![\"tf-wounded-hand\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-wounded-hand.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She’s Marty, a young woman who’s just moved west with her husband, planning to homestead in the plains by a lovely river. He comes by an untimely accident the very day they arrive and she’s left adrift – she’s an easterner through and through and plans to return home, but the last wagon train before winter has already left. A widower named Clark has an offer: he wants a mother figure in his young daughter’s life. If Marty marries him, stays the winter (total platonic relationship, of course), does what she can with the daughter, he’ll pay for her passage back east in the spring if she still wants to go.<\/p>\n
You can guess where all this is going, and you’d be right, but despite its predictability, it’s the kind of story that still gets me. Like I said, the setting goes a long way, and there is some great beauty in the surroundings here. I also enjoyed seeing Marty, a fiery and independent young woman, trying to prove she can cut it on the frontier even though she’d apparently been planning to rely on her husband to do everything, because she can’t do anything. But she steps up, especially when her new husband’s 9-year-old keeps showing her up all the time.<\/p>\n
![\"tf-daddaughter\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-daddaughter.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
With Michael Landon Jr. directing a Janette Oke book, you can bet there’s some faith-based elements here, but they’re not actually overwhelming (of course, I’m a Christian) – Clark is a strong Christian. I don’t totally agree with his loner nature-based theology, but again, it works for the setting. Marty isn’t at first, though his quiet faith eventually has an impact. I do have an affinity for the “love comes softly” approach of the title. We tend to place way too much focus on love as an emotion (and as a romantic passion) in our culture, and not enough on love as an action, and the way that emotional\/romantic love can grow out of time and actions.<\/p>\n
Heigl isn’t GREAT in this, though she’s adequate enough – the memorable one really is the girl Missy (Skye McCole Bartusiak), who outacts Heigl in every scene. That said, the movie worked surprisingly well for me, thanks to those setting and plot elements that appeal to me – I also quite like stories about forming new families and beginning to heal from devastating losses. I probably would’ve ranked it a little higher, actually, if the third act hadn’t succumbed to one plot device that annoys me to death – as spring nears, Marty writes a letter to tell Clark she wants to stay but it gets lost so he assumes she wants to leave. JUST. TALK. TO. EACH. OTHER. Of course, this allows for a last-minute chase and reuniting, but it’s such a lazy way to get that kind of a climax.<\/p>\n
![\"tf-wagon\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-wagon.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Stats and stuff…<\/h3>\n
2003, USA<\/em> I’m ranking all my Challenge films on Flickchart (as I do all the films I see), a movie-ranking website that asks you to choose your favorite between two movies until it builds a ranked list of your favorites. Just for fun, I will average out the rankings and keep a running tally of whose recommendations rank the highest. When you add a film to Flickchart, it pits it against films already on your chart to see where it should fall. Here’s how Love Comes Softly<\/em> entered my chart:<\/p>\n Love Comes Softly<\/b> > Sylvia Scarlett Final #1672 out of 3734 (55%)<\/p>\n It is now my #1 Michael Landon Jr. film, my #1 Katherine Heigl film, my #10 Rural Drama, and my #32 film of 2003.<\/p>\n Love Comes Softly<\/em> was recommended by Micaela, my cousin’s daughter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I tend not to seek out Hallmark-type movies, but when on vacation with my cousins this year, they heard about my challenge and wanted to give me some movies, and this is what my cousin’s teenage daughter assigned me. I’m game for anything! The pioneer setting helps a lot, as I was a big fan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3027],"tags":[3279,3280,3278],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-feat-lovecomessoftly.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":36630,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/challenge-week-49-loves-enduring-promise\/","url_meta":{"origin":36629,"position":0},"title":"Challenge Week 49: Love’s Enduring Promise","author":"Jandy","date":"December 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the (first) sequel to Love Comes Softly, so it was nice to see them so close together. And I was actually interested to see more of Marty and Clark's story, even though the first movie tied it off pretty nicely. This is mostly Missy's story, though - the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-feat-lovesenduringpromise.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36433,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/challenge-week-41-midnight-mary\/","url_meta":{"origin":36629,"position":1},"title":"Challenge Week 41: Midnight Mary","author":"Jandy","date":"November 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Cheery little Pre-Code drama told mostly in flashback while Mary Martin awaits the jury's decision in her murder trial. Turns out growing up poor, getting locked up for a crime you didn't commit, becoming a \"lady of the night\" (hence the nickname), then falling in with gangsters can lead one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tf-feat-midnight-mary.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":35928,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/challenge-week-20-sneakers\/","url_meta":{"origin":36629,"position":2},"title":"Challenge Week 20: Sneakers","author":"Jandy","date":"May 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I hadn't heard of this movie at all until it came up on a podcast I randomly listened to a few months ago, and I was intrigued because I love spy-type and hacker-type movies, so I was glad to have a push to see it. I didn't know much what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"tf-listening","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/tf-listening.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36654,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/challenge-week-50-some-kind-of-wonderful\/","url_meta":{"origin":36629,"position":3},"title":"Challenge Week 50: Some Kind of Wonderful","author":"Jandy","date":"December 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Teen\/coming-of-age\/1980s movies are often a hard sell for me, but John Hughes-penned ones have a bit of heart and tenderness that hit me in the right place, so I was hoping Some Kind of Wonderful, one of the few I'd missed up to this point, would fit the bill as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-feat-somekind.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36165,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/challenge-week-29-it-should-happen-to-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":36629,"position":4},"title":"Challenge Week 29: It Should Happen to You","author":"Jandy","date":"July 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was another very comfortable choice for me, a classic Hollywood era romantic comedy that I definitely knew about back when I was watching only classic Hollywood movies, but missed. In this case (unlike with April in Paris), I can probably guess why I skipped it - I enjoyed Judy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tf-feat-ISHTY.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36087,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/challenge-week-26-dinner-at-the-ritz\/","url_meta":{"origin":36629,"position":5},"title":"Challenge Week 26: Dinner at the Ritz","author":"Jandy","date":"July 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"For this one, Naomi REALLY reached deep into the vaults, pulling out a 1937 British mystery I had never ever heard of. It's fallen into the public domain, but the print I saw was pretty decent for being in that condition, and I had an overall good experience with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tf-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndirected by Michael Landon, Jr., written by Michael Landon, Jr. and Cindy Kelley<\/em>
\nstarring Katherine Heigl, Dale Midkiff, Skye McCole Bartusiak, Theresa Russell<\/em><\/p>\n
\nLove Comes Softly < Twin Warriors<\/b>
\nLove Comes Softly < Manhattan Murder Mystery<\/b>
\nLove Comes Softly < The Ring<\/b> (2002)
\nLove Comes Softly<\/b> > About a Boy
\nLove Comes Softly<\/b> > The Girl from Missouri
\nLove Comes Softly < Hard Luck<\/b>
\nLove Comes Softly<\/b> > Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z
\nLove Comes Softly < Interview with the Vampire<\/b>
\nLove Comes Softly<\/b> > 6 Hours to Live
\nLove Comes Softly < Happenstance<\/b><\/p>\n