Love & Jane, or, When Dead Authors Talk to You

Gosh, this promotional image for Hallmark’s second “Loveuary” movie made me think I was about to watch a love story set in a library. Well, close–there are books (the film is sometimes set in a bookstore). But the movie annoyed me…and bored me. I fell asleep while watching it, and I don’t plan to finish watching it. 

Alas, I had such high hopes for this movie. Alison Sweeney, aka Sammy from Days of Our Lives, is in it. I have watched Days since I was a little girl. I didn’t recognize the actor, Benjamin Ayres, but he looked good from what I saw in the preview. And the actress playing Jane Austen, Kendra Anderson, also seemed promising with her “Austen” look.

But as soon as I started watching the movie I had this feeling it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the acting and the dialogue weren’t working for me. Sweeney is a great actor, but she didn’t seem to really fit the character, Lilly Thorpe, a Janeite who runs an Austen book club called “The Jane Society” and happens to have written a novel and only works at an ad agency to pay the bills. She really wishes she could devote herself to her fiction writing, as Austen did. I’d like to add that the last name of Thorpe is drawn from Austen’s Northanger Abbey–but not from the protagonist; rather, Thorpe is the name of two of the novel’s antagonists! There isn’t a Lilly in Austen’s writings.

Love & Jane (the title a riff off Austen’s teenage writing “Love & Freindship” or maybe just a reference to Austen’s two published ___ & ___ novels) does something I detest: it makes Austen fans look and sound like obsessive weirdos who are out of touch with the contemporary world. And even worse, it resurrects Jane Austen from the dead to appear as a spirit guide, whom only Lilly can see and hear, full of outdated (i.e., trite early 19th-century) advice. So, the fan and the long dead author are out of touch with a 21st-century reality.

A bunch of scenes show this. One example comes early in the movie when Lilly goes to a bookstore and tries to grab an Austen book off the shelf only to be pushed aside by a seemingly rude bookstore clerk named Trevor Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons. Fitzwilliam. You get it. Yes, it’s another Darcy is so rude motif. When Trevor says the book has been purchased online by a buyer, Lilly refuses to give it up, even though she has not paid for it. Why? She says being in person trumps being online. A luddite? Really?

Another example concerns Austen, the character, who shows up after Lilly falls asleep one night (and after she had asked the gods for advice from Jane). Austen is this uppity figure who dispenses odd requirements for a proper suitor: he must have a large head of cattle? Is that a euphemism? I don’t think so. But it’s not something Jane Austen would say anyway. And there are many more out of touch moments in the movie–and I only watched half of it, so who knows what else followed.

My sister watched the entire movie as I slept through the second half. The next day I asked her if it got any better after I dosed off. She said it did not. Bummer. The last thing I remember was Trevor not really being the bookstore employee but the bookstore owner who is also a tech mogul who wants to get people online to buy more of (his) books. Remember: Lilly is not a fan of online anything. And she has to work with him as a part of her job. How convenient.

Maybe I’m being too critical. One review of the film calls it a “clever premise,” “fun,” and “enjoyable.” It also describes Jane Austen as an “imaginary friend that every romance fan wants and needs. She’s the dream fairy godmother.” I beg to differ. And the writer of that review eventually critiques the film, too.

I shouldn’t say much more because I didn’t finish this film. Maybe I would have found some redeeming scenes? Maybe not.

Did you watch the film? If so, did you like it? Did it get better in the second half?

I mean I don’t mind the idea of Jane Austen as an imaginary friend. Heck, I’d love to chat with her, too, but this film didn’t carry it off as well as it could. Paging Mr. Darcy looks like a masterpiece compared to Love & Jane.

I wonder what the next film will be like!