6.6 stars.
Margaret left her life behind, that's the best description of this film as a whole. Margaret's cousin and best friend has died and left her two kids. Now she has to wrestle with a major life decision: to take the kids or let grandma take them.
There are so many flaws in this story, I'm not sure where to begin, so I will touch on a few very lightly, and move on with my day. I have bigger and better films to rate. First of all, her best friend in the whole wide world has two kids, a wonderful little girl and boy, and Margaret has never met them? Talk about an outstanding friendship...who just leaves everything important behind for so many years, not just a few years, these kids are like 8 and 10 years old? Next, Margaret's ex-boyfriend teaches at the school where the kids attend, and he actually helps take care of them and has been, and so they both have a connection again through the children. And so it begs the question: why did you leave all of this behind? And why would your ex-best friend/cousin leave her kids in your care? Nope, no way, uh-uh. Margaret is currently dating a very professional and business oriented man who tries to integrate into her new situation as she is caring for the kids. It's a very awkward situation, and we can see that he's on his way out, so it fits with the Hallmark formula.
The movie is slow, the music and sound are a bit wonky, the rest is average. The kids are cute. You can detect some sort of issues with the boy, he's bullied at school, seems to have a mild form of autism or something. His sister tries to take care of him. I think she's younger, but she acts older, looks younger, talks older? Really hard to tell. This movie doesn't do it for me. I can see the potential for appeal to some audiences, just not this audience of one.
