This could have been a nice sentimental story that was more than the usual Hallmark Saturday night. Like some of their Christmas stories that involve a quest to uncover something from the past, it is a romance with a mystery attached. The mystery would be especially compelling as it involves Grandma and a mysterious relationship during World War II.
My first problem that I'll call a hole is that an unusually committed love affair is launched on basically one dance at a USO-like function where grandma is a hostess who admits she isn't supposed to get personal with the soldiers. From that beginning, the soldier writes her countless letters and she pines to receive them but some mix-up leaves him without her address and so apparently she never got them while he was gone. He is deployed several years. I don't want to give a spoiler, but let me just say that how this is resolved is equally spontaneous and hard to understand.
Meanwhile, the granddaughter Val and her newfound "friend" are searching for answers to a title issue for the ranch. How they proceed on the search is confusing. How and where they find clues is confusing. And where they find the biggest clues leave an obvious question - why did they wait to look there? The way it played in the movie, it seemed that there was no reason they couldn't have looked there first. In fact, it would have made more sense than at least one of the places they did look. It really was a disappointment.
There is a character Douglas who isn't really explained. All I can figure is that he is a red herring for the viewer.
The movie explores home, immediate family, ancestral family, love, and wanderlust.
The movie kept my attention because of the mystery, but my frustration level was high throughout because there were so many scenes that were hard to figure out. I wasn't particularly surprised by anything including the ending.
The acting was decent despite the story holes. There was chemistry between Marcus Rosner and the beautiful and winsome Emily Alatalo. There were many flashbacks as I alluded to above.
