is giving the keynote address, hoping to catch the ear of the venerable Dr. Victoria Jennings (Carolyn Scott) and get a prestigious Princeton professorship in the process. She takes things too seriously and only wants to analyze Austen without dressing up and having fun.
But when she finds out that Dr. Jennings loves all the goofy trappings of the conference, she has to fake that she likes them too. And who better to teach her than the conference's resident Mr. Darcy cosplayer Sam Lee (Will Kemp), to whom she has previously been an absolute pill for basically no reason? Sam seems very down to fall in love with Eloise, so the pride and the prejudice all fall onto her, but you can see where this is all going.
So, here's the thing about Hallmark movies. They are deeply, intentionally generic, but almost always in each movie there is exactly one Lynchian nightmare scene that sneaks in and makes the whole experience feel off-kilter and unusual. Paging Mr. Darcy lacks the Lynch scene, which should be a stake through its heart from the beginning. But honestly... it makes up for it by being actually kind of good?
Obviously, we're grading on a scale here. It ain't When Harry Met Sally. Like any Hallmark movie, it was cobbled together from first takes on overlit stages with an almost callous disregard to ever presenting an image that might be inherently pleasing to gaze upon in and of itself.
With this type of material, it's almost always up to the cast to keep the audience engaged. And somehow, Paging Mr. Darcy has assembled a pair of charismatic leads, which might be the first time this has ever happened in a Hallmark movie. Usually, it's one lead or the other. If you're lucky.
But no, Mallory Jansen provides a completely grounded and vibrant character, efficiently letting you know everything you need to know about Eloise with voice, physicality, and all those good things. Will Kemp is likewise no slouch, delivering comic lines as if they're actually funny and - horror of horrors - actually wringing a few laughs out of them in the process. Carolyn Scott and J.D. Leslie (as Eloise's former student) are also delivering in their supporting roles. Really, the only weak link is Lillian Doucet-Roche, who goes too broad, playing Eloise's lovelorn sister Mia as a garish and repellent cartoon caricature.
The movie is also not a half-bad representation of characters who know a hell of a lot about Jane Austen. Most of the time, I'm convinced that these Hallmark Austen screenwriters haven't even cracked the Cliff's Notes of the texts they're dealing with. However, there are solid references to some close readings of Pride & Prejudice and mentions of - God forbid - other books by Austen including Mansfield Park, which is a text I was quite certain nobody in the vicinity of the Hallmark office had ever even heard of.
This can probably only be considered a positive aspect of the movie if you've sat through, say, Christmas at Pemberley Manor and Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe during one single harrowing 2018 Christmas like I did. But hey, knowing the material you're adapting, however loosely, should count for something.
But let's not be too hasty in our praise. The movie still dabbles in its fair share of cheap Hallmark goofiness, including a montage where the prospective couple is meant to prepare dessert for 120 conferencegoers and clearly makes enough for like 30, at most. And the scene where Eloise, who is, I will remind you, a Jane Austen scholar, highlights the opening line of Pride & Prejudice like she hadn't already memorized it decades ago.
It also flags something fierce at the beginning of the third act, something it never really recovers from. However, a half-decent script being performed by two full-decent leads is nothing to shake a stick at, especially because things could always be way worse. This is something that I gravely fear we're about to learn next time when we cover the "Jane Austen is a ghost cupid" movie Love & Jane. But until then, allow me to express how ardently I vibed with Paging Mr. Darcy.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about ‘80s slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: love stories, romcoms
