Forever My Girl (2018)
Directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf
Written by Bethany Ashton Wolf
Starring Jessica Rothe, Alex Roe
Release Date January 19th, 2018
Woof! Forever My Girl is a bad movie. This pseudo-Nicholas Sparks romance about a country music star who walked out on his wedding day and never went back to his hometown for seven years never, never rises above mediocre. Unfortunately, our lead character Liam wasn’t aware when he left that he had a daughter on the way. When a friend dies, he decides to return home for the funeral and finds out about the secrets he left behind.
That all sounds like a potentially good story, but as executed in Forever My Girl, it’s really terrible. Alex Roe stars as country music star Liam Page and I will give him this, he can sing. Beyond his pleasant voice, however, Roe is a void where charisma is supposed to be. Roe is just a hair above somnambulant in his energy level, even in the film’s most emotionally charged moments.
It doesn’t help that Jessica Rothe, recently of the far better, far more fun and exciting Happy Death Day, blows Roe off of the screen. Rothe, playing Josie, the film’s love interest, working through some of the most leaden dialogue and dull characterization, at the very least, brings some life to her performance. I think Rothe is a future star but she needs to avoid making movies like Forever My Girl, where her star qualities are dimmed by having to play down to her co-star and the material.
The story of Forever My Girl, as I mentioned, has potential to work but as presented by director Bethany Ashton Wolf, in her first feature in 11 years, we get boilerplate Robert McKee clichés dressed up with a lot of extremely dull country music. I’ve never been the biggest fan of country music, like any music there is good and bad, but country music seems much more open to the mediocre than other genres and boy is the music here mediocre.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.
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