Hallmark Channel
Following the delightful A Little Park Music, Hallmark’s next ‘Spring into Love’ movie has an interesting premise driven by a historical mystery, but with little chemistry between its leads, the romance is lacking. And with the country about to celebrate its 250th anniversary this summer, why schedule this movie that’s heavily informed by the events of 1776 now and not even capitalize on the whole America250 thing?!?
To Philly with Love is centered around historian Emily Hollister, returning to Philadelphia following the death of her historian grandmother to help her mom, Diane, go through the belongings in her house while preparing to sell the property. A woman named Nancy Rolland shows up, a colleague of the grandmother at the women’s historical league with some letters that were written in 1776 from a man to the woman he loved. The elder Mrs. Hollister was working on authenticating the letters while trying to locate the corresponding letters from the woman. Initially not wanting to get involved as she is on a sabbatical and focused on her grandmother’s house, Emily is quickly drawn in by the love letters and the fact that her grandmother was about to submit a report that would help keep the organization running. Without it, they would have to disband, and it’s already gotten to the point that they’ve lost their work space, and their non-profit status is in jeopardy. So Emily goes to the historical archives in the hopes that she can speak to someone about getting the letters authenticated and preserved, and hopefully find the missing letters in the process. She is introduced to Nate Callahan, who is eager to get to work on the letters but Emily is hesitant to let them out of her presence. She eventually allows Nate to stabilize the paper and scan the images so she can have copies to work with, but as much as he is enjoying being a romantic historical detective, he also has to keep focus on his own job especially now that his boss, Richard Kent, has dropped a new assignment on him — create an exhibit with a real wow factor … in two weeks. That’s difficult as Nate becomes more invested in helping Emily with the letters, as they discover what appears to be a code written at the bottom of each letter, which they decipher, taking them to different locations in Philadelphia that may help them determine where the missing letters are, with stops including Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and the Betsy Ross House. After a small electrical fire in the attic of her grandmother’s house, a part of the original brick wall is exposed and it looks remarkably like the same brickwork at Independence Hall. Through more sleuthing, Emily and Nate discover the surprising connection between her grandmother’s home, which has been in the family for at least four generations, and the lovebirds in the letters, finally making the astonishing discovery of the missing letters in a spot no one would have ever thought to look, but now giving the house a potential historical preservation status.
But Kent is pressuring Nate about the exhibit, and out of the blue Nate tells him the exhibit will be centered around these 250 year old love letters. By this point, Nate has been invited to dinner with Emily and Diane, he’s taken her to his brother’s house for a family cookout, where she also meets Nate’s sister-in-law who just happens to be a lawyer specializing in non-profit work — what are the odds? — and Nate invited Emily to be his plus one at a dinner with Kent and some donors. It’s there that Kent lets slip to Emily how excited he is about Nate’s upcoming exhibit … before Nate could even broach the subject with her … leading to a feeling of total betrayal, Emily accusing Nate of just using her and the letters to help further his career. Despite Emily basically ending things with Nate in the most dramatic fashion, he still asks Kent to make sure the application for the preservation of her grandmother’s house gets top priority. On the day of the opening of the exhibit, Emily is a no show despite the note Nate left for her at the house, which was directly inspired by the love letters with its own little secret code included that she initially overlooks. She does show up at the exhibit after all, but Nate has left and when Emily is told where he is, she realizes it was in the note all the time, and she quickly excuses herself to run back to Nate and authenticate their own feelings for each other. But did Kent come through and help save Emily’s grandmother’s house?
Hallmark Channel
The story for To Philly with Love, with its sort of mild National Treasure historical scavenger hunt theme, really makes the search for the missing letters and all of the connections to Philadelphia and the historical context much more interesting than the actual romance, which really suffers from a lack of chemistry beyond the professional between the leads. The production team did a really nice job of seamlessly integrating scenes filmed in Philadelphia with scenes filmed in Ottawa, with the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and LOVE Park featured prominently. It’s refreshing that they didn’t just fake it and use digital visual effects to make Ottawa look like Philly (so I’m assuming the cheesesteaks Nate and Emily had were authentic, even though where they came from was never mentioned). Unfortunately, all of this, the historical treasure hunt and the locations were more interesting than the actual romance. As written, Emily and Nate do flirt with each other but we never feel a real romantic connection, and then when Emily just flies off the handle over the exhibit without allowing Nate to get a word in edgewise, it almost feels like that was probably how that relationship should end. But in typical Hallmark fashion, Emily realizes her mistake and runs to Nate for that expected kiss, but here’s the odd part … the reunited lovebirds always have another prolonged kiss right before the credits roll to confirm to the audience that they are indeed in love and in it for the long haul. After their single kiss, the final scene takes place back at the house six months later, now the new home for the ladies’ historical league and a center to educate youth on the country’s history. Nate and Emily are engaged at this point but instead of them celebrating their success with another kiss, Nate walks in the house with a student and Emily stays on the porch and hugs her mom. What? It’s good when they try to shake up the formula, but this moment only enhanced the fact that there was little romantic chemistry between Nate and Emily.
Rebecca Dalton and Stephen Huszar are fine as Emily and Nate, with Dalton really showing Emily’s enthusiasm for learning more about the letters and finding the missing correspondences, and Huszar does a good job at being convincing as a historian, especially in the way he handles the delicate paper. Often when he speaks, though, it sounded like the late Robert Osborne introducing a movie on TCM, and perhaps as a historian Huszar felt the character needed to be a bit of a stiff (who also has a not great romantic history that also keeps his walls up with Emily). Together there is little between them to indicate even the hint of romantic possibilities, but they would make a great team of history detectives. Dalton has better chemistry with Precious Chong, who plays her mother, Diana, the two really feeling and looking like they are related.
At the mention of Richard Kent’s name and how it makes everyone freeze up, you’d expect Michael Dickson to make the guy a real overbearing jerk, but he’s actually a jovial fellow whose real crime is that he expects way too much out of his employees, dropping his grand ideas on them without considering there is little time to get things done in his time frame. Dickson makes Kent anything but the boss from hell we expect when Linda first alerts Nate that he’s on the way to the building unexpectedly. Mylene Carino’s Linda just seems to show up in a mild panic to alert Nate every time Kent is on the way in, but she does tell Emily where Nate went at the end, so she kind of helps get them together again. Brett Wolfe doesn’t get a whole lot to do as Nate’s brother Frank except rag on him a bit and make a ‘dude, that’s your girlfriend’ face at him, while Monica Rodriguez Knox as his wife Sonya actually gets to interact more with Emily as she helps her with the ladies’ league’s legal issues, while also asking why Emily broke things off with Nate.
In the end, To Philly with Love serves as more of an adventure than a romance, allowing the viewers to connect the dots to figure out how the letters tie together with Revolution-era America, Emily’s family and the house. The supporting cast is decent and the leads are charming, it’s just that lack of chemistry that makes this a romance movie without much romance.
To Philly with Love has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, is rated TV-G, and is streaming on Hallmark+. Try Hallmark+ free for seven days on Apple TV.
Preview | To Philly with Love
Hallmark Channel