Lake Effects

This movie is a great family movie that delves into parent/child relationships. This movie explores the return of a woman to her hometown and the conflicts she faces within herself about her decision to leave home and explore the world as a young adult. She deals with grief, love, and her perception of relationships and the world around her throughout the movie. The actors all did a great job, and this one does pull at the heartstrings. I highly recommend this one. Well worth watching. James Welch Henderson, Arkansas 3/16/2021

I figured a movie with some pretty good cast would have something interesting happen. I was extremely disappointed. It was so boring! Also, I usually like Jane Seymour, but what was going on with her in this movie? Her accent kept changing for what few lines she seemed to have, and she was a bit too quiet and hard to understand. I get her character's husband just died, but it still seemed inconsistent, and just wrong.

Lately I seem to be more likely to leave reviews on movies I don't like, as I feel like I'm over using the word boring. I also wsh there wasn't such a high word minimum, as I feel it makes my reviews boring too.

Nice to see this lake in Virginia and so many familiar actors. Story about small town values. Enjoyable and slightly underrated.

Sara and Lily grew up at Smith Mountain Lake. Sara became estranged from the family and without explanation moved to Los Angeles to study law. Her sister Lily, an artist, teaches locally and lives with their parents, Ray and Vivian, until Dad dies in an accident.

The best hing about this film is the cast. Every great character actor is here, plus Jane Seymour and the nearly-forgotten Ben Savage. Unfortunately, it seems most of them gave the bare minimum level of performance, or the director simply did not attempt to get better out of them. The whole thing comes off as an amateur affair with no budget and actors eager to collect their (meager) paychecks and move on to the next project.

I am sorry to disparage something with the legendary Jeff Fahey, but Hallmark (much like Lifetime) is not known for its quality. If anything, they are known for trying to pull the heart strings of easily-affected house wives.

I am a Hallmark fan so the genre was not the problem but the background music far too loud and the whole concept of sanctimoniously hounding a community looking to smear your father's name after his death was maudlin and really distasteful. This is ugly through and through.