Wendie Malick is excellent with tongue firmly in cheek throughout this faux mystery. I laughed aloud more than once (just ask my wife in the next room - she thought I had changed channels since I rarely laugh aloud at Hallmark movies.) The other characters adequately complement this mood. Cinematography is not my forte, and I did not notice any outrageous errors in the filming. Be sure, though, to begin with the expectation that had this aspired to mystery, it would have been a catastrophe; as a comedy, it works.
It is most certainly more comedic than mysterious, and I must assume that to be intentional. My charity is reinforced by some citations, including the final sequences where the lieutenant repeatedly shushes Malick ("be quiet!", to recite verbatim in his deeper male voice, her previous line of the script. Or when he is so effusive in praise of her skill in forcing the suspects to support the case she has made, even offering her a job as an investigator.
This is appropriate and commonplace for other amateur movie sleuths - for example, Murder, She Wrote - but that dialog seems to have disappeared in the two later broadcasts earlier today. Perhaps I should have held off a day or so for editing to be final. Some scenes were clearly deleted, others subjected to minor alterations vis-a-vis a line or two deleted, to be replaced by a line or two added from stock rescued from the cutting-room floor. The schedule may have been a little too tight for all the editing to be completed to everyone's satisfaction so that it is yet a work in progress. Hallmark does this quite often - I frequently see the same movie a day or two later with new scenes replacing some that I had thought were keys to the story. Glad I saw both versions so far of this one.
I will add only that when the culprit is eventually revealed, the mystery component is forced back to the surface with the choice of identity of that culprit. As in a true mystery, it has to be someone whom we have dismissed as utterly impossible - and it IS! I was actually surprised when my two best suspects were innocent of the murder; SHOCKED at the true perpetrator.
It is most certainly more comedic than mysterious, and I must assume that to be intentional. My charity is reinforced by some citations, including the final sequences where the lieutenant repeatedly shushes Malick ("be quiet!", to recite verbatim in his deeper male voice, her previous line of the script. Or when he is so effusive in praise of her skill in forcing the suspects to support the case she has made, even offering her a job as an investigator.
This is appropriate and commonplace for other amateur movie sleuths - for example, Murder, She Wrote - but that dialog seems to have disappeared in the two later broadcasts earlier today. Perhaps I should have held off a day or so for editing to be final. Some scenes were clearly deleted, others subjected to minor alterations vis-a-vis a line or two deleted, to be replaced by a line or two added from stock rescued from the cutting-room floor. The schedule may have been a little too tight for all the editing to be completed to everyone's satisfaction so that it is yet a work in progress. Hallmark does this quite often - I frequently see the same movie a day or two later with new scenes replacing some that I had thought were keys to the story. Glad I saw both versions so far of this one.
I will add only that when the culprit is eventually revealed, the mystery component is forced back to the surface with the choice of identity of that culprit. As in a true mystery, it has to be someone whom we have dismissed as utterly impossible - and it IS! I was actually surprised when my two best suspects were innocent of the murder; SHOCKED at the true perpetrator.