The Other Side of the Mountain: Part II

Very sugary. I think I got diabetes after viewing this flick. But the leads - Marilyn Hassett and especially the underrated Timothy Bottoms - make the film worth watching. It is a tender story about a real rarity -genuine love. I just wish another director made it. Obviously Jill Kinmont is to be admired and she deserved a better film treatment. Cut out the dreamy music, sharpen up the dialogue, show some "Born on the Fourth of July" realism - for example, there should have been at least one hardcore scene that showed Bottoms really proving he could take care of her - not just a beach scene where he struggles to get her wheelchair out of the sand as the tide comes in.

The Other Side of the Mountain movies are so underrated when it comes to love and romance. The girl just happens to be handicapped. Marilyn Hassett's Jill lost her fiance in a plane crash and her boyfriend before that couldn't accept her disability. So of course she'd be gun-shy about opening her heart again. When she runs away from John and they end up sharing their hearts at the second to last scene in the film, I cry every time I watch it. Great movies!

The Other Side of the Mountain part 2 is definitely one of the top few romance films. The last scene is definitely THE BEST romantic tearjerker event in film. The strength of this movie is that it features 1) a realistic, gradual, development of love, 2) an extremely nurturing, loving male lead, and 3) the wonderful, unequaled, "tearjerker" ending.