The Way to the Heart

This isn't quite the typical TV romance movie - it's a bit more tragic and real, whilst still telling an encouraging tale. There's a lot packed in - bereavement, financial blows, relationship breakdowns, unrequited love, burn-out, job loss, physical injury, learning new skills, rebooting life/relationships/work, so surely something for everyone. I wish the character who says she's "not into guys" had added that animals are her focus, because that would have strengthened the conversations about loving work - sometimes it's all consuming in a good way, not just the negative ways shown in other characters. If you've watched too many regular room-coms, this is the anecdote - it still gives the warm and fuzzies but in a more relatable way.

This is somehow strange TV movie. It's not done by or for Hallmark nor Reel One which dominate that market. Technically it's done better than the majority of abovementioned TV movies, but I have one nitpicks. Meghan Heffern didn't have appropriate makeup in a few scenes. Music score was really good, mostly country music but with some tense music in drama parts.

There is one technical thing for which movie deserve at least passable score (4*) and that's location. They said in the movie that it takes place in Prince George, and it was actually shot there. Furthermore, Vancouver was mentioned later in the movie, too. This is what always baffled me, and I never like it - how hard is for Hallmark and Reel One (excluding M. Rosner co-production) for once that movie actually takes place in Canada instead of faking to be random US city every single time? It's even more absurd as Reel One is actually French owned and their movies are regularly shown and streamed in Europe, and are quite popular. Like nobody heard of Canada or what?

Cast is passable. Jon Cor was a Hallmark regular, and seeing him here was a bit of strange, but he was passable. This is the first major role for Meghan Heffern and I don't know should I blame her or director for overacting in at least the first half of the movie. But she improved in the second half, and was much more enjoyable. Another former Hallmark regular is Pete Graham who played Ava's father. The rest of cast are basically rookies.

I liked directing, it was pretty good, but writing... It was the first and so far the last entry for the writer. The main story is the same old story of girl coming back to her home town which she left 10 years ago, and has a change of heart. The first half of the movie is light hearted comedy mixed with a bit of drama which then slowly transition to drama. Pacing is totally off as the two of three most important things in the movie where suddenly and quickly solved in the few minutes around 70 min in, so they have to finish it somehow which introduced unnecessary drama...

Overall, it's the average movie. Pacing is a bit of off, but directing was pretty good, so they even out. And don't watch trailer posted outside IMDb as it shows whole movie compressed in just 2:03 min.