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Love's Unending Legacy DVD Review
Love's Unending Legacy DVD Credits:
Love's Unending Legacy Directed by:
Mark Griffiths
Love's Unending Legacy Written by:
Pamela Wallace, based on the book by Janette Oke
Love's Unending Legacy Cast:
Erin Cottrell, Dale Midkiff, Victor Browne, Samantha Smith, Holliston Coleman
Love's Unending Legacy Released by:
Not available at this time
Region:
1
Love's Unending Legacy DVD Release Date:
4th December 2007
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Love's Unending Legacy Synopsis:

In the latest Love series installment, two years have passed since the tragic death of Missie's husband Willie. Missie is forced to move back to her father's ranch in Tettsford Junction and ends up adopting a teenage orphan girl who tests her faith and strength. Missie is compelled to defend the girl's orphan brother who is being mistreated by his adoptive family all the while fighting her own feelings of love for the town sheriff.

Love's Unending Legacy DVD Review:

Love’s Unending Legacy definitely lived up to its title. At only 84 minutes long, it is unending, with a cliché story, amateur acting, and poor writing.

The story is set in 1888, but for some reason the entire crew as well as screenwriter Pamela Wallace was unaware of this fact. The lead characters spoke in a completely modern dialect and used colloquialisms of the present day such as “hey there,” “are you okay,” “oh my gosh,” “and stuff,” and started sentences with “look,” and “it’s just that.” Either Wallace neglected to do her research on the time period or the actors paraphrased her words, an error that should not have been included in the final cut. In addition to the dialogue, the lead actress Erin Cottrell wore her hair in a modern style, not the traditional up-do a widowed school teacher would have fashioned. The men in the film, Victor Browne and Dale Midkiff, were also guilty of wearing their hair according to the new millennium. Midkiff spiked his hair with gel and Browne wore his hair, sideburns, and beard as one would today.

Missie LaHaye (Eric Cottrell) claims that she will never fall in love again, for she is still in mourning. However, a mere two years after her husband’s death, Missie becomes attracted to Sherriff Tyler (Victor Browne) at first sight. Apparently a pretty face is enough to make her forget her husband and walk down the aisle again. Perhaps “forget” is the wrong word; our heroine did take one minute out of her life to tell her husband that she will “always love him,” but she’s going to move on, only after an equally as short and equally as poorly written pep-talk from her father.

The main storyline follows Missie’s adoption of Belinda (Holliston Coleman). At first, Belinda resents Missie and doesn’t get along with her new family, but to no one’s surprise, Missie wins her heart and Belinda’s anger disappears by the end of the film. The side-story of the “Belinda conflict” is that Belinda’s younger brother was adopted by a cruel couple who beats and starves him. Belinda tries to rescue him but for some reason, doesn’t want anyone to know they’re related. The writer neglected to write another conflict that was obvious and inevitable. Missie has a son Maddie. Maddie has lost his father, and now his mother adopts another child, and falls in love with another man; there is no possibility that Maddie will be unaffected by this drastic change and support his new sister and father. This is exactly how he reacts, for either Wallace wasn’t clever enough to write another, more interesting side-line, or Janette Oke never wrote the details in her series Love Comes Softly, on which the film was based.

On the topic of children, the child actors’ performances were painfully amateur. Either the three adolescents were completely talentless or director Mark Griffiths did not know how to work with children. For that matter, Griffiths did not know how to work with adults; the four adult leads in the film were lacking in talent as well. Cottrell put a good effort into her acting, but with terribly cheesy dialogue, no chemistry between the other actors, a talentless cast, and a pointless, obvious story, it’s hard to pull off a good performance.

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Love's Unending Legacy DVD review written by: Eh-Eh Plotkin

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