Un amour polaire

The story is nothing special and the chemistry between the leads is weak. But the locations are beautiful, rescuing what would otherwise be a well below-average Hallmark movie.

One elephant in the closet is never mentioned, the shortness of winter days in Iceland. If it's supposed to be January (it's winter but the actual month is never mentioned) in southern Iceland (where all the locations are), there would only be 4.5 hours of daylight at the beginning of the month and 7 at the end. (The days would be even shorter in northern Iceland.) They spend far too much time doing daytime activities outdoors for the time of year.

I was hoping for more from this new Hallmark. The story was ok as was the acting. That's it. What I was focused in on was the shots of Iceland which I expected to be much darker and more stark in its appearance. So I would recommend this film just to view this island country in the North Atlantic with its small population, cool climate, and high standard of living. The story was pleasant enough but visually there was a lot to look at.

This was worth watching for the scenery, but not the story!

Very meh.

'Love on Iceland' is mostly what you'd expect from a television film, though does manage to mix things up ever so slightly by taking events over to Iceland - kudos for actually filming there, by the way.

The premise is plain and entirely predictable, though a lot of the camera work is solid - including a decent amount of drone footage - even if a few shots did amusingly feel like Eurovision postcards.

Cast-wise it's basic. Kaitlin Doubleday (Chloe) and Colin Donnell (Charlie) are average, neither terrible nor great. I actually think they missed a trick, Preston Sadleir (Kenneth) and Kate Easton (Erin) seemingly had way more chemistry together - of course difficult to tell if they are lead worthy, but I had more interest in their romance than Chloe and Charlie's.

The Icelandic surroundings help raise the film up, but it's still a draggy watch. 2½*.

Take the story outline of 100, no 1000, no even more than that, other Hallmark movies and flip around some details and set it in a most beautiful winter wonderland. I can't emphasize enough how overused the general story line is, from start to end.

As I've said before, when the story is not a factor, at least not a positive one, then look to the relationship building. Meh. Doubleday and Donell were OK together, but not that great either. There was a secondary romance which piqued a little interest but it was definitely secondary. The acting was OK also.

In this movie, it was the places they went featuring great scenery and some background and history behind those places.