Love in the Great Smoky Mountains: A National Park Romance

I love Ariel Kebbel ... especially paired with Andrew Walker ...or other notable Hallmark leading men.

I mean she is absolutely one of my favorite actors on Hallmark. However, in this semi documentary-like movie ...except for the scenery... it was total blah blah blah...bottom line ... boring and totally predictable-totally! And sorry to report I felt absolutely no chemistry between her & her ex.... zero... nada... ziltch...none!

I truly felt he did not deserve her ... maybe in their past but not now.

And it really got into lots of minutiae and way over the top detail of how bad the whites destroyed the indigenous peoples occupying the land at the time.

Disappointed fan.

The premise is common. Former lovers with bad break up are thrown together. Also there is a treasure hunt. There is also a secondary romance.

The initial meeting of Haley and Rob is so cold, it should have ended the movie there. Haley was furious about the past. You could almost see her blood boiling. Turns out Rob was pretty hurt also. And like so many of these movies, that tension is ignored almost immediately. Apparently some of it still lingered, but they acted pretty friendly. Like Rob teaching Haley to cast a fishing line. Everything between them.

I'd be curious how accurate several things were. Do real archaeologists use shovels? Would someone whose life is the outdoors and has experience in the Smokey Mountains go off alone on a very difficult trail? Would he run on it?

I was so turned off by the initial animosity and the complete reversal, I can't tell you if there was any chemistry between Kebbel and Roerig. I didn't really trust Rob.

The climax is pretty dumb. Then ending is worse. I was surprised that there was little or no conflict leading into the climax. I expected something that didn't happen.

I watched this with my wife, and we loved the scenery. We honeymooned in the Smokes many years ago, and have been back since, and loved those mountains and waterfalls.

Sadly, this movie was poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly set up in so many of its actions that we very nearly turned off the movie several times -- but the Smokies kept us watching.

The way the female lead "hiked" in those mountains was dangerous and foolhardy, and the "in cave" portion of the final part was sooooo non-professionally-done for a PhD "archaeologist" that it completely broke the scene.

We didn't come to care about the leads, didn't "feel" any chemistry between them -- see "poorly acted" above -- and she accepted him waaaaay too quickly and easily.

All in all, I think the 4 stars might be an overly positive rating. (sigh) This was an exceptionally poor movie -- not quite terrible (mostly because of the great scenery, actually in the Smokies!) -- but definitely below average.

We still love the Smokies.

We either love or at least enjoy most Hallmark movies. We've watched some of them over and over again. Not this one...

The dialogue and the acting seemed so forced with this one, that we couldn't get through it. We tried. We gave it at least an hour. But we were suffering. The plot is decent. It's something about the casting and the actors. The dialogue seems forced. So many others could have carried this movie so much better. There seemed to be little chemistry. It's not the actors themselves. They'd all do better in different roles.

At the time of this review, 26 people had rated it, with ratings obviously higher than the one the four of us who were watching it came up with.

I was disappointed with this movie. The concept was good, but the execution wasn't. I've seen Ariel in other movies and she has had great chemistry with other male leads, but in this film there was nothing, not even a fizzle. It was disappointing because I've seen her in the other films and really liked her. She was okay in this film, but without the chemistry it just fell flat.

The scenery was lovely, but I don't watch hallmark movies because of the scenery. It's just a nice bonus if the setting adds to the movie. The story of trying to find this magnificent stone was okay, but finding it was way too easy. It was hard to believe that it hadn't been found already.