Love's Long Journey

Newlyweds Missie (Erin Cottrell) and Willie (Logan Bartholomew) travel in a covered wagon to a new land of opportunity, leaving Missie's childhood home. Missie copes with her pregnancy while the two of them forge a new life on the Western frontier, encountering a number of friendly characters, a pair of wholly westernised Natives and even highwaymen. From Hallmark Entertainment and Michael Landon Jr. comes this Western love story, a saccharine portrait of early Western settlers as survived through dime store Harlequin Romances. From its opening Bible quoting narration over a handsome smiling couple to the excruciatingly heavy-handed "last rites" conclusion, the director sloppily continues the sins of his father, crafting another boring entry in the school of Evangelical Tabloid Narrative. The namesake of Highway to Heaven star Michael Landon, Landon Jr. started his career as an actor in a series of neo-Bonanza TV movies (playing the son of his father's original Bonanza character) before directing a couple of films about his father — one a documentary, the other a TV movie starring Smallville's John Schneider as the late actor. To give some idea of how long Love's Long Journey has been, this is the third film Landon Jr. has adapted from Janette Oke's series of Western Christian romances. The cinematic equivalent of a Jehovah's Witness, even at 85 minutes this entry overstays its welcome. (Fox)