Love on the Right Course

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".

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.

A decent story but anyone who has a moderate knowledge of the game would have been grimacing with most shown golf scenarios. Hiring an LPGA player to consult and correct a few swings, terms used, golf situations and tournament play would have made it a much better movie.

Obviously, Taylor-Made kicked in some sponsor money for the advertising they received. That being said, tour players would be wearing clothing with the company logo. Every shirt the club pro wore would have had the club logo embroidered on it.

Other than the golf related mishaps, it an OK Hallmark movie and worthy of a watch.

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.

While the story was okay and the lead actors delivered their usual respectable performances, I found the narrow depth of focus chosen for much of the movie to be simply too hard on my eyes to keep watching. We do not see the world with such short depth of focus, so prolonged exposure to that effect neither feels natural nor is easy to process. So many scenes were shot with only the actors in focus, that the audience is deinied extended views of lovely waterfront scenes, quaint village alleyways, and interesting interiors. One knows these appealing scenes are there, but they're repeatedly obscured by somebody's idea of what makes cinematic "art." Rather than focusing my attention on the characters & story, I found this video technique was such a distraction that it killed my interest in the movie.