[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
If you’re very fortunate, you still have your parents and grandparents or special elder friends with you. If you’re exceptionally fortunate, they’re all in good health. At a certain point, your relationships may become a caregiving scenario, where the whimsy and magic of sharing grand adventures and hearing their stories and unique points of view softens and fades into a relationship that, while still special, becomes something else amid the day to day of tending to their needs.
Before that happens, when you can be out in the world together making brand new memories, it can indeed be magic, and it’s those idyllic moments that are captured by I’ll Be Seeing You, which premieres Saturday on Hallmark Channel. Jessica Harmon directs a script by Joey Elkins & Blake Silver based on their story with Kathy Kloves.
The film follows an unlikely quartet of road trip companions where two of the four, BFFs Vivien and Sue, played by Christine Ebersole and BJ Harrison, are able-bodied, vibrant women in their 70s, ready to hit the open road and impart their wisdom about what their journeys have taught them about life and love. The recipients of those chestnuts are Sue’s granddaughter, Amy (Stacey Farber), and the activities director at their senior living center, Mark (Tyler Hynes, who also executive produces).
The film is a love letter from Hynes to Ebersole, with whom he costarred in Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, and who he pitched the idea to when they were making the press circuit rounds last year for that film’s Emmy consideration. The basic premise is the rote young woman on the cusp of a promotion who’s forfeited pretty much everything for that vaporous golden ring and been thwarted at every turn. But there’s a twist.
The weekend Amy decides to visit Vivien is when that elusive reward finally, finally seems to be within reach. Her boss, Phyllis (April Telek), calls, forking her girls weekend when she asks her to drive nine hours south to get some papers signed because an e-sign just won’t do.
Vivien pitches the idea of a road trip, and they invite Sue, who’s marking her first wedding anniversary without her late husband. Early in the trip, they hit an actual bump in the road, and the cavalry arrives in the form of Mark and his trusty steed, a 70s-era VW van affectionally named Mabel.
The carefree Mark agrees to take them the whole way, partly out of a feeling of responsibility for Sue and Vivien, and secondly to distract him from his own professional quandary—whether to formally take the job he’s been doing as a temp. Along the way, Vivien has one request: a detour to Keystone, the town where she met her first love.
It’s there that she drops an ulterior motive/truth bomb on Mark and Amy that they need to get their acts together and focus on living their lives now and not leaving everything to “some day.” She also uncovers an unexpected scavenger hunt that sets the travelers on separate paths for a while, where a few shenanigans ensue, and her advice to Amy and Mark starts to take hold.
It’s a very sweet, old-school style multigenerational romcom that’s blissfully mostly devoid of cell phones and tech and instead just lets people be together and get lost in new and old friendships and make the most of the time they have right now. And there’s no gotcha to be worried about. (It is Hallmark, after all). It’s a happy story for all involved and I enjoyed it very much. Depending on where you are with your own older family members and friends, it may inspire new adventures yet to come or hopefully spark sweet memories of the ones you once shared.
I’ll Be Seeing You premieres Saturday, April 25h, at 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Channel in the US and W Network in Canada and streaming on various outlets in the US. It will also be streaming the next day on Hallmark+ in the US and StackTV in Canada. Here are a few sneak peeks.
Photos courtesy of Courtney Julien for Hallmark Media; videos courtesy of Hallmark Media.
