Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A wedding groom goes missing on his wedding day and he is never to be seen again for some 30 years and no one seems to care anymore. That is until our antiques dealer/amateur sleuth Jennifer Shannon (Lori Loughlin) visits an estate sale and finds the brides wedding dress with some blood in one of the bride's dress pockets.So the mystery begins with enough suspects to record a new Guinness Book record for the amount of people who can be stuffed into a Volkswagen car. So where was the missing bridegroom stuffed? Not in that Volkswagen that is for sure.Jennifer's also dealing with two family matters. Her daughter's boyfriend is looking at a distance relationship and if it can survive their young love, and Jennifer's own marriage is near to another anniversary date but her workaholic husband seems to be distracted with his business to realize their wedding anniversary is just around the corner with no plan in site to celebrate their (not so?) memorable wedding date. One of the suspects is the still very attractive 64 year old Cheryl Ladd (Charlie's Angels TV 1977-1981) who plays the stood up at the altar and wealthy bride Helen Whitney Carter, that fateful day some 30 years prior. Although the writing of this made for TV movie seems to take the long way around to find out what really happened to our missing bride groom the real mystery would be how sloppy the absent police department would have had to be if this story was even vaguely possible.Mrs. Shullivan and I both liked the film and especially the recovery ending even though the story was quite winding and a bit troublesome to think that the police department could not have achieved what our amateur sleuth Jennifer Shannon accomplished all on her own with just her good looks and wholesome charm.I give this chapter of the Garage Sale Mystery series a more than decent 7 out of 10. Just remember that this mystery film is not developed with a blockbuster Hollywood budget so manage your expectations and like Mrs. Shullivan and I, you will not be disappointed.

The thing that really got me was the use of Lie Detector tests to climax the mystery. This was written and acted by people dedicated to Dr Phil programs. In fact Lie Detectors can be very unreliable and are not admissible in a true court of law and, at best, can only indicate some evasion to answering specific questions, despite what Dr Phil says. They do not indicate guilt. Very contrived story and disappointing...only watched it through because my Wife was watching it.

I was terribly disappointed in this Garage Sale Mystery. The Wedding Dress brought no closure to the blood family of a victim who disappeared 36 years earlier between the wedding and the reception. Even Britney Spears did not have a marriage that short.This all begins when Lori Loughlin gets a wedding dress at a garage sale, a really fancy one that the bride told her maid to burn. But with a designer label on it the maid puts it away and now it's part of a garage sale where Loughlin and her sidekick Sarah Strange pick it up.The woman who had it was a deserted bride and now is played by Cheryl Ladd. She could have become a 20th century Miss Favesham but instead became a big charity mover and shaker. Her husband's family hired detectives and neither they or the police could solve it.But in that dress was a hidden pocket which contained a handkerchief of dried blood. Of course the victim's type and Loughlin now really thinking foul play, who wouldn't?From a mystery we go to a romance akin to what the young folks had on the sinking Titanic.I'm disappointed that Hallmark chose such a ridiculous romantic ending. Truth be told Loughlin has no real evidence on which a murder case could be based. Still there's a dead man who ought to get some justice.

The Garage Sale Mysteries, like many Hallmark mysteries, are for light watching and mild entertainment. This is unlike, say, the Hallmark Christmas films, which are awful.I love seeing the antiques and collectibles featured on the shows, and the cast is likable. These films also move a little better than others on the network.In this one, Wedding Dress, the shop owners Jennifer and Dani (Lori Loughlin and Sarah Strange) find a vintage wedding dress from 1979 at an estate sale. Given the styles back then, I rather doubt it was a real vintage dress - guess the set dresser couldn't find one. On investigation, they learn the groom disappeared during the reception and was never seen again. They meet the bride, Helen (Cheryl Ladd), and Jennifer becomes involved in the mystery. These are usually easy to figure out - this one was slightly more intriguing.The thing about anything Lifetime or Hallmark is you have to know what you're getting into and take it for what it is: made in Canada without big budgets and a mostly Canadian cast with one American TV or soap star, and not particularly well directed.On that basis, Garage Sale Mysteries are a slight cut above the norm.