Adventures in Love & Birding 2025 Movie Review
It’s officially Autumn and as the temperatures drop — well, at least they’re supposed to — and the foliage begins to turn, the romances begin to heat up on Hallmark Channel. To kick things off, the network brings together two fan favorite stars for the first time (on the channel anyway, as they previously appeared on a 2008 episode of ER together, and a Lifetime Christmas movie, A Christmas in Tennessee, in 2018) — Rachel Boston and Andrew Walker.
Adventures in Love & Birding stars Boston as Celeste, a woman recovering from a break-up after a 22-year relationship whose co-workers feel the need to constantly try to hook her up with their single male friends. Trying to escape the matchmaking of Andrea and Layla, Eva appears at just the right time for Celeste to pretend they were meeting up at that moment and they make their escape. But it turns out Eva has a favor to ask — she was supposed to be the partner of a guy named John (Walker) for a birding competition (yes, it’s a real thing where teams gather over the course of a day or several weekends to see who can identify the most species of birds in their area) but she has other obligations and can’t take the time away over the three weekends of the competition, so she asks Celeste to take her spot … do something to get her out of her rut. It’ll be fun! Celeste agrees although she knows nothing about birding and would rather organize her garage as a means of therapy, but John seems like a nice guy and once she puts all the pieces together that his former partner in birding (and romance?), Breena, dumped him for a pro named Lazlo, Celeste is all in to help John win the competition … or at least just do better than Breena. John also wants to win so he can get out of his office job and start is own birding expedition company as he is very passionate about birds and nature. He also has a dream to see a spotted barn owl in the wild, and as luck would have it they are not solely nocturnal animals so it could happen.
Celeste also has a daughter preparing to move to Arizona for college, and she is also an aspiring artist with an exhibit coming up but she isn’t sure what her work will encompass and she is stressing out. Her mom tells her she always comes up with an idea and everything will work out. When Celeste’s co-workers get wind of John, they automatically assume he is a new boyfriend she’s been keeping secret and they want to meet him. In fact, there is a charity bowling event coming up that their office is participating in so Celeste invites John so they can pretend to be in a relationship to shut everyone up. Despite their best efforts, John overhears Andrea and Layla commenting on how it is obvious that he is not into her because they’ve barely touched so he returns to the lane and gets close enough to let Celeste know what he heard and to keep up the charade they decide that in order to put those suspicions that the relationship is fake to rest, they must kiss. (Hallmark is getting bold with these mid-movie kisses lately.) But that kiss bring up all kinds of complicated feelings that neither of them know if they should pursue. But they continue to connect over the birding, but at an anniversary party for Eva and her husband while John and Celeste are dancing, he makes a comment that they are pretending so everyone thinks they are falling in love. Oops. That changes Celeste’s demeanor right away and she leaves the party, while poor John really has no idea that his comment set her off because she really hasn’t been open with him about her feelings. He just assumed she was still in this for show. They make it through the final weekend and attend the results party separately — Celeste has to also attend Morgan’s art exhibit that night (and there are complications there as well because Morgan has dropped a bomb that she’s not going to Arizona after all, at least not right away, deciding to attend an art school instead) — and John really wants to clear the air with Celeste, but before he can say anything her alarm goes off and she has to run to the exhibit, still feeling heartbroken in the belief that he was just ‘pretending’ the entire time. Will John just leave things at that, or will he surprise Celeste and reveal his true feelings? And will John finally get to see that owl in the wild?
Adventures in Love & Birding is a lovely way to start the Autumn ‘Fall into Love’ season on Hallmark Channel. The screenplay by Nicole Baxter, based on the novel Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb, perfectly lays out the paths of Celeste and John, and changes quite a few story points to make the film fall more in line with the more wholesome Hallmark aesthetic (you can kind of guess from the title that the relationship takes a different course), also changing the gender and relationships of the friends in the book (it’s a mutual male friend who sets up Celeste with John, and it’s John’s friends who meddle in their relationship). But it all works, probably for the better as this puts Celeste as the focal point (as most Hallmark movies do with their female leads) and it makes more sense that it’s her female friends all up in her business. The story builds up the relationship believably, and frustratingly as the two are too scared to share their feelings when this was all just supposed to be a partnership for the endurance of the competition. The dynamic between Celeste and daughter Morgan is also handled well, although Morgan does a lot of stuff off-camera with her father that keeps her mother, and the viewer, in the dark until she feels ready to reveal her decisions. One nice moment comes when Morgan finds her mom asleep on the couch and she looks through the birding diary, seeing sketches her mother did of the birds she had spotted, perhaps giving her the idea she needed for her exhibit. One thing that left me scratching my head was when Eva tells Celeste and John at the party that there is something big planned but we never find out what it is. Or was it the DJ they search far and wide for? Not sure because it wasn’t like they hired Diplo or Daft Punk, and the whole party scene ends quickly after the ‘pretending’ comment. Either way, it is a pleasant romantic movie with some nice performances directed by Michael Robison, lovely scenery and lots of birds.
Boston, last seen on Hallmark as Mrs. Miracle, is always chipper and upbeat as Celeste, seemingly an eternal optimist even though others can see she has dug herself into her own little comfort zone from which she is too fearful to emerge from. She’s happy just looking straight ahead, taking care of her daughter before she becomes and empty nester, not really dealing with the emotional turmoil of her break-up. So it’s nice to see her remain so positive and become engaged with the whole birding experience, allowing her to expand her horizons and even consider a new romance. It’s not hard to see why John is so attracted to her personality, especially as she is always so encouraging to him in his dream to become a birding guide. His boss thinks it’s a crazy idea and wants to put him up for a promotion, but Celeste is his biggest cheerleader, and even when her heart breaks a little bit she is still encouraging and positive for John.
Walker is also delightful as John. It’s interesting how he gives John the more nerdy, stick in the mud personality, a corporate drone who would rather be outdoors, but a man who is also dealing with the emotional pain of a break-up. He treats Celeste with nothing but kindness and understanding, because her inexperience could really dash his hopes of winning the prize money so he can start his own business. It’s very sweet when he goes that extra mile to get her friends to stop meddling in her life, and it’s obvious he really likes her but isn’t able to read her own signals which leads to the ill-timed ‘pretending’ comment and his befuddlement as to why it upset her so much. But Walker makes John a truly upstanding guy who is sensitive and focused, the kind of guy anyone would want in their life. And for the Walker fans, he does briefly take off his shirt.
Talisa Mae Stewart does a nice job as Morgan, ready to go out on her own and be an adult, but still unsure of her talents and afraid of stepping on her mother’s toes, especially when it comes to the decision about her education (although dropping it on her at the same time she’s reeling from the ‘pretending’ comment was unknowingly another gut punch to Celeste). But she demonstrates how much influence Celeste has had on her and how much love she has for her mother when she reveals her artwork at the exhibit. Carmel Amit is the perfect Hallmark ‘villain’ of the piece, putting her own need to win over the feelings of her partner, taking any opportunity she can to give John little digs about his new, inexperienced partner. She does get hers though when she says he should have had someone more experienced, and she fires back with, ‘I did,’ knocking Breena off of her high horse to the point that she comes to respect him later (especially since he and Celeste had a very high number of sightings). Mapuana Makia is perfect as Eva, always supporting Celeste and able to see what her friend can’t or won’t when it comes to John. Lydia Campbell and Emma Pedersen are also very good as Andrea and Layla, the office busybodies, with Campbell in particular getting a nice moment with Boston as Celeste finally tells her how she feels about their meddling in her personal life, with Campbell showing Andrea to be truly sorry for how she’s been acting. Jason Tremblay is perfect as the arrogant Lazlo, the man for whom Breena dumped John, and if you’re keeping score he is also the real-life father of young actor Jacob Tremblay.
Adventures in Love & Birding doesn’t break any new ground as far as a Hallmark romance movie is concerned, but it is full of beautiful scenery, filled with a wonderful supporting cast, and has two totally engaging leads who make their characters come to life and feel like they truly do belong together.
