Love on the Danube: Love Song

What a boring movie, I kept nodding off. The locations in Hungary were beautiful, especially Budapest. Wes Brown is always a reliable actor in Hallmark's rom-coms, the rest of the cast was ok. Catherine Disher was a stand out, she has stage presence.

A bad script and dialog are what made it a very boring movie. The same topics were regurgitated over and over again along with Julia's performance anxiety. I was to the point of who cares if they ever get together or if Julia ever sings. . A first time screenwriter could probably have written a better script. If you're going to spend the money filming in Europe, get a decent script. Or just save the money and film it in Montreal or Quebec City and call it Paris.

This was not Hallmark's best. Dare I say, it was its top 10 worst. First, the makeup artist chose to give all the women dark smokey eyes, with a dreaded wing eyeliner. It managed to make the mother look older and tired. I mean her WHOLE eyelid was black. Come on! The makeup artist managed to give the daughter turned down eyes which in turn made her look sad all the time. I love Wes Brown and his comedic timing is superb, but how y'all managed to make him boring is a special kind of talent. They had no absolutely chemistry to me. I couldnt buy into their story. The storyline did not do it for me either. This was snoozefest.

What is going on with Hallmark? The stories are tiresome and the new replacement actresses are lacking. Wes Brown is reliable and can be fun, see him in Haul Out the Ivy, but not in this snoozefest.

He could not breathe life into this sinking cruise. The plot with the adult children trying to set up their parents and finding each other as romantic partners was too predictable. Adding the older mother ( who looked the same age as her daughter) , a professional singer who has stage fright was just silly. The only thing that saved this shipwreck was the scenery. I fell asleep in the middle but didn't miss anything. Hopefully the next two installments will be an improvement.

I wanted to like this movie. Having done a river cruise and recognised the locations. But I ended up wondering if I should get off at the next city.

The two main characters had about as much chemistry as a fizzled firecracker. Wasn't sure if I was to wait for the excursion to finish or fast forward to the next one.

If you do a movie using a river cruise on the Danube, at least try to add some sort of passion and romance. It felt like the characters had just met two minutes ago throughout the whole movie even when they were more than halfway through the cruise.

However, I give it five for filming on the Danube. But please, Love on the Danube it isn't. I wanted so much to like this movie.

6.4 stars.

The story could have been excellent, but it's lacking real drama. This is simply a feel good story about a gal and her mom traveling in Europe, and they meet a guy and his dad on a river cruise on the Danube. The foursome get along and there are intermittent sparks, but so much is missing.

In the category of romance it comes up very shy. The parents have almost zero chemistry and the leads have only a scant more. If the leads had more affinity for each other, it might be more entertaining. But if you take all the romance (lack thereof) and dialogue away from the film, what remains is a feeble storyline and a drab script. Seeing a movie that turns out like this only proves that real filmmaking requires heart. No heart was put into this one. They dotted the i's and crossed the t's with a nice setting, lighting and music, but there is no passion.

Because the acting and cinematography are stellar, I will rate it at 6.4, but not 6.5, because that would round up to 7.