Cream of the Crop

My wife and I were looking for a movie to while away the Saturday evening after dinner and came upon this on FreeVee, on Prime streaming. It seemed like a good pick but we didn't get very far into it before we realized it was just a low-budget, family project with marginal production values, an unimaginitive script, amateurish acting, and haphazard directing. But I always say, you can't really appreciate the good movies unless you occasionally see a real clunker like this one.

We did watch the whole movie but found ourself laughing during non-humorous parts just because the story was handled so clumsily. Shot in Maryland, the premise is an ambitious real estate man's company has its eye on some prime farmland for its next housing and retail development. It turns out he falls for the daughter of the local farm owner that becomes the target of the buy out. Conflicts arise, they have to be sorted out. His company loyalty is tested.

It mostly follows the Hallmark formula for story arc but overall is not handled nearly as well as the typical Hallmark movie. My wife wishes she had not taken the time to see it, I sort of enjoyed the absurdity of it all. It isn't a "1", there are some worthwhile aspects to it, but maybe a "3" or "4" rating, clearly inferior to most other similar movies. (Note: on a 1 to 10 point rating system the middle rating would be 5.5.)

Everyone is unlikeable. The main girl is a ridiculous Mary Sue and everyone else is also arrogant and annoying. They pretend like they know all and all they do is perpetuate the idea of stupid hicks. Which is an insult to real farmers everywhere.

Seriously, I'm ten minutes in and I want them to lose their land.

It's like someone grew up on a farm and honestly thinks all farmers are good guys and everyone else is evil and so they wrote a screenplay with terrible pacing and in likable characters. They watched movies of others who did it better and mistakenly thought, "yeah, I can do that."

This movie has 7.8 out of ten stars and not one user review? I smell fake ratings by family and friends. No one likes it enough to even try to justify those stars.

The Hallmark recipe , few strong bullying scenes and predictable final. Not so bad acting but conventional script , with few pure unrealistic scenes and other only as pretextes.

But two virtues - first the pretty honest image of farm work and difficulty of town guy to adaptate to it.

Second the final, the film being a hommage to memory of Bob Stafford.

The good point - the nice portrait of goofy proposed , in smart - touching manner , by Ben Davies .

In rest, the energetic Brittany Goodwin - nice as farmer, not so credible as teacher - , the portrait of country life and , sure, the fight to save the farm. Not last, inspired work of Randall Oliver as the Stafford patriarch.

Cute story, Hallmark type movie without the same budget. Filmed around Cecil County MD (which made it more interesting since my wife's family is nearby) it's a typical love story.

There are some humorous scenes and the girl's father has some great one liners. There are no Academy Awards level performances but for a small budget film that will hold your interest it's worth your time if you like these type of movies. We are always on the lookout for decent movies with no to minimal bad language, embarrassing sex scenes and characters that are realistic. "Cream of the Crop" fits the bill for us and you should definitely check it out.