I can’t tell you how excited I was when I heard Garage Sale Mysteries was coming back with the old gang after such a long hiatus.
I told the story about how I discovered these movies in my review of the original Garage Sale Mystery, so I’m not going to repeat the whole thing here. But let’s just say that Hallmark subscription has been worth every penny. These movies have become part of my background rotation — something I can throw on when I want to chill out or just have something familiar playing in the background.
Who would’ve ever guessed that one?
But Garage Sale Mysteries: Murder Takes the Stage had a bigger job than simply giving Jennifer Shannon another murder to solve. After being gone this long, it had to prove the gang could come back without losing whatever made these movies so damn comfortable in the first place.
Good news: they haven’t lost it.
The Gang Is Back — Just a Little Older
Jennifer (Lori Loughlin) and Jason (Steve Bacic) are now empty nesters, although Logan (Connor Stanhope) is still perfectly willing to stop by for a home-cooked meal instead of living on college-student ramen. Hannah (Eva Bourne) is in law school — law school! Can you imagine? — and appears by phone.
Dani (Sarah Strange) is still her fun, creative self. Frank (Kevin O’Grady) is back. Jason is looking hot with a beard and longer hair. And Jennifer and Jason are still as lovey-dovey and flirty as ever.
We even get to see more of Jennifer’s humongous house instead of spending all our time in that kitchen or staring at the king-sized bed that’s bigger than my whole apartment.
They all look a little older because, well, they are. But they still feel like the same people.
That’s probably the most important thing Murder Takes the Stage gets right.
Hallmark hasn’t messed with the Hallmark sheen, either. Everyone is still smiling. Everyone is still ridiculously pleasant. Jennifer may actually be physically incapable of not smiling.
I’m not complaining.
But Where’s My Garage Sale Mystery?
The movie even opens at a garage sale, which immediately felt like coming home. Better yet, Dani is out browsing alongside Jennifer instead of being stuck back at the shop.
I loved that.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the garage-sale mystery we get.
This time Jennifer isn’t tracing some mysterious object she picked up at a sale. She’s a member of a true-crime book club that’s putting on a reenactment of the Lizzie Borden case, and naturally someone winds up dead during rehearsals.
So the garage-sale element mostly takes a back seat to a murder at a mystery-club play.
As a one-off, I’m willing to give it a pass.
This movie has to reintroduce everybody, show us what they’re doing now and reestablish the relationships after the long break. Using the reenactment gives Hallmark an easy excuse to throw practically the entire gang into the same place.
But if we’re getting more movies, I hope they return to the old formula. Let Jennifer and Dani go garage-sale hunting together. Hell, hire somebody to mind the shop while they’re out causing trouble. It’s not like they’ve never left the place unattended before.
That Jennifer-Dani garage-sale dynamic works, and I’d love to see more of it.
Lizzie Borden Would Like a Word
Jennifer’s true-crime club is reenacting the Lizzie Borden story at Milton’s (John Murphy) bed and breakfast, with historical expert Carol (Liza Huget) making everyone’s life miserable because she wants every detail to be historically accurate.
Carol is especially adamant about the idea that Lizzie Borden didn’t actually give her mother and father 40 whacks with an axe.
And all I could think was: can you imagine this woman watching Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story?
She’d have a f*cking cow. And she’d probably start emailing Netflix every hour.
Coincidentally — or not, who knows and who cares? — the new Garage Sale Mystery arrived around the same time as Netflix’s Lizzie Borden series. I watched an episode of that one too.
It’s no Garage Sale Mysteries.
We’ll get to that another day.
Jennifer is playing Lizzie’s stepmother in the reenactment and mostly finds herself caught in the middle of everybody else’s arguments because Jennifer just wants to have fun.
Helen (Lauren Akemi Bradley) is coordinating the production, Isaac (Fred Ewanuick) is playing Andrew Borden, and Sierra (Megan Best) is playing Lizzie.
Then somebody gets murdered, and suddenly all these supposedly respectable people start looking shady as hell.
Everybody Is Apparently a Suspect
There’s also a rare first-edition book about the Borden case at the center of everything, which gives the movie plenty of opportunities to start tossing suspects into the pool.
And it tosses in a LOT of them.
Carol has secrets. Milton has even bigger secrets. Even innocent-looking Helen has some shadiness going on.
Then Eric (Matthew MacCaull) turns up at the B&B because he’s a descendant of Edwin Porter, the author of the first-edition book. Naturally, he gets scooped straight into the suspect pool.
As he should.
You show up out of nowhere because you’ve heard about an extremely valuable book connected to your ancestor and then somebody gets murdered soon after you arrive?
Buddy, you’re going on my list too.
The sheer number of suspects is both one of the movie’s strengths and one of its problems.
Older Garage Sale Mysteries tended to give us a much tighter group of possibilities. Here there are so many new people that keeping track of everybody occasionally becomes work.
There are also stretches where Murder Takes the Stage gets stuck in the River of Molasses. It breaks free quickly enough, but the movie feels longer than some of the earlier entries, and some of the cast arguments and maneuvering around the investigation could have been tightened.
On the other hand, all those suspects mean the mystery isn’t ridiculously easy to solve. I didn’t figure it out.
In fact, I was genuinely surprised by who the killer turned out to be.
For a cozy Hallmark mystery, I’ll happily take that trade.
Frank Has Finally Accepted His Fate
Another change I noticed is Frank’s attitude toward Jennifer’s nosing around. At this point, the man seems to have accepted his fate.
He isn’t merely tolerating Jennifer showing up with another theory. He’s already tangled up in the situation himself because he becomes part of the reenactment — playing a bobby, no less — and was there when the murder happened.
But we still get the familiar stuff. Jennifer and Frank have coffee and discuss the case, except now Jennifer introduces him to espresso.
His reaction is golden.
It’s a small thing, but those little interactions are exactly what I wanted from a revival. I don’t need Hallmark reinventing these people. I want to see what changed while still recognizing the relationships I liked in the first place.
Another new wrinkle is the murder board. Jennifer and Frank actually stand in front of it together going through the suspects, which immediately reminded me of You’re Killing Me on Acorn and Allie and Andi’s murder board.
That could just be a one-off for Murder Takes the Stage, though, because holy hell does this movie have suspects. The older Garage Sale Mysteries usually gave Jennifer a much smaller pool to work with. Here, you need a board just to remember who the f*ck everybody is.
But the board also shows how the Jennifer/Frank dynamic has changed. He isn’t off doing official police business while Jennifer conducts her own investigation and eventually wanders in with another theory. They’re working through the suspects together.
And Thank God Dani Is Still Dani
Dani remains one of my favorite parts of this entire series.
She gets dragged into the reenactment to play a maid and immediately decides the historically appropriate maid costume needs some improvement. So she adds gold lace, and Carol, naturally, loses her mind.
Does gold lace remotely fit the period? Absolutely not.
Does Dani give a shit? Also absolutely not.
That’s Dani. She’s got a little rebel in her, which is why I love her.
And that’s another reason I hope Hallmark keeps putting Dani and Jennifer together outside the shop. Watching the two of them browse the opening garage sale was fun. Don’t tease me with that dynamic and then take it away.
Even Logan gets pulled into the mystery, as usual, when his computer expertise is needed. Jason gets involved. Frank gets involved. Hannah checks in from law school.
This really does become a reunion for the entire Garage Sale Mysteries family rather than simply dropping Jennifer into a new story and pretending no time has passed.
There’s even a moment when Jason mentions “Hannah Banana,” meaning their daughter, and my brain immediately went to Hannah Swensen because that’s what I call her.
Wrong Hallmark mystery, Lisa.
They Didn’t Lose the Mojo
That’s really what I wanted to know going into Murder Takes the Stage.
Could these people still feel like Garage Sale Mysteries after being away for so long?
Yes.
The format is different. The movie is arguably longer than it needs to be. There are too many suspects. And I definitely want the next installment to get back to Jennifer finding something at a garage sale that drags her into a mystery.
But as a reintroduction? This works.
Jennifer and Jason are still Jennifer and Jason. Dani is still wonderfully Dani. Frank is still there drinking coffee and reluctantly — or maybe not so reluctantly anymore — getting pulled into Jennifer’s investigation. The kids have grown up without disappearing from the family. And the central mystery has enough twists, secrets and suspicious characters that it actually kept me guessing.
After a long hiatus, that’s exactly what I wanted.
🔥 The Verdict: WATCHABLE
I’m not going to lie: I love Garage Sale Mysteries.
Bad ones? What bad ones?
Good, bad or somewhere in between, these movies are fun and comforting and really don’t require you to do anything except sit back and enjoy the shenanigans. Garage Sale Mysteries: Murder Takes the Stage is no different.
The mystery runs a little long and the suspect pool gets overcrowded, but it’s also one of the trickier mysteries in the series because there are enough twists and turns that I genuinely didn’t figure out where it was going.
More importantly, the gang hasn’t lost its mojo.
Lori Loughlin is still fabulous as Jennifer. Dani is still the Dani I love. Jason and Jennifer still have their chemistry. Frank still fits perfectly into Jennifer’s investigative orbit. Everybody slips back together remarkably well after all this time.
That’s always the worry when something you love comes back after a long hiatus. Sometimes you get the characters back without getting the magic back. Garage Sale Mysteries still has both.
Put this one on your watchlist even if you don’t think you’d ever enjoy a Hallmark mystery.
Remember, I originally came here to roast Hallmark. I left with a f*cking subscription.
More Hallmark Coverage
Keep checking back as we add more Hallmark movies and shows to our watch rotation. Maybe even Hannah Banana, one of my faves.
What If Christmas – Lori Loughlin, Tom Cavanaugh (Countdown to Christmas)
Garage Sale Mystery – Original 2013 Movie
