Julie Gonzalo (Supergirl) plays Anna, the new employee at her father's real estate company after her relationship and business with her ex Elliot (When Calls the Heart's Chris McNally) fell apart. Anna's first task: prepare the 100-year-old Baker property and prepare it to be sold to fins to be torn down and rebuilt again. Just a note: this house definitely has more than three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I'll let it slide because the title is a fantastically stupid joke.
Anyway, there's just one problem with Anna's plan to get a new career off the ground, and her name is Ruby (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Madeleine Arthur). Ruby has haunted her former home since her untimely death 100 years ago. In the Roaring '20s, Ruby was the most popular socialite in town, rubbing shoulders with all the superstars of the time, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Her father disapproved of her relationship with her chauffeur, and Ruby's love for Charlie remains unrequited to this day. Oh, and he definitely won't let Anna sell her house! She needs a good old fashioned appearance.
Except there's one problem with Ruby's plan: Anna can see her. For the first time in a hundred years, Ruby has someone to interact with, but why does she have to be an emotionally exhausted and existentially confused professional woman whose father bosses her around and who is still low-key and hung up on her ex? And why does Elliot have to be so nice to Anna if he's already planning to move away forever? And what will it take for Ruby to finally cross over and finally be with Charlie for eternity?
The opening of this movie is unlike any she's ever seen on Hallmark, with a level of authenticity she didn't expect to see. But Arthur? She completely immerses herself in the role and boy, is she well cast. Between her cropped hair and her big eyes, she looks like exactly the person you'd cast in a 1920s ghost movie, like a live-action Betty Boop mixed with Addams-era Christina Ricci. And Arthur is clearly having a lot of fun with the dialogue, delighting in lines like “I'm thinking about how to help you. I have always loved charitable work! It's a great performance and a great victory.
One of the first things Elliot tells Anna is, "You can succeed at anything you set your mind to, except us, of course." Just to clarify: Elliot is a good guy, to a fault. This line is just a great example of Hallmark exposition and it made me laugh.
I also liked this exchange between Ruby and Anna: “I'm as unsinkable as the stock market!” "You're not making the case you think you are."
Honestly, the biggest problem I have with 3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost is the title. The title is, I repeat, fantastically stupid and I would never dream of suggesting anything else. But if you tell me that a movie called 3 Bedrooms, 2 Bathrooms, 1 Ghost is airing on Hallmark, I'll imagine Lacey Chabert returning to her hometown and finding the perfect apartment located above her late mother's antique store, just to discover that he is haunted by a ghost (Tyler Hynes), the great-great-grandfather of his romantic interest (Tyler Hynes). I'm going to expect hijinks, sentimentality, a romance front and center. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 ghost is not that at all, and it is much better.
This movie doesn't follow any recognizable Hallmark formats, nor does it really prioritize any of the usual Hallmark themes. The plot is based on the old "unfinished business" trope that all ghost stories use, but the film is mainly about how these two women, one of them dead, can help the other overcome the invisible obstacles that are holding them back. . Anna is just as stuck as Ruby, and we're much more interested in seeing these two go from adversaries to allies than anything else.
That's saying something, because there's actually a lot going on in this movie. Anna's relationship with her father is unhealthy and she has a co-worker determined to get whatever promotion falls to her. I also appreciated the way the movie made the most of her haunting. The rules of Ruby's imprisonment become clear fairly quickly, and then the film has fun with them by testing them, bending them, and breaking them. The film really runs the gamut of ghostly scenarios, and is even richer.
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