Love in the Forecast

It's a fluffy Hallmark love story, and I didn't expect anything more. I enjoyed the city and country settings and the different professions of the main characters. Also, that they weren't on opposite sides of a business deal, or trying to save a business or farm or property, or thrown together to work on a small-town festival of some kind. The weather details were interesting, and I thought the lead actors had good chemistry and that their performances were just fine. It might not be one of the top Hallmark movies, but I give it high marks for being different.

The movie is cute and typical Hallmark fun but the casting of the mom is so far off it's distractingly laughable! She wears an awful grey wig but looks younger than the star! In reality she is only a couple of years older than the woman that plays her daughter. Please. Aren't there some late fifty year olds that can act? Of course there are. Shame on you for miscasting.

Leah (Cindy Busby), who works for a local television station, is a hapless dater. She decides to forego dating to focus on her career and moving out of her parents' house.

She buys half a duplex and discovers an attractive bachelor lives in the other half. Within the constraints of her no-dating policy, they become friends---perhaps more?

The story of this romance feels slapped together; small details seem incongruous. The characters are so cheery they feel unreal, like they are talking sitcom-ese. In short, everything feels staged. It is staged, but it shouldn't feel that way if we are to buy in to their story.

The actors do a fine job with the material they have. The leads, Cindy Busby and Christopher Russell, are likable and worthy of other material that allows them to be more authentic.

Cute enough story line, I watched because I like the leads, and they carried the story.

But why in the world did they cast an actress as the mom of the female lead who can't be any more than 4-5 years older than her on-screen daughter? You can't just frost her hair and give her glasses and think the viewers can't tell they could be sisters.

Another mid-cast character is the female lead's co-worker who keeps making advances toward her all movie long - why cast someone who is let us say, is metrosexual or perhaps a negative testosterone level in comparison to the male lead?

Those two mis-cast actors combined with the supposed setting of Conway, Arkansas when the foliage amd scenery is clearly the Pacific SW Canada...

Mediocre, like assembled too fast to get details right, even to the point of those two mis-cast characters. And yet...worth watching if you like the two leads.

It's the only movie where the lead actress didn't irritate me. She does so in all her other movies.

She is usually too perky. But I think she toned it down a bit in this movie.

I probably won't watch it again but it was OK.