Love in Focus

It is absurd for anyone to rate this movie higher than one star. With atrocious acting, amateur editing, deplorable special effects, and an unimaginative script, Love in Focus struggles to remain coherent and engaging. If you ever wanted to see the polar opposite of an Oscar-winning masterpiece, this is it!

We enjoy watching cheesy romantic comedies, most of which have redeeming value despite their mediocrity. But this movie is on a completely different level of dreadfulness. There is a difference between charmingly cheesy and downright atrocious! Love in Focus is even worse than most made-for-television movies. Unlike more tolerable rom coms, scenes are painful to watch and acting is not believable in the least. The script isn't clever. And editors butchered any chance of a logical flow to the film.

Jenna (Nicola Posener) is a TV actress who's show is cancelled so she retreats to a mountain cabin for a week. Unbeknown to her Chris (Dan Fowlks) who's parents own the cabin, also shows up and the two get snowed in. There follows some love tennis but will it end up a match?

The story is an old, old one like most romances are: boy meets girl, they fall in love, there's some misunderstanding and they split, and later everything gets cleared up and they either fall bac in love, or they realise someone else was meant for them all along.

So the story is OK, but the acting while having some bright spots, is mostly B rated soap acting. The filming and editing is fine although throughout the film the there are very few wide shots: they're all closeups which is a bit too much in your face for me. But makeup is truly horrendous. It was actually so bad it spoiled some scenes.

It's easy to watch, made for HDTV I would guess, and easy to predict but it's not a film you would ever watch again. I gave it a 5 and that was being very generous.

The movie is very good, I think it has the necessary ingredients to be a perfect romcom. Nicola Posener plays a fantastic role and as always in all of her work she gives us that feeling of the moment. It must have been a bit strange for her: "an actress acting like an actress." It has nice, everyday details with a well-treated touch of sweetness. Perhaps if I have a complaint or criticism, I am sorry to say that Dan Fowl is inexpressive, without emotion and without feeling, his face did not change throughout the film, this means that the scenes that should be a certain sentimental tension are completely lost.

Two atractive people stuck in a cabin, so obviously they start as adverseries, but soon abandon their prejudice. Become fast friends and fall in love.

The movie is full of clishe's - the mother that constantly tries to get her son married so she'll have grandchildren, the quirky friend, the snow-ball fight (are you five years old?) the confution with the old boifriend.

The lead actors are fairly good, and have good chemistry, but the other characters are stereotypical caricatures, played with exaggeration. And there is no chemistry between the other couples.

I didn't suffer, but finished the movie with a feeling I wasted my time.

7.6 stars.

Surprisingly good. Starts off feeling like a b-rated movie for sure. The sound quality and sound editing were very faulty throughout, which was a bummer, however the story is wonderful and the acting is actually really good. All of the actors brought their best, except maybe the secondary male, he needed a bit more work. But the two leads are great together and there is a lot of chemistry. The movie producer mother and talent agent father were very refreshing roles as they melded into the story very nicely. This film has a lot of funny moments, surprisingly witty and clever conversations and it wasn't a fluke, I laughed about 4 times, really good laughs, akin to the humor I can recall only from the best films. Unfortunately, this appears to be an unknown movie, but it's a hidden gem, the best kind of surprise. Better advertising maybe, because "Love in Focus" needs to be seen by a larger audience, who will come to love it like I have. Sure, it's not absolutely amazing, thus less than 8 stars, but anything written this good and with great acting deserves high praise.