"The real triumph is not in the final product - it's in the journey."
Hello everyone!
Or maybe you will, who knows?
Either way, what happened was I watched a Hallmark channel movie from this year's lineup - and I actually really, REALLY liked it.
This is a monumental thing, because I haven't really enjoyed any of their productions this year yet, not the way I have in the past.
I don't know what it is, whether I've finally reached my limit or what, but the movies just aren't as good anymore, in my opinion at least, and they come across as even more ridiculous in terms of plot twist twenty minutes before the end than they would normally do.
But this weekend, they FINALLY delivered.
And it's apt, because the movie was Her Pen Pal.
I will be linking movies from the Summer Nights lineup, as well as other summer-related Hallmark ones, down below, as always.
On with the show, because I bet everyone wants to know about this movie!
Or at least, I hope you do haha.
Victoria (Mallory Jansen) is an event planner, mostly specializing in weddings, and she's worked hard over the past decade or so to build her business from the ground up. She's currently planning a wedding for her best friend, and as it's going to be a destination one, they're going to Paris.
But, there's a catch.
See, Victoria had been in a relationship for about 12 years or so before Cameron decided they didn't have a future together, and while she's been waiting 6 months for him to come to his senses, he's bringing a date to the wedding, someone who ISN'T Victoria.
Awkward!
Once in Paris, however, the two best friends rediscover that Victoria's first love wasn't ACTUALLY Cameron - but her French pen pal from high school, when they were both 17 or 18 years old, Jacques.
Naturally, as friends do, they look him up, discover he's a contractor living in the area, and leave him a voicemail pretending to be Victoria looking him up, much to her chagrin, but she doesn't believe anything will come of it anyway since they broke up the summer he visited the States before she started dating Cameron.
But as this is a movie, Jacques (Joshua Sasse) DOES show up, and while it takes her a beat to recognize him, Victoria is eventually thrilled to see him again - and her friends are, too. The bride invites him to tag along for the week of pre-wedding stuff they have planned, and while Victoria is a little bit nervous about it, Jacques is more of a go-with-the-flow kind of person and says, sure thing.
He says much more than sure thing in the evening when Cameron comes sniffing around Victoria, mind, telling the other man that he and Vic had made plans for the whole week (an added magic to this particular scene is that Jacques apologizes after, explaining he thought she needed some support because guy was a douche, and Victoria waves his apology away saying, yeah, he was right on the money about that one). And I mean, they DO have plans.
See during their letter exchange, they poured their heart and soul out to each other and made grand plans for their Tour de France, which Jacques is more than happy to take the brunette on now, so they go to see the Eiffel Tower, eat sweets at patisseries around Paris, sit on the steps of Montmartre, visit the famous bridge of lovers, etc.
Through it all, they begin to rediscover why they fell for one another in the first place - also helped along by the wonderful activities Victoria has prepared for the pre-wedding week, which include walking tours, cooking classes, and the like.
She also remembers why she started her business and where she's veered off in a completely different direction, finally taking a breath to ask the bride and groom whether they would like something changed, after a disaster forces her to look for a different wedding venue from the one in the hotel she'd initially planned.
Naturally, Jacques comes to the rescue, since he owns a chateau (which he spends the majority of the movie waffling over whether or not to sell - in the end he doesn't), one his grandparents bought and restores, and his parents added on to. But it's a big project for just one person, and he'd always thought he'd have a partner to work on it with.
Cough, Victoria, cough.
ANYWAY, she asks if they can have the wedding in his garden, which he easily agrees to, and at this point you're thinking, well, Victoria's slowed down from her frantic planning pace, she's made sure to include the minor alterations the bride wanted (when she actually MADE a decision, given she was portrayed as the ditziest person ever who can never decide on anything at all), and she's slowly fallen in love with Jacques again.
Looks good, right? Jacques is obviously still in love with her and never got over her, evidenced by the fact he never really dated anyone after they broke up.
But there's Cameron. Who still has feelings for Victoria, and who forces the subject, asking her to give him another chance (while I'm over there, thinking, you HAD your chance, 12 years of it, and you called it quits, moron). I think I would have been okay with it all - a conversation IS the right way to go, obviously - but then he suddenly kisses her out of the blue (which Jacques naturally sees) which is a huge invasion of privacy to me since he forfeited the right to it when they broke up.
ANYWAY, this does lead them both to discover, hey, we aren't REALLY compatible and won't work out a second time either (but I will say Victoria becoming friends with the new girlfriend is one of the best scenes ever in the movie where they realize THEY have more in common than Victoria and Cameron ever did LOL). But at this point Jacques is pulling away.
See, like he told Victoria at the bridge, love isn't something you lock and keep to yourself, it's something you set free and, if it's meant to be, it'll come back to you, but what she hears when he says that is that he's giving up and won't fight, which is the initial misunderstanding that drove them apart all those years ago.
She wanted him to fight for them. He didn't want to force something, especially as Cameron was already on the scene then and he feels like it's a repeat now, with him just being yeeted out of there as soon as Cameron shows up.
This causes the obligatory movie rift because the two just don't seem to be able to communicate the proper things, but during the wedding ceremony, which Victoria officiates (since, badass woman can do it, too), she reads part of a letter Jacques sent her when he was 18, and he clocks into the fact that maybe they don't have to break up this time around.
And as they dance together that night at the reception, they finally clear the air, admitting that, hey, they don't know where this is going, but they DO want it to go somewhere, and so they seal it with a kiss.
FIN!
Honestly, I loved this movie. SO MUCH.
It has to be largely because Mallory and Joshua starred opposite one another before on Galavant, and I swear, in the beginning scenes where there were close-ups of Joshua, I 100% expected him to bust into song. Don't judge.
But their on-screen chemistry was definitely believable and very much enjoyable, and the supporting cast did their job well, too, even though I'd have throttled the ditzy bride by that point, or the other husband who kept trying to mommy-and-daddy his poor pregnant wife, who just wanted to live normally like before she got pregnant.
What I'm saying is, there were other plotlines in the movie running parallel to the main one, but the main was definitely the star attraction, despite the dresses poor Mallory was stuck in for most of the movie. Whose idea was it to dress her like that??? I'll forgive the summer shoes she was in most of the time, because apparently, Joshua isn't THAT much taller than her, and he kind of needed to be, so they kept her in flats, but still.
All in all, this was a heartwarming, enjoyable destination wedding kind of movie, with a suave Frenchman (who occasionally lost his accent to his natural British one, but we forgive him) giving the silly American competition when there wasn't ever really any competition at all, since both Victoria and Jacques never ACTUALLY got over one another.
Listen, I do get it though: after spending 12 years with someone, you obviously need to consider what's best, and you might be afraid to jump into something new - but in this movie, it was a no-brainer Jacques was the man to pick.
And with how the movie ended - fairly ambiguously - I'm really, REALLY hoping for a sequel. I think it'd be something magical to watch as they navigated their relationship as adults, and their pairing works on-screen, so why not, right?
10/10 recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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