A Harvest Homecoming

Trevor Donovan is experienced and I've enjoyed him in a lot of movies. I've come to enjoy Jessica Lowndes also. This movie was very disappointing. The acting is surprisingly average.

The story is average with no great highs or lows or surprises. In fact, if you break it down, it follows typical lines. This includes an antagonistic first meeting. Then that melts instantly and they get along great with no transition. There's friends and family all telling the leads to get back out there, repeatedly. There is even the line about "It's a date, no not a date..." (Ugh) There's a ticking clock as far as Drew leaving soon. The conflict occurs explosively, quick and maybe overblown. The ending is predictable.

Something was off with Donovan and Lowndes, just a little. It dampened any chemistry. The dialogue wasn't great. The sets are limited.

What about the singing? Whenever there is a movie with Lowndes I eagerly anticipate her singing. I guess there was one surprise. Donovan did the singing. He was decent in a country sort of way.

This is another totally family safe, family friendly movie. It's not bad, but it wasn't what expected with these leads. It's still a little better than many I've seen on this network with lesser known stars, so I guess it's watchable.

This movie would make Christopher Walken happy so long as you replace the cowbell with fall decor. I'm all for setting up a nice movie set that makes you wish you were somewhere where you can actually wear sweaters in the fall, but this was definitely overkill. They even had the actors wearing fall colored clothing...good grief! They also must have filmed this in summer because everything was fake. The leaves, the one pumpkin... I'm guessing the apples too. Didn't see a single apple tree at the apple orchard either. Geez, can you imagine if you had to inventory all of the set props? Yikes! You'd be there for months counting all of the fake leaves!

The movie itself was comical and cute. Didn't really expect much from a Hallmark style movie. Though it was pretty hard to stay focused with the fall vomit everywhere.

I might watch it again, probably to turn it into a game of guessing where there aren't any leaves.

Great American Family is trying hard to compete with Hallmark, but these movies continually look cheap and cut obvious corners. As other reviewers have pointed out, the leaf decor is over the top and ridiculous. No pumpkins or hay bales, and not one apple in sight -- at an apple orchard! Also, there's no character development and the story is too simple to stretch into a full-length feature. Where had Jessica Lowndes and her son been living before coming to Chestnut Hollow? What happened to her kid's father? Is he in the picture? Who is her best friend who drops by occasionally? How did this orchard stay in business without obvious things like a petting zoo and a maze? And isn't Trevor Donovan at 40 a little old to still be searching for a permanent life? GAF is certainly a player in these types of movies, but so far Hallmark continues to eat their lunch.

Good storyline, good acting, appreciated the prayers before meals, good sharing of feelings between Drew and Aiden. The downfall was the REALLY overdone autumn decor - EVERYWHERE, in EVERY scene in EVERY location. The paper leaves in the yards, on the chairs, on the stair bannister, bed headboards, walls, in the school classroom, on the porch, on the fences, on the curtains, all over the kitchen, doorposts, shelves, door wreaths, etc., etc. They even included trashy-looking brightly colored flowers at the fishing lake - they looked like litter sitting on top of the bushes. It's the same stuff everywhere, and WAY TOO MUCH. The set designers need to realize that a little goes a long way, and that the same red and orange decor just gets boring if it's seen everywhere constantly in every scene. And to add to the insult, the house gutter was painted bright orange, which didn't match the red door color - but just over saturated the house scene. No one paints their home just for autumn! Tone it down, folks. This is so unrealistic it's a distraction from the storyline.

I could be wrong, but it also seemed that the photographic saturation in the red, orange, and yellow tones was being enhanced in many scenes. Even the orange basketballs in the gym seemed to be "glowing."

Hallmark is the master of plastic colored fake-looking flowers stuck everywhere in their rom-coms. Don't copy their mistakes (which go way beyond decor). We want better for GAC family. Rethink the need for overdone decor before making future movies and tone it down! (I subtracted 2 points for this, I'd rate the movie a 9 if the decor was more tasteful and less of a distraction).

I have never been so distracted by a movie set's decor as with this movie. The movie was actually.good, but all I kept saying was, who in the world was.the set Director.

Not sure how to gently put it, but it was so gawdy, it took away from the movie...so.glad I was not.the only.one distracted.by the horrible.sets.

There were.leaves and.lights in the Living room, bedroom, the new apartment, front.of.the house, side of the house, festival, everywhere. It made it look like a low budget movie. The set Director just said, I'll buy all these leaves in bulk and use it all Through the movie.

You should.re.do it.