New year, same us. We’re casually at home on a Saturday, watching movies and eating food that we shouldn’t be eating. That’s okay with us though, we’d have it no other way.
Now that we’ve moved past Countdown to Christmas, it’s Winter Escape season on Hallmark. The first movie, Love of the Irish, and yes, it’s set in Ireland. We’re always down for a trip to Ireland, but it’s not that time for us. What is safe though is us watching a movie in which someone is falling in love with an Irish man. We need to see hopes and dreams come true.
The short synopsis for the movie, “Tired of her bad luck, Fiona takes her mom on a trip to Ireland to turn things around where she meets a charming single dad who helps her make her own luck.”
As usual, it’s a lot more complicated than one sentence. It’s a story of women of multiple generations, finding themselves. Love of the Irish is a story of how your life and your dreams can change in a short amount of time. It’s a story about letting people in and embracing your past, while looking forward to your future.
Fiona has been chasing her dream of being a dancer for as long as she can remember. When she has the audition of a lifetime, she is stuck at work and her boss tells her if she leaves, she will be unemployed. The thing is – at any age – when you are chasing dreams, you’ll make decisions that aren’t always smart.
Fiona doesn’t get a callback and she doesn’t have a job now. She’s stressed, but she’s living with it. When she finds a letter – from her Mom’s birth Mom, she starts asking questions. Her Mom is afraid to answer and Fiona is worried. So half asleep, she books a trip for her and her Mom to Ireland. She books a cottage to stay at, in the town the letter was sent from.
As the two land in Ireland, they get ready and head out to the pub. It’s where they meet Liam. He bumps into Fiona and she’s not nice about it. I was put off by how rude she was, but also enjoyed the banter between the two and her beating him at darts.
There is something special in Liam’s eyes, and I think that even she sees that. She is having fun and enjoying herself but leaves with her Mom to head back to the cottage.
Fiona doesn’t seem to have anything go her way, but she’s fine when she can’t go horseback riding. This means she has a little bit of time to head out and try and find out more about her Mom’s birth mother. She hasn’t told her Mom that she’s doing this – which I think isn’t the best idea. You don’t know how things like that will work out. It’s a tricky situation.
As we watch the moments of the movie unfold – the best moment of the entire movie is when Fi’s Mom told her birth Mom who she was. The way that the two connect made me fall into tears. Seeing that those moments are happening and the bonds that are being built with the characters in the movie is what makes this movie enjoyable.
It’s the moments where you see that these characters are letting their walls down and showing that the human connection is something that they desperately need. Every character in this movie needs to find a way to move forward.
Fiona and Liam moving forward is reliant on each other. Liam helps her find her good luck. I find this whole storyline to be charming because I grew up believing in the luck of the Irish and how it is the best kind of luck. I do understand that with Fiona, all of these annoyances keep happening (I am a cynic though, because I don’t believe that it’s luck. I believe that things just happen) but I think that Fiona needs to open her mind to possibilities.
When you are so focused on the negative, that is all that you are going to see. You’re only going to be able to focus on the things that seem unfair and you won’t see the good. You won’t see what you really need.
And Fiona needed to go to Ireland to see that life is more than New York and auditions and there are other dreams out there for her. When she stumbles upon a dance studio, that place calls out to her and makes her feel like a dream is chasing her. That had to have been freeing for her because it meant that she saw more for herself.
But we all know that in these movies when the characters find themselves in the new place they are, there is something that will draw them home. For Fiona, it’s the gig of a lifetime. When she gets the callback, she tells Liam that she will be leaving and he shuts down.
They’d only known each other for a week and there was a strong connection between Fiona and Liam. She’s not making decisions based on her attraction to him, which I respect and love. She is making decisions based on what she wants to do and who she wants to be. He wasn’t going to ask her to stay and even if he did, I think that would have been taken the wrong way by her. I think she needed to find her way to the dream that has been calling her on her own.
When it comes time for her to leave, she’s not sure she’s making the right choice. It takes Liam’s daughter telling him to fight for her to see him make a move. He gets in the car to go chase her, not knowing she’s already turned the car around.
Staying was on her terms – with her following her dreams and the dream that was following her. He was surprised, but he was so happy that she decided to stay. You could see the relief in his eyes.
Overall, Love of the Irish was a beautiful tour of Ireland, but also of the scale of human emotions. Definitely worth the watch.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- I really want to go to Ireland and an Irish pub
- The garden table restoration – that green was a choice.
- MJ was adorbs
- I didn’t understand the need to put in a side relationship there. It felt weird. Would have liked more of the relationships that were there. I could have used more MJ time
- Fiona and her Mom keep telling each other they see each other every day. We get it but still, would have loved more time between the two or more Fi and MJ time
- I love the green of Ireland
- Liam’s daughter was the sweetest
- How easy it was to make a deal for the studio space. If only shopping for places to live in NY was that easy.
I liked this movie too!