Love's Unending Legacy

While I appreciate having decent,wholesome movies to watch, the movies based on the Janette Oke "Love Comes Softly"series are such a disappointment. I know some of the messages suggest "if you can just get past the books" you can enjoy the movies. I cannot seem to do that. I love those books and do not understand why it is so hard to make movies that align more with stories and plots in them. I know some books are hard to make into movies and need some dramatization, but I don't think these books need THAT much help. I watched the first three but by movie number four, I'm reading the back of the DVD and I'm thinking "No thank you!" It really is a shame, these could have been terrific movies.

It's three years after Missie LaHaye lost her husband Willie shot in the line of duty as sheriff. She moves back east to her parents Marty Davis and Clark Davis with her young son Mattie. She takes the teaching job. She adopts bitter orphan Belinda who is the last without a home. Her little brother Jacob had been taken by the Pettises looking for a farm hand. Sheriff Zack Tyler falls for Missie.

The adoption story is compelling. The overall feel is a bit disjointed especially at the beginning. The story improves as it concentrates more on Belinda and the adoption. That's the more dramatic part and a real tear jerker. This is a sincere faith-based movie. It's the fifth in the series. The TV movie does have its charms but also has its limitations.

What could have been a good TV movie was weakened by an overdone and unsuitable musical score. I found this was an annoyance during the first half of the movie. Performances overall were not that bad but the this mood music (that didn't seem to suit a western film) played over the actors as they spoke in many scenes and this became a real distraction.

In one scene, which takes place in the church, a pastor is asking a congregation to volunteer to take care of homeless children lined up across the platform behind him. All the dialog in this scene is underscored by this deep emotional mood music which is unnecessary and distracting.

There were so many technical things wrong with this film that made it cringe worthy half the time, but I guess the real question is not so much is it a great film, but what do you want to get out of it?

Love's Unending Legacy is a clean movie with great values and is good for the entire family. There's nothing violent in the movie, no offensive language, there's only kindness and love trying to conquer all. Making it a great film for the entire family.

With that said, there are some serious things that downgraded the quality of the film. Every time they add to the "Love comes softly" movie series, each movie seems to get a little worse in quality. The biggest downfall to the film was the music score. The music overpowered the actors talking and never seemed to stop. Why on earth did there need to be music all the time? In every serious scene the music overpowered the scene making it feel corny. If the music would have been toned down it would have helped greatly.

The past 4 films of the franchise have been following a strong storyline that builds off of its self. But this movie veers a little off course. The story in this film leaves a lot of plot holes as it seems to erase lots people that existed in the previous movies. It would have been easy to explain what happened with a line or two, but instead they went in the direction of "those people do not exist". It's disappointing that they changed actresses for Marty, on top of that there were things that were hinted, but not explained with Clark and Marty leaving plot holes. And to make it even worse they didn't use the original house from the first film for Clark and Marty's ranch.

Further more the love story in the film was random, predictable and put on the back burner. In the second film there was a slow build between Willie and Missy creating this beautiful love story. But in this film there's barely any screen time with Missy and Zach, they felt more like friends than anything else.

These two are perfect for each other and I love Belinda's story.

Once again the movie diverges from the book. Still a great story.