Ho Hum Heist
Nothing could save this one from being boring. Not the not-seen-often-enough charm and talents of Luke Macfarlane, the proven acting talent of Rachael Leigh Cook, nor the beautiful setting of Malta. All were pretty much wasted on a phone-it-in script. I went into this one with optimism thanks to the presence of Luke, for whom Hallmark usually makes a greater than usual effort, and the fact that it was set in Malta which I last visited only a few months ago albeit in a book and albeit in the mid-16th century. It’s changed a lot. In this one all of the effort went into filming in an exotic land, which helped, but was not enough to engage me much.
Annie (Cook), a bank teller, arrives at a White Lotus type resort hotel (except no alcohol or caffeine-lolwut) in Malta and quickly falls into the arms of Jake (Macfarlane) thanks to her high heels which she is not used to. Her best friend, Joanna, a cosmetics magnate, has given her her place at a 7 day self help get away. How humble Annie got to be best friends with a millionaire tycoon might have made a more interesting story. It turns out that Jake, who at first we are led to believe might be up to something nefarious, is actually a private investigator who is trying to catch a thief for the reward money. Of course he was not up to anything nefarious: It’s Luke Macfarlane, for cripes sake. Jake has gotten an anonymous tip that the thief who stole a valuable necklace from “The Met” has arranged to sell it to one of the very wealthy guests at the hotel during the 7 day retreat. Annie, Jake, and Jake’s partner Laura, sleuth around for the rest of the movie trying to figure out who the buyer of the necklace is and catch him/her and the thief in the act. We get to know the other guests whose stories are supposed to fill in the plot but unfortunately they are not very interesting. We have the typical social media influencer, the typical billionaire real estate mogul and his neglected wife, the typical tech-god, the typical new-age motivational speaker, and the typical spoiled and entitled female member of royalty. All of them behave suspiciously but all turn out to be red herrings. Jake’s investigative skills are considerably aided by the fact that the suspects expediently allow him to do things like scroll through their phones and open their suspicious suitcases at will. We start to think that maybe the anonymous tip that Laura and Jake received might be a little sus after all of the possible buyers of the jewels are eliminated. But never fear, there is one person left, and it is someone they didn’t even think of (!).
There were some bright spots. The character of Laura (so far uncredited on IMDb-that figures) was pretty amusing. She is undercover as a very versatile employee of the resort. She fills in wherever needed going from a pool girl to a room maid and even filling in teaching a class on herbal medicine when the original instructor goes on maternity leave. You’d think a resort that caters to billionaires and royalty would have more of a tip top staff. But anyway, her dead pan expression when the spoiled royal female confronts her about taking out the excess chlorine in the pool was worth a chuckle. As was her attempt to teach the class when everything she knows is straight out of Wikipedia. The pace was good and there were some cute lines and isolated situations (Aerial Yoga). But the whole concept, although a little out of the usual Hallmark box was so predictable. Each guest, none of whom are at all entertaining, comes to the sleuths’ attention one at a time, is duly investigated, but of course is found misunderstood and innocent until we get to the last 5 minutes of the movie. **Spoiler Alert** The three investigators get the reward money even though it was really the federal agents who caught the bad guy. This convenient but totally unrealistic happenstance saves Jake and Laura’s struggling P.I. business, and helps Annie’s escape from bank teller-dom into law school. This was supposed to be light-hearted and fun but missed the mark.
