I was surprised by this. My strongest impression is that this movie is more about feelings than story. I'm not a Cindy Busby fan, but she does a good job of making me feel the emotions.
The story starts out like same old same old. Struggling ranch. They spent a fair amount of screen time planting that feeling and the sadness that went with losing part of her. But the trajectory of the story quickly took an unusual turn. The middle was slow, story-wise, but more emotions and some romantic relationship building. The climax and ending were interesting and some more strong emotion beginning with the obligatory misunderstanding which could have been quickly resolved with some listening, but then what fun would that be? I like the touch of Autumn cleaning again and her surroundings while doing it. If you think about it a little, the scene is strongly symbolic of the theme that has been running throughout the movie. The ending was pretty obvious when you saw what Jake saw, but it was nicely done even so.
I thought the chemistry between Busby and McGarry was excellent. I was put off in this aspect by, first, they didn't meet for 20 minutes screentime, and, second, they bashed each other for the next 20. But when the characters settled down, the actors were great together.
The ranch is beautiful. There are some nice scenes of Autumn riding either with or without others. I thought Kevin McGarry trying to act like he had no idea how to ride was funny. And there's some good dialogue sprinkled throughout. Supporting actors were mostly good.
