Love Comes Softly (Telefilm)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Film: C-

 

 

Michael Landon Jr. takes on his father’s legacy of family entertainment by directing Love Comes Softly (2002), yet another family entertainment about the early days of settling families in the United States as agriculture became important.  Though it is a family-friendly work, it is also a very predictable one and soon turns the characters into cartoons.  Whether Janette Oke’s book is as simplistic, time did not permit before this review was posted, but this is not up to Landon Sr.’s best work and is not very memorable.

 

The Claridges (Oliver Macready and Katherine Heigl) are the family in question, traveling to find a better place to have a new way of life that will be richer than the one they are trying to leave behind.  When Aaron Claridge has to go away unexpectedly, widower Clark Davis (Dale Midkiff) becomes a surrogate “man around” until he and Marty Claridge (Heigl) start to develop a bond of their own.  It is melodramatic and we know what follows, especially in a faith-based production aimed at families.  It is safe…  too safe.  On that level, you now know what you are getting.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is lacking some detail, but is not awful, though that is still a problem with such a recent production.  The same goes for the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, which the box claims to have Pro Logic surrounds, but what is there is weak and the Pro Logic mode makes the dialogue sound worse.  This was not that low budget, so what gives?  Except for a trailer for Hangman’s Curse, there are no extras either.  I guess that’s safe too.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo