Love in the Great Smoky Mountains: A National Park Romance

This is really difficult to watch.

The whole thing has this amateurish feel about it.

The actors are various degrees of bad. They literally just recite lines but are not believable in their roles. I couldn't believe they were happy or mad or excited. It was obvious throughout that they were just actors badly cast in some roles.

The plot is based on a potentially good idea but the final result is like "color by numbers": you understand the idea but it looks unnatural. There is no spark, no heart, no creativity.

It works as background noise, if you need to work but can't allocate too much attention to the TV and, for some reason, you don't want to listen to music. Otherwise don't waste your time.

6.9 stars.

The different sites and digs I find interesting. The chemistry between the leads is so-so, good enough to keep me hanging around until the end. It's a bit on the glam side, not enough dirt and grit for a real archaeological dig and all the true hard work that would be involved. The actors are too clean, too soft. This needs more sweat and pain for me to be convinced of the actual effort that would be involved with finding a treasure.

Ok, now the bad stuff. Oh boy, there is no way that her friends and colleagues are not all over this supposed hidden cave she found. Instead, the writers have them all being blase about it as she goes in search of a hidden and legendary treasure. No way this is reality. Then she thinks she found it and they just say: hey you go get that secret treasure that the natives have revered for a hundred years as the story has been passed down generation by generation, and we will just sit here on our lazy butts and not care about it. Then the cave, and the waterfall, and it's all way too dumb. So this only gets 6.9 stars.

Recently been to the Great Smoky Mountains, that is why I wanted to see this film. I usually like these Hallmark romance stories, but yikes, this was bad. Zero chemistry between the actors and the treasure hunt just doesn't fit type of film. The Smokies is stunning, but the scenery is the only thing good about this film.

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 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.