Love in the Great Smoky Mountains: A National Park Romance

6.9 stars.

The different sites and digs I find interesting. The chemistry between the leads is so-so, good enough to keep me hanging around until the end. It's a bit on the glam side, not enough dirt and grit for a real archaeological dig and all the true hard work that would be involved. The actors are too clean, too soft. This needs more sweat and pain for me to be convinced of the actual effort that would be involved with finding a treasure.

Ok, now the bad stuff. Oh boy, there is no way that her friends and colleagues are not all over this supposed hidden cave she found. Instead, the writers have them all being blase about it as she goes in search of a hidden and legendary treasure. No way this is reality. Then she thinks she found it and they just say: hey you go get that secret treasure that the natives have revered for a hundred years as the story has been passed down generation by generation, and we will just sit here on our lazy butts and not care about it. Then the cave, and the waterfall, and it's all way too dumb. So this only gets 6.9 stars.

Oh, I love the main actress... She has been exceptional in her previous Hallmark movies I've seen, but there is a massive lack of cohesion between any of the characters in this movie. Although I appreciate all of the background they give regarding the Indians, it seems the unnatural conversations are terribly memorized and too slow for the flow of communication. This is quite disappointing because the previews of this movie were so cute.

I am so happy to see that this film was actually made in the Smoky mountains. I was expecting another Canada location but much to my surprise, there are four filming locations in the United States.

This is really difficult to watch.

The whole thing has this amateurish feel about it.

The actors are various degrees of bad. They literally just recite lines but are not believable in their roles. I couldn't believe they were happy or mad or excited. It was obvious throughout that they were just actors badly cast in some roles.

The plot is based on a potentially good idea but the final result is like "color by numbers": you understand the idea but it looks unnatural. There is no spark, no heart, no creativity.

It works as background noise, if you need to work but can't allocate too much attention to the TV and, for some reason, you don't want to listen to music. Otherwise don't waste your time.

I watched this with my wife, and we loved the scenery. We honeymooned in the Smokes many years ago, and have been back since, and loved those mountains and waterfalls.

Sadly, this movie was poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly set up in so many of its actions that we very nearly turned off the movie several times -- but the Smokies kept us watching.

The way the female lead "hiked" in those mountains was dangerous and foolhardy, and the "in cave" portion of the final part was sooooo non-professionally-done for a PhD "archaeologist" that it completely broke the scene.

We didn't come to care about the leads, didn't "feel" any chemistry between them -- see "poorly acted" above -- and she accepted him waaaaay too quickly and easily.

All in all, I think the 4 stars might be an overly positive rating. (sigh) This was an exceptionally poor movie -- not quite terrible (mostly because of the great scenery, actually in the Smokies!) -- but definitely below average.

We still love the Smokies.

The premise is common. Former lovers with bad break up are thrown together. Also there is a treasure hunt. There is also a secondary romance.

The initial meeting of Haley and Rob is so cold, it should have ended the movie there. Haley was furious about the past. You could almost see her blood boiling. Turns out Rob was pretty hurt also. And like so many of these movies, that tension is ignored almost immediately. Apparently some of it still lingered, but they acted pretty friendly. Like Rob teaching Haley to cast a fishing line. Everything between them.

I'd be curious how accurate several things were. Do real archaeologists use shovels? Would someone whose life is the outdoors and has experience in the Smokey Mountains go off alone on a very difficult trail? Would he run on it?

I was so turned off by the initial animosity and the complete reversal, I can't tell you if there was any chemistry between Kebbel and Roerig. I didn't really trust Rob.

The climax is pretty dumb. Then ending is worse. I was surprised that there was little or no conflict leading into the climax. I expected something that didn't happen.