This Week in Hallmark: As Luck Would Have It

Back in December, I read a rumor that alleged that Hallmark was working down to the wire with it’s late of Christmas movies. That movies wouldn’t be finished until mere days before they were supposed to premiere (if not an closer timeframe than that). Obviously, I do not live in the Hallmark scheduling offices and have no inside sources, so I can’t say for sure that it’s true. But it certainly feels true. COVID made it even harder for a channel known for a quick turnaround on its movies, and the need to create vast amount of product in a short amount of time probably led to some very, very rushed movies.

As Spring Fling continues on though, I can’t help but think that the trend continued. It’s no longer Christmas so Hallmark has the ability to free up its calendar a little more and make adjustments when need be. So when One Winter Wedding can’t be finished in time for the winter months, it becomes One Perfect Wedding and is weirdly slotted into their Spring Fling event. As Luck Would Have It was clearly designed to be a St. Patrick’s Day movie, but it wasn’t going to make that premiere date. So now it is premiering randomly in April. Less egregious than the One Perfect Wedding situation, but still noticeable.

As Luck Would Have It is a Hallmark movie I feel that I have seen before, a long, long time ago before anyone cared what I thought about these movies. Emma Thompson’s husband did one once upon a time! There was another one called Chasing Leprechauns? In the days when Hallmark Channel was more holiday focused beyond Christmas, St. Patrick’s day existed to create a weird one-off movie set in Ireland. As Luck Would Have It follows in that tradition. It just premiered in April.

Beyond the scheduling, As Luck Would Have It was fine. It hits every single trope you expect from a Hallmark movie just with more exposition about Irish culture in between. Even though it’s the best Spring Fling movie so far this year, I still found it to be a little disappointing because I have liked the leads in other projects before (and both are Hallmark newbies, apparently) and perhaps hoped they could further spark the material. Still, you can’t expect miracles all the time. As is, As Luck Would Have It is forgettable fluff and as that is what Hallmark makes it’s money on, so it will have to do.

Spring Fling has been a weird event for Hallmark, one that is more interesting for the scheduling antics behind the scenes than anything that has been put forth on the screens. They still have one more movie to premiere next week before the event is through, but I am not banking on it singlehandedly making it an above-average slate of movies. That’s a lot of pressure. For now, I will keep my eye towards May when the movies don’t have to fit a theme and maybe will give me less headaches as a result.

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