Glad Valentine’s Day, y’all! In honor of the event, Hallmark has seen match to elevate their moratorium on Jane Austen-inspired films. As somebody who has made it his mission to look at and overview each function adaptation of her work, I can communicate with some authority about the truth that there was a really unsettling profusion of the issues, racking up a cool half-dozen or so titles between 2016’s Unleashing Mr. Darcy (relax, it is a couple of canine present) and 2019’s Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen.

Since then, nonetheless, there has hardly been a peep. 2021’s Taking part in Cupid is allegedly an adaptation of Emma, however hell if I have been capable of finding a shred of proof that it may presumably be such a factor. Even counting that title, three years with no Hallmark Jane Austen adaptation is a very long time. Chronologically, no less than.

Anyway, in the end, all through February, Hallmark is unleashing a riotous proliferation of 4 new films adapting or impressed by the works of Jane Austen (ie. the 2 books they at all times do – Delight & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility). Each two weeks or so, I’ll drop a brand new overview of considered one of these films, beginning – naturally – at first: the February third launch of Paging Mr. Darcy.

Tragically, this isn’t a film set within the Nineties. Moderately, the title is a pun on… pages? In a ebook? I suppose? It is not misguided on the After Ever Glad degree of brain-melting codswallop, however it’s an astoundingly harebrained title nonetheless.

I suppose there are pages within the film, although. Someplace. It is set on the Jane Austen League of America Annual Convention and Ball, the place Austen scholar Eloise Cavendish (Mallory Jansen) is giving the keynote deal with, hoping to catch the ear of the venerable Dr. Victoria Jennings (Carolyn Scott) and get a prestigious Princeton professorship within the course of. She takes issues too critically and solely needs to research Austen with out dressing up and having enjoyable.

However when she finds out that Dr. Jennings loves all of the goofy trappings of the convention, she has to pretend that she likes them too. And who higher to show her than the convention’s resident Mr. Darcy cosplayer Sam Lee (Will Kemp), to whom she has beforehand been an absolute capsule for principally no cause? Sam appears very all the way down to fall in love with Eloise, so the delight and the unfairness all fall onto her, however you possibly can see the place that is all going.

So, this is the factor about Hallmark films. They’re deeply, deliberately generic, however virtually at all times in every film there may be precisely one Lynchian nightmare scene that sneaks in and makes the entire expertise really feel off-kilter and strange. Paging Mr. Darcy lacks the Lynch scene, which ought to be a stake by way of its coronary heart from the start. However actually… it makes up for it by being really form of good?

Clearly, we’re grading on a scale right here. It ain’t When Harry Met Sally. Like every Hallmark film, it was cobbled collectively from first takes on overlit levels with an virtually callous disregard to ever presenting a picture that could be inherently pleasing to gaze upon in and of itself.

With this kind of materials, it is virtually at all times as much as the solid to maintain the viewers engaged. And one way or the other, Paging Mr. Darcy has assembled a pair of charismatic leads, which could be the primary time this has ever occurred in a Hallmark film. Often, it is one lead or the opposite. In the event you’re fortunate.

However no, Mallory Jansen offers a very grounded and vibrant character, effectively letting you already know all the pieces you could find out about Eloise with voice, physicality, and all these good issues. Will Kemp is likewise no slouch, delivering comedian strains as in the event that they’re really humorous and – horror of horrors – really wringing a couple of laughs out of them within the course of. Carolyn Scott and J.D. Leslie (as Eloise’s former pupil) are additionally delivering of their supporting roles. Actually, the one weak hyperlink is Lillian Doucet-Roche, who goes too broad, taking part in Eloise’s lovelorn sister Mia as a garish and repellent cartoon caricature.

The film can also be not a half-bad illustration of characters who know a hell of lots about Jane Austen. More often than not, I am satisfied that these Hallmark Austen screenwriters have not even cracked the Cliff’s Notes of the texts they’re coping with. Nonetheless, there are stable references to some shut readings of Delight & Prejudice and mentions of – God forbid – different books by Austen together with Mansfield Park, which is a textual content I used to be fairly sure no one within the neighborhood of the Hallmark workplace had ever even heard of.

This will in all probability solely be thought of a optimistic side of the film in the event you’ve sat by way of, say, Christmas at Pemberley Manor and Delight, Prejudice, and Mistletoe throughout one single harrowing 2018 Christmas like I did. However hey, figuring out the fabric you are adapting, nonetheless loosely, ought to rely for one thing.

However let’s not be too hasty in our reward. The film nonetheless dabbles in its fair proportion of low cost Hallmark goofiness, together with a montage the place the potential couple is supposed to arrange dessert for 120 conferencegoers and clearly makes sufficient for like 30, at most. And the scene the place Eloise, who’s, I’ll remind you, a Jane Austen scholar, highlights the opening line of Delight & Prejudice like she hadn’t already memorized it a long time in the past.

It additionally flags one thing fierce at first of the third act, one thing it by no means actually recovers from. Nonetheless, a half-decent script being carried out by two full-decent leads is nothing to shake a stick at, particularly as a result of issues may at all times be manner worse. That is one thing that I gravely concern we’re about to study subsequent time after we cowl the “Jane Austen is a ghost cupid” film Love & Jane. However till then, permit me to specific how ardently I vibed with Paging Mr. Darcy.

Brennan Klein is a millennial who is aware of far more about ‘80s slasher films than he has any proper to. He is a former host of the Assault of the Queerwolf podcast and a present senior film/TV information author at Display Rant. Yow will discover his different evaluations on his weblog Popcorn Tradition. Observe him on Twitter or Letterboxd, in the event you really feel prefer it.