One Summer

I've always got a kick out of hallmark love stories; falling in love in less than a week. This story was refreshing. It has real love, loss, grief, healing and romance on a realistic timeline. This is definitely one of my hallmark favorites now.

Finally a PG-rated Hallmark movie with a little bit of zip. Also, it's a bit of a weeper, too, especially for anybody who has lost (or is losing) a partner to illness or accident. The world breaks everybody, but some become strong at the broken places., and this is a story of getting past grief. It'd help the suspension of disbelief if the ghost looked a little more "ghostie" (ethereal). Another nice break from the typical Hallmark formula is to not have "The Kiss" in the final frames of the movie, but I don't think that qualifies as a "spoiler".

This appeared on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries which when not doing mysteries shows movies with a different flavor than the Hallmark Channel. This movie fits that mold. It is actually quite different than most of the rom/coms we're used to because the romance is secondary to the rest of the story.

This movie is about grief, and family, and starting over. As Amanda Schull points out in an interview, this movie focuses on the man rather than the woman. His backstory is a bit unusual and possibly even a bit strange. Sam Page is excellent in that role.

Sarah Drew is also good, but I would have liked to have seen more of her.

The climax simultaneously goes off the scale with sappy and with stupid (in the sense of unrealistic). Yes I know, and I've even said, that Hallmark and realistic don't always go well together, but this movie takes the cake. But I love sappy, so I was willing to forgive for the extreme poetic license.

I know Madeline Grace Popovich can sing. She was second best in The Christmas High Note, but still pretty good. When she does her feature performance in this movie, it sounds like they switched to a voice over, but I'm assuming it was her and not someone else. The song is quite good.

I read the book a few years ago and hoped this.movie would be made. It came true, only a character or two went missing from the book but great version in compromise.

Parts of it were over the top and might make you roll your eyes, but most of it was very well done. The actress who played the daughter was impressive. The father was excellent as well. I like the melancholy touches about grief and found them to be the strongest parts of the movie.

Hallmark should continue with these slight deviations from their usual movie formula. I like them so much more than the conventional fall in love in one week stories.