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From the Past

Films on the to-do list

  • Armageddon Time
  • Black Widow
  • Chimes at Midnight
  • The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • Last Christmas
  • Remember Sunday
  • Shazam! 2
  • Thor: Love and Thunder
  • Spy Guys

Love’s Unfolding Dream (2007)

TV film review: Love’s Unfolding Dream (2007), directed by Harvey Frost

Missie LaHaye (Erin Cottrell) – or rather Missie Tyler as she’s gone and married Sheriff Zach (Victor Browne) – and her family are living their lovely, wholesome lives somewhere in America, somewhere in The Past (late 1800s).

Belinda (Scout Taylor-Compton) has been adopted by the couple and has grown into a young woman now. A young woman with a knack for helping and patching people up. She would love to become a doctor, but a female doctor? What a ridiculous notion! Nonetheless, she manages to convince the highly sceptical Dr Jackson (Robert Pine) to take her in as an apprentice when rich widow Virginia Stafford-Smith (Nancy Linehan Charles) and her butler Windsor (Richard Herd) have to stick around town for rather longer than they had hoped for. After all, someone needs to nurse Mrs Stafford-Smith back to health, and the doctor is terribly busy.

Meanwhile, young Drew Simpson (Patrick Levis), fresh out of law school, has arrived to take care of his dead uncle’s property, which was left to him. Drew and Belinda don’t seem to get along very well … or are there in fact wedding bells on the horizon? If there are, what’s going to happen to Belinda’s hopes of becoming a doctor?

Also starring Dale Midkiff as Clark Davis and Samantha Smith as Marty Davis.

Spoilers. Except, you know, they’re not really, because the plot really is THAT transparent.

If Michaela Quinn hadn’t been a well-off city lady, but in fact an orphan come to a small town in the middle of nowhere hoping to find a new family, perhaps this would be a similar story to that of Dr Quinn. Except it isn’t, of course. This is young love, playing out exactly how you’d expect it to.

That the old lady conveniently has a stroke and has to be nursed back to health by a young lady with outlandish dreams of becoming a doctor – which means she can tell the old lady exactly how much she’d love to go to university but hasn’t got the means to do so – and of course, the old lady is a rich widow whose kids have all died and she has nothing to spend her money on these days, and wants to spend them on something worthwhile. Like her small-town nurse’s tuition fees. I mean, HOW FORTUITOUS. Who would ever have guessed?

There is some Dale Midkiff in here, thankfully, and I like Belinda as a character. It’s just that this film series is becoming increasingly tedious and predictable, and the only reason I’m still watching is because, well, I saw it was on, and DAMN YOU DALE MIDKIFF. Then again, it could be worse. Romantic Western period drama with tedious Christian overtones does sound better than subjecting myself to something like Sharknado. Or Witchville. Or The Witches of Oz. Basically, any of Syfy’s films that are so horrendously bad you just want it to stop because the pain is too overwhelming.

So there’s that.

Still, Love’s Unfolding Dream is cute and wholesome, which makes a nice change from all the twerking we’re currently subjected to on telly, but the plot is so predictable Nostradamus would be envious.

2 out of 5 amputated legs.

Traxy

An easily distracted and over-excited introvert who never learns to go to bed at a reasonable time. Enjoys traveling (when there's not a plague on), and taking photos of European architecture. Cares for cats, good coffee and Boardwalk Empire. A child of her time, she did media studies in school and still can't decide what she wants to be when she grows up.

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