All Rise...

Judge David Johnson's love is everlasting, but cowardly.

The Charge

The hard-hitting human drama of a Thomas Kinkade painting.

The Case

I don't know how many Love's ________________ movies there are, but the series is surely vast by now. Having reviewed more than a handful over the course of my employ at DVD Verdict, this much I have learned to expect: For 90 minutes, we'll get saccharine storytelling, earnest (if limited) performances, and a total package that makes for ideal viewing with the grandmother of your choice.

Love's Everlasting Courage follows a family of three, as they work to keep their modest homestead solvent in the harsh landscape of the 19th century American West. It hasn't rained for some time and patriarch Clark Davis (Wes Brown, We Are Marshall) has been unsuccessful in wringing anything much from his sand-blasted scrap of land. Worse, the bank is on his back for payment and he's staring at a potential eviction.

Thankfully Clark has his wonderful wife Ellen (Julie Mond, Rest Stop: Don't Look Back) to lean on, and their life-size American Girl daughter (Morgan Lily, X-Men: First Class) to cheer him up. As an added bonus, his parents (Cheryl Ladd, Charlie's Angels, and Bruce Boxleitner, Tron: Legacy) have miraculously managed to avoid a terrifying infection and are alive to support him. But just when he thinks things can't get any worse, tragedy befalls Clark's family and he'll have to lean on his parents and the kindness of strangers to lift him out of the darkness. Also, God plays a big role in all of this.

Easygoing and sentimental, with some made-for-TV tragedy sprinkled in to give the production some emotional pop, Love's Everlasting Courage follows a well-established game plan for these Hallmark-ish endeavors and hits all the necessary melodramatic beats. A father's wise counsel imparted to his son, dumb actions by a little girl generates a needed action-lite finale, a light-hearted courtship features a lovable buffoonish side character, and one man's journey from tortured soul to redeemed scrub brush farmer. Toss in some Biblical overtones and you're looking at an inoffensive, light-lifting film suitable for all ages, but mainly for geriatrics who find the real-world grittiness of Highway to Heaven too off-putting.

Like its protagonist, the DVD release of Love's Everlasting Courage is lean and utilitarian: standard definition 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, Dolby 5.1 Surround, and no extras.

The Verdict

Not Guilty. For the intended audience, there is little to quibble with here.

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