Un simple baiser

Sooooo, is Erika havingba thing for Nate and has a boyfriend named Mark????

Erica (Courtney Ford) is engaged to Marc in Chicago. She is still haunted by her husband Seth's death in the war. She goes home to prepare for her sister April's wedding. Everyone is walking on egg shells around her. She reconnects with old friend Nate and finds a support group for military widows.

So she planning to get married while dealing as a war widow and her almost affair. There is one too many relationships. I couldn't see how they could screw up a simple widower having a romance movie but this is how. It's an overly complicated premise and it isn't well laid out at the beginning anyways. The easiest thing to do is to eliminate Marc from the story. This is a story about loving someone while honoring the lost of a great love. Marc adds nothing but speed bumps to journey. The movie also moves rather slowly and it becomes a bit of a grind. It's too bad. Courtney Ford has the potential to pull this off without the emotional baggage of Marc or the secret.

I thought this was a Hallmark movie.. which I count on for more chaste relationships. She is a widow and suffering as would be normal. She is dating a guy named Marc who she is sleeping with. Not a husband, a boyfriend, who are not committed to each other. It is not what Hallmark usually shows and I would not want children watching it as being okay and normal. Hallmark does not usually do that..

Courtney Ford really shone as lead character, Erika, in this one. There were a few schmaltzy moments, when it seemed like the movie couldn't decide if it was a light drama or a comedy (I didn't care for the mother character - don't know if it due to acting, writing, or directing - she was too over-the-top for me, and seemed very out of place for this otherwise warm and gentle story). However, there was one hillariously sweet moment toward the end, concerning the the brother-in-law-to-be, in which I was simultaneously laughing and "aw-ing" out loud (Johnny Kramer, as Scott, toed the "dramedy" line quite well). Overall, the acting was well done and believable; the story was enjoyable; I would watch it again.

Can we get a story set in Iowa to be shown halfway right? Probably Field of Dreams, but that might be the limit. There were mountains in the background in this movie, what? Where in Iowa would that be? And if there is corn growing... its HOT, even at night. You're not wearing your Uggs or a flannel shirt. You are sweating in places you didn't really know could sweat, it's in the 90s and 100% humidity in the summer. Plot was okay, pretty predictable.