This movie was a romance, pure and simple. That was the whole plot: getting our heroine Laurel together with her true love. There were no other plot elements to distract from that. As such, you might say the plot was a little thin, but I quite enjoyed this movie.
There were a few things that I really liked about this movie. Front and center was Marla Sokolof. I've enjoyed her in everything I've seen her in. She has such a cute, sweet, girl-next-door appeal that it's hard not to like her. This movie was a Hallmark movie from the days before their plots were so formulaic and boilerplate. I love that Laurel isn't in some high-powered career like advertising, marketing or the arts, as seems to be the case in all of today's Hallmark movies. She's a simple florist, a down-to-earth job that most of us in the real world can relate to. Yet, she loves her job and she does it well. And the two men in her life are attracted to her for who she is, not because she's someone out of the ordinary. The dialog in this movie was real and natural, and you mostly felt like you were viewing a snapshot of real people's actual lives and not some characters in a movie.
I thought the love triangle between Laurel and doctor Evan and author Stephen was handled pretty well. There will always be one of the two love interests who you instinctively know the girl will end up with, and this was no exception. However, I saw both guys as reasonable alternatives for Laurel, and the story could have gone either way, had the screenwriters chosen to do so. They did a fairly good job of throwing you off about Stephen, and making you think he might be either a player who already had a girlfriend, or a slacker who was lying to Laurel about really being a writer. The plot twist, where it's revealed that Stephen is really romance writer Victoria Darling, and that the beautiful supposed girlfriend is really his editor, is pretty clever. I suspected something like this, but was still somewhat surprised.
I'd have to give a few negative points for the character of Laurel's grandma. She was just too annoying and meddling. She seemed like she would fit in better in the world of Jane Austen, where parents largely arranged marriages for their daughters to who they considered suitable husbands, with no consideration of whether the daughter actually loved them. In all fairness, however, I can see how the grandma would see Evan as a better prospect than Stephen, especially since it appeared that Stephen was cheating on his girlfriend to date Laurel. The "follow your heard" philosophy works well in rom-coms, but in real life, many a girl has ruined her life by "following her heart" and getting together with a guy that she connected with, but who was totally unsuitable as a marriage partner. Had the screenwriters decided to change the story, you could as easily have had Stephen be a slimy, smooth-talking player and have Laurel eventually realize that Evan, an attractive, successful, sweet guy who absolutely adored her, was the person she really wanted to be with and would be far happier with.
In the end, this was a sweet, feel-good movie that delivered the happy ending that we all love. One of the more enjoyable rom-coms I've seen lately.
There were a few things that I really liked about this movie. Front and center was Marla Sokolof. I've enjoyed her in everything I've seen her in. She has such a cute, sweet, girl-next-door appeal that it's hard not to like her. This movie was a Hallmark movie from the days before their plots were so formulaic and boilerplate. I love that Laurel isn't in some high-powered career like advertising, marketing or the arts, as seems to be the case in all of today's Hallmark movies. She's a simple florist, a down-to-earth job that most of us in the real world can relate to. Yet, she loves her job and she does it well. And the two men in her life are attracted to her for who she is, not because she's someone out of the ordinary. The dialog in this movie was real and natural, and you mostly felt like you were viewing a snapshot of real people's actual lives and not some characters in a movie.
I thought the love triangle between Laurel and doctor Evan and author Stephen was handled pretty well. There will always be one of the two love interests who you instinctively know the girl will end up with, and this was no exception. However, I saw both guys as reasonable alternatives for Laurel, and the story could have gone either way, had the screenwriters chosen to do so. They did a fairly good job of throwing you off about Stephen, and making you think he might be either a player who already had a girlfriend, or a slacker who was lying to Laurel about really being a writer. The plot twist, where it's revealed that Stephen is really romance writer Victoria Darling, and that the beautiful supposed girlfriend is really his editor, is pretty clever. I suspected something like this, but was still somewhat surprised.
I'd have to give a few negative points for the character of Laurel's grandma. She was just too annoying and meddling. She seemed like she would fit in better in the world of Jane Austen, where parents largely arranged marriages for their daughters to who they considered suitable husbands, with no consideration of whether the daughter actually loved them. In all fairness, however, I can see how the grandma would see Evan as a better prospect than Stephen, especially since it appeared that Stephen was cheating on his girlfriend to date Laurel. The "follow your heard" philosophy works well in rom-coms, but in real life, many a girl has ruined her life by "following her heart" and getting together with a guy that she connected with, but who was totally unsuitable as a marriage partner. Had the screenwriters decided to change the story, you could as easily have had Stephen be a slimy, smooth-talking player and have Laurel eventually realize that Evan, an attractive, successful, sweet guy who absolutely adored her, was the person she really wanted to be with and would be far happier with.
In the end, this was a sweet, feel-good movie that delivered the happy ending that we all love. One of the more enjoyable rom-coms I've seen lately.