A Feeling of Home

For a regular, devoted Hallmark viewer, Saturday night original movies are often looked forward to as new, exciting, innovative romantic offerings. Unfortunately, this film was not one of those. The storyline was familiar..successful young female star returns home..(one of Hallmark's very over-used scenarios)..because her father has had an accident and cannot run his business..She encounters an old lost love, and the rest of the film leads the viewer to finding out how the young woman resolves her old, unfinished romance, saves her father's business (in this case a Texas farm), and manages to find a way to stay "home" rather than return to her successful life in another city. The formula often works..but is becoming over-used in order to fit into the Hallmark niche. A large deterrent in this film was the poor acting. The hero's contrived Texas accent was so broad that many of his lines were blurred and incomprehensible. The father's stiff acting was never convincing or genuine. He sounded as if he was reading his lines from a poster board. It felt sad to see and aging Robbie Benson brought back in such an unsympathetic role. The young leading actress did her best with such poor material..using smiling as a form of acting. Interestingly one of the most impressive performances in this film was offered by David Lewis, a very familiar Hallmark star..usually seen as the second male lead, the rejected suitor, the innocent loser. In this film, he gets a chance to appear strong, decisive, and mature as a business tycoon with firm decisions and a serious demeanor. What a refreshing delight! For this viewer, he carried the film, being cast beside the shallow performances of the three main leads. This is pleasant diversion for a rainy evening, but it is surely not worthy of a Saturday night prime time Hallmark presentation.

The story in this one was pretty lame, but I loved the male leads: Nathan Parsons at the male lead was very sexy and appealing. Loved his voice. It was so great to see Robby Benson again. He has certainly aged well, and is even more attractive than he was in his youth. Both of these actors are responsible for the high rating from me. Although, sometimes Robby Benson delivered his lines like he was a trifle constipated. Sorry Robby, I saw what you were trying to do there character-wise, but.... I also liked the acting of Shannon Chan-Kent as Gina. Unfortunately, I was not impressed with the character of Abby. She struck me as needy, whiny, and not too bright. I don't think it was the actress so much as the way her character was written. As others have mentioned, the depiction of farm life was silly and ignorant. Talk about lazy. But it did provide some laughs.

The basic sin is the deep unrealism of story. Sure, it is A Hallmark production and the romance must be the only significant. But something, almost at the each scene, seems just wrong. To not be very critic, a good points exists - the decent portrait of father, more a sketch, off course, of. Robby Benson. But the formula Connecticut versus Texas and so easy/ enthusiastic acceptance of the boss of it is just awful. So, a story in Texas.

Jonna Walsh is seriously miscast as a Texas girl. Her So-Cal accent is jarring and seriously mars my enjoyment of this movie. Not one of Hallmark's better movies due to the flawed premise and the miscast female lead.

Read an unusual amount or severely negative reviews of this movie. This movie is no better or worse than an other Hallmark movie with this well worn plot line. Reading the reviews before watching the movie, (I had paused it to check out some of the actors), I was tempted to delete the film, they were so extremely negative. It followed the same script all these small town/big city movies use. Either you like them or you don't. Such extreme vitriol, I think was unwarranted.