Review

Love Finds You
Subtitle: Because apparently the fastest way to find true love is to follow a package that was delivered to the wrong person.

Love Finds You takes the classic Hallmark formula and gives it a modern logistical twist: forget small-town bakeries, Christmas tree farms, and suspiciously available innkeepers. This time, romance begins with a misdelivered package. Because nothing says “destiny” quite like a shipping error.

Alex is a jewelry designer who receives a package that was clearly intended for someone else. Naturally, the reasonable response would be to contact the delivery company, arrange a pickup, and move on with her life. But this is a Hallmark movie, so instead she teams up with Jack, the delivery driver, to track down the mystery recipient.

And thus begins the Hallmark version of a scavenger hunt.

Alex and Jack spend an impressive amount of time traveling around Columbus trying to solve a package-based mystery that probably could have been handled by a tracking number and three minutes on a customer-service website. But where would be the romance in that? You can't fall in love while sitting on hold listening to elevator music.

The movie does a good job with the central Hallmark requirement: two attractive people must spend an unreasonable amount of time together while insisting they are focused entirely on the problem at hand. Alex is looking for the person connected to the package. Jack is trying to complete his delivery. The audience, meanwhile, is looking at the screen thinking, “You two realize you're the actual love story, right?”

Of course, neither of them does.

At least not immediately.

There are clues, misunderstandings, suspiciously meaningful conversations, and plenty of opportunities for Alex and Jack to discover that the person they're supposedly searching for may not be the person they actually need. Because Hallmark movies have apparently determined that romantic compatibility is best discovered through increasingly complicated logistical problems.

The jewelry-design angle also provides the required Hallmark career quirk. Alex has a creative business, which means she can make beautiful things while simultaneously contemplating her future, questioning her priorities, and discovering that love is more important than whatever five-year plan she had when the movie started.

Jack, meanwhile, is a delivery driver, which gives him the perfect Hallmark superpower: he knows how to get everywhere.

Need to find someone across the city? Jack knows where to go.

Need to chase down a package? Jack is your guy.

Need to locate the woman you're destined to fall in love with? Apparently that is also included with delivery service.

And while this isn't one of the Hallmark holiday movies, it still manages to deliver the essential Hallmark experience. There may be fewer Christmas trees, fewer cups of cocoa, and significantly less aggressive use of decorative wreaths, but the fundamental ingredients remain intact: career uncertainty, romantic confusion, attractive people wandering around a picturesque city, and two people slowly realizing that the answer to their problem has been standing approximately six feet away from them the entire time.

The best part is the movie's central idea: sometimes you go looking for one thing and end up finding something completely different. In real life, this might be a package. In a Hallmark movie, it's almost always a soulmate.

Love Finds You is sweet, predictable, mildly ridiculous, and completely comfortable with its Hallmark DNA. It takes a simple delivery mistake and stretches it into an entire romantic adventure, proving once again that in the world of Hallmark movies, even a wrong address can be part of a carefully coordinated plan by the universe.

Because apparently Cupid has a tracking number.