Real Murders: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery (2015)

Crappy film

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I enjoyed the first Aurora Teagarden (and I love her name!) Hallmark movie and looked forward to this one. The staple characters are likable and Candace Cameron Bure's "Roe" is delightful (I never saw the TV series that made her famous, "Full House," or anything else in which she has appeared). This movie concentrates on the Real Murders Club of which she, her best friend, Sally (a newspaper reporter), and her mother's romantic interest, John, are all members. It appears that a serial killer is loose in Aurora's charming town, mimicking real-life infamous murders that the Club has discussed. As clues began to surface it becomes clearer that the murderer could be one of the Club members. This really is too close to home for Aurora, who first suspects then allies herself with a best-selling (and good looking) author of mystery novels to solve the mystery and reveal who the murderer is. I enjoy a few of the series on the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries channel, but this is my favorite because it is closer to a true "cozy" environment and presents some interesting puzzles and mostly charming and likable characters. For the most part, the main characters are well cast; it's a treat to see Marilu Henner again, for example. However, not having read the books I cannot comment on how close the movies or actors reflect the plots and characters in the books, and perhaps that's just as well.Although the denouement was a bit far-fetched, it lends itself to the wackiness that can make a cozy truly endearing.

Candace Cameron Bure is Aurora Teagarden in "Real Murders: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery" from 2015.In this film, someone is using famous murders from the past to knock off people in the murder mystery club to which librarian Aurora belongs. She gets to work trying to solve the crimes, coming up against her nemesis, Detective Lynn Smith (Miranda Frigon), the wife of Aurora's former boyfriend. In the last film, Aurora delivered Lynn's baby so I don't see how it is she's still hostile.Anyway, I didn't like this one - I thought the denouement was pretty dumb. I guess Candace Cameron Bure is an acquired taste. She's way too perky and childish for me. Marilu Henner plays her mother, and I believe the rest are Canadian actors.I love all mysteries, which is why I'm checking out the Hallmark movies.

I was in the mood for a light night without lots of drama and heartbreak. Instead, I got heart burn! Let's face it, we don't expect heavy drama or even great acting from the Hallmark Channel, but occasionally I will see a movie that is entertaining. This was not one of them.Candace Cameron Bure is incredibly annoying, acting so childish with her little girl tics. She actually bounces when she walks! Her dialogue is worse, and nonsensical...cutesy to the point of nausea.She must come cheap. I can't see any producers paying good actor salaries for anyone so ill equipped to act. Everyone else seems to be just as stilted in their roles. There is only one professional..a female detective who they have turned into a bitter, backbiting shrew. They must do it because Teagarden has to look smarter and better than the most intelligent person in this town.How to improve the show?? Get this chick some adult education classes before she turns 40, which is very, very soon.

I am actually a fairly big fan of cozy murder mystery books series, so I am certainly not against the Hallmark Channel adapting them for TV. However, one would assume that they would make certain that the series in question is a good fit for the channel. The Flower Shop Mysteries (with Brooke Shields) and the Bake Shop Mysteries (with Alison Sweeney) are a fairly good fit. Hallmark's modus operandi seems to be taking a fairly innocuous book series with a hopefully built in audience, hiring a familiar actress of a certain age who can play cute with some familiar veterans in the supporting cast, and usually pairing said actress opposite a blandly handsome borderline asexual love interest (the Flower Shop mysteries Brennan Elliot is actually an exception here in that he seems to have a pulse and sex appeal) in the quest to find out whodunnit.By contrast, Charlaine Harris's Aurora Teagarden mysteries are most definitely a questionable fit for Hallmark. Centering on a likable heroine with a morbid hobby of researching and sometimes getting embroiled in real life murders, the series is often ghoulish with its violence, motives and supporting characters. The first in the book series focuses on very gruesome murder perpetrated on members of a Real Murders research group. When watching the TV version, red flags that this series will be an adaptation failure crop up almost immediately. First, gruesome murders that happen to likable characters in the book are prevented in the film to give it that homey feel that Hallmark loves. Second, Aurora's family background is changed around to give her a much more traditional family presentation to make her more cuddly to Hallmark viewers.Last, but certainly not least, is the complete misfire in casting. Aurora's mother is supposed to be a society doyenne realtor and force to be reckoned with. The books likens her to Lauren Bacall, the film series gives us a distracted Marilu Henner (probably wondering how to wring her agent's neck and get away with it). Robin Dunne is cast as the love interest here, a visiting novelist who is either the killer or a target. Naturally, he shares absolutely no discernible chemistry with the leading lady and has apparently been directed to play everything in such a low wattage fashion so that viewers can be assured that nothing but the most chaste of flirtation is happening.The worst decision is the miscasting of Candace Cameron Bure in the lead. I am completely puzzled as to how anyone in the sublimely talentless Cameron family keeps scoring acting gigs. The Aurora Teagarden of Harris's novels is described as a short, pleasingly plump, bespectacled librarian-type with a lusty sex drive and a borderline unhealthy (but fun) morbid curiosity. There is not one characteristic of this character that comes through in Bure's performance. Physically, she is completely wrong for the role as she bears absolutely no resemblance to Harris's character. Indeed Bure's performance sanitizes pretty much anything that would have given Aurora flavor as a character and replaces it with an over-caffeinated, hyper-cute nonsense performance that seems more like Bure's audition reel for the Full House reboot than anything that demonstrates an actual performance or an attempt to prove she can...well, act at all.Just when you think it cannot get worse, the climax where Aurora outsmarts the villain(s) arrives (which is completely different from the book by the way) and you realize just how utterly clueless and foolish this whole endeavor was from the start. Aurora seems less like a resourceful and brave character, then a childish moron with the IQ of a 12-year-old with ADHD and some highly questionable luck.A complete disaster, even by Hallmark standards, and a total waste of time.