When Calls the Heart

Thank you, Kielsa03! Your review cleared everything up for me.

I have not read the book and I was underwhelmed by the movie, especially by the way it just kind of fizzled out at the end. It made no sense--no one actually gets together, we're left wondering, etc. I was shaking my head "huh?" at the end.

I did not realize this was intended to launch a TV series. No wonder so much remained open ended.

I will say that Maggie Grace was very good in her role. Most of the other actors were adequate, except for the "free-spirited" sister, whose acting was atrocious. (Hey, just my opinion. YMMV. I liked her looks, as far as being the rascally sister, I just thought her acting choices were awful.)

The real star of this movie for me was Wardrobe. Such gorgeous dresses and hats! If I could just vote for the costuming, I would give it 10 stars!

First of all, the Janette Oke book series is faith-based. The stories revolve around the characters and their relationship with God. This is sadly lacking in this movie. The characters and romance of Aunt Elizabeth and Wynn are pushed so far into the background, they are barely relevant to the story. So, the acting skill and chops of Maggie Grace and Stephen Amell are not utilized which means their talents are really wasted because they are both fine actors. How good would this movie have been if we had seen more of Elizabeth and Wynn? If we had been allowed to see their relationship develop? Instead, we are left unsatisfied with a giant question mark when it comes to them. Too bad Hallmark doesn't have the backbone to use Janette Oke's stories to their full potential instead of telling watered down, extremely altered stories that barely resemble the source material. I know this movie was created to introduce the television series, but it is badly executed. I really wanted to like this but instead I was just very disappointed.

This is obviously supposed to be a guilty pleasure kind of movie, so why did they have to take the pleasure out of it??? Yes, there were a lot of nice and funny moments but they seem to have happened by chance because the story (or two-story) pace is absolutely off; there constantly is a build-up to some scene that never happens and we only hear Elisabeth read about it in the journal! I understand it was important to show how a person chooses their path and recognizes what's closest to their heart - okay, we got it the first couple of times. But still - the least you could do is show the actual moments that helped the characters realize this. I don't know about the others, it appears the movie appealed to many and this is great, but for me this kind of movie needs some actual romance (and an actual ball!!!), before using love as a variable in the choice that is supposed to affirm the thematic message.

Nice movie that leaves you wondering what happened to Elizabeth and Wyn.

Liked it. Ok acting.

It even has funny parts.

It's a pity that these actors were left out of the TV show.

Sometimes when you skim the top off a book to make a movie it can really miss a lot, and/or it can make the story seem overly simple. I'm not sure where the brunette Elizabeth and Edward came from, but adding them really seemed to add depth to the story, and even though it is still technically a simple story you have to pay more attention to keep up. I like both story lines; I hope we get to keep both in the new series coming out in January. I've always liked the original Elizabeth and Wynn from the books, but I also like the Elizabeth and Edward story as well. Since Edward kind of messed up his reputation with Elizabeth, we'll need to see if she gradually gets feelings for him if/when he stays a responsible adult a.k.a. knight in shining armor. I hope we get to keep the best bits from Elizabeth and Wynn's story as well they had quite an adventure together in the books. Just off the top of my head since it's been a while since I got to sit down with the books. When he took her hiking in Banff, brought her a puppy, told her what ?winiwishy? means, took her camping, etc. The original Elizabeth was really mostly done in her head there wasn't a whole lot of interaction between her and Wynn but we don't want to miss any of what there was of it. I really enjoyed this movie like how much I enjoyed the first couple of the Love Comes Softly movies. I hope that since they are able to do the follow up in a series instead of spread out movies over years that the quality on the series will be as good as this kick-off movie is. Debbie Macomber doing her book in series instead of movies really seemed to work well for her; I hope it works well for WCtH also. I think what this movie does is make you want to read the first book again because they kind of skim over Elizabeth and Wynn's story as the new Elizabeth read's her aunts diary while having a story of her own in a cliffhanger style. I can definitely recommend this movie.