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TV Movie Goodness: A Preview of Hallmark Channel’s Lucky in Love [PHOTOS and VIDEO] 

Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC

[Warning: General spoilers in article, photos, and video.]

Gossip Girl‘s Jessica Szohr headlines Hallmark Channel’s newest outing, a fun and light “be careful what you wish for” tale called Lucky in Love. It co-stars Days of Our LivesDeidre Hall, Cult‘s Ben Hollingsworth, and Hellcats’ Ryan Kennedy, who was on Hallmark Channel last year in Nearlyweds.

The story is simple–Szohr plays Mira, a rising talent at a Facebook-type web company. Her co-worker/BFF Jonah (Hollingsworth) is nuts about her, which seems to only be a secret to her. April Fool’s Day rolls around and after one “gotcha!” too many, she retaliates with a few of her own–a selfie with Liam (Kennedy), an awesome guy she literally bumps into on the street, pics of a dream apartment, and a text about a faux promotion–only to have all those things manifest on April 2nd.

Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC

It starts when she’s trapped in an elevator with her CEO, Erin (Hall), and uses the time to calm her claustrophobic boss and make an actual elevator pitch about her ideas for a redesign. Erin responds with a promotion and a corporate apartment, and then her jokey selfie with Liam results in him asking her on a date. From there, Mira gets everything she wants, very quickly, only to lose herself, and the people who were already in her life. She soon figures out that who she’s become, and everything she wanted and now has, pale in comparison to who she was before, and what she had and didn’t appreciate.

I kept waiting for this to be one of those wake-up-and-reset type stories, and in a refreshing change of pace, it isn’t. Mira has to sort through her new-found success and decide what aspects to keep and what aspects of her previous life to reclaim. It’s a sweet story and while we have a foil for Mira, there’s nobody in the story who’s an outright villain.

Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC
Photo Credit: Bettina Strauss/Crown Media United States, LLC

It was filmed around Vancouver, making good use of the downtown skylines–and Mira’s new apartment is KILLER. I can count the episodes of Gossip Girl I watched on one hand, so Szohr is relatively new to me. She’s very good here as a young woman who pined and pined for the next phase of her life to start and then seizes it when it does and realizes she needs a balance of the old and the new. She has a nice energy with both Hollingsworth and Kennedy. I loved having Hall involved, too, and it’s nice to see her play an executive woman who’s a mentor with no ulterior motives.

The movie reminded me a little bit of an ABC Family movie several years back with Carly Pope and Sara Rue called This Time Around.

Lucky in Love premieres tomorrow night on Hallmark Channel at 9/8c. And check back tomorrow for our EXCLUSIVE chat with Deidre Hall. [Update: The interview is here]. Here’s a sneak peek:

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