Love on the Right Course

The story is fairly common. A sports star is burnt out and goes home to re-energize. Part of her burn out is she is still grieving the loss of her mother who was also her coach. She meets a golf pro working at her dad's club who brings back fun for the game. To add to that simple story, dad is considering selling his home and the club. There is a subplot around that. Another subplot is the appearance of the professional caddy she recently fired. Despite Andrew's good looks, supposedly the two never had any romantic involvement and there is no hint of any sexual orientation either way. Nevertheless, his arrival does make things more complicated.

The chemistry between Ashley Newbrough and Marcus Rosner is good but not sparkling. There are enough things going on in the story that Rosner and Newbrough are not together as much as they could have been. Overall the acting is good and dialogue is decent. We see some Hungarian scenery.

Hallmark lately seems to like mixing there regulars around, sometimes for cameos, sometimes for more. In this case Brittany Bristow appears as a rival competitor in the two golf tournaments shown. She gets a few lines at the end. Maybe because she wrote the story, this her first fictional movie on the small screen. Not bad, but no great highs or lows or surprises.

I enjoyed it, but my current rating may be over-generous. I like both Newbrough and Bristow and the story flows well. And it is the first non-Christmas movie I've seen in weeks.

The scenery is breathtaking and takes place in Budapest Hungary. The story is about a female tournament golfer trying to cope with the death of her mother and coach, and her father who is also is trying to cope with the death of his wife. Ashley Newbrough is great as the lead female golfer, Whitney who goes home to Budapest to prepare for a tournament and try to figure out whether to continue her golfing career, her father is deciding whether to sell the golf course he owns since it only brings memories back of his deceased wife. Whitney meets a handsome golf pro,Daniel, played by handsome actor, Marcus Rosner,who gives her a new perspective on her golf game and life. I enjoyed the chemistry between Whitney and Daniel, and wish there had been a bit more focus on the romance, but overall an enjoyable movie.

I found this movie to be quite boring.

To be fair, though, part of that could be because I'm not a golf enthusiast. To be honest, I only watched it to the end because I have grown to love the actor, Marcus Rosner, & I enjoy taking in the scenery when the movies are made on location in Europe. But, my biggest pet peeve is when the background music doesn't go along with the movie. When they don't meld together, it's distracting to me & takes away from my enjoyment of the story. I hope Hallmark doesn't continue to take on a trait I have found in Great American Family movies. Hallmark can do much better than this.

Whitney is a professional golfer who has been having a bad streak since her mom passed away two years prior, so after a tournament she goes home to Hungary, to spend time with family and train for the next competition. There she meets Daniel, the pro golfer on the grounds. So, they bond after their love for the sport and he helps her find her groove again.

I think the movie had a different pace than a lot of Hallmark films. I didn't know where it would go. Which is good, different. Marcus and Ashley worked together before and I do think they have chemistry, just not the romantic one. I feel they are good friends in real life.

So while I didn't hate the movie and enjoyed some aspects of it, there are few things that were difficult to get into: the fact that they were all Hungarian (minus Whitney) and some didn't even have an accent. Or the fact that EVERYONE speaks impeccable English. And this may be funny but I just don't care about golf. I knew it was about golf going in, but I didn't care about it. And let's not even mention the miscommunication or the fact that the lead doesn't even try to speak up when necessary!

I do love when another Hallmark star appears in a movie in which they are not the lead, even if it's just a second. In here we see Brittany Bristow who in fact co-wrote this.

Once again, Hallmark cast a lead "current or former pro athlete" with an actor who seemingly started learning the sport and its mechanics a week after the script arrived. Previous movies about baseball and hockey and football players, ice skaters, etc have been painful to watch ... and "Love On the Right Course" adds 'pro golfer' to the list. Enough!!

A simple and obvious casting tweak would have at least tripled my IMDB stars for this movie. Ashley Newbrough is lovely, but her golf swing wouldn't make a junior varsity team. Her scoopy pitch shots were cringe-worthy for a "pro". Marcus Rosner (a golf instructor here) had a passable full swing. Cameo cast member, co-writer, co-producer Brittany Bristow should have been the lead actress based on her golf swing alone, and her acting style and charm would have brought more sizzle to the script's inevitable lead romance.

Team Bristow (dad, mom and daughter) continued its string of overseas shooting locations, this time in Hungary. Many roles were filled with eastern European actors. It helped toggling on Closed Captions. Enough said about that.

Golfers will see that TaylorMade was an exclusive brand logo for clubs and bags. But the golfers' and gallery wore strikingly plain, logo-less clothing and headwear ... and the last time I saw that was in "Caddyshack".