Love's Unfolding Dream

I´m far from the target audience of "Love´s Unfolding Dream" and while I found the picture to be predictable, unreasonably sappy and opinionated; "Love´s Unfolding Dream" still managed to entertain me. The story is uplifting and it´s hard to not find some enjoyment towards a story with so many likeable characters. The story moved along nicely and while it felt preachy at times, the characters generally had something worthwhile to say. The film neither greatly succeeds nor greatly fails in any given area. It is a middle-of-the-road made-for-television film that is affable enough to sit back and watch once. I´d have a very difficult time sitting through it again any time soon, but I don´t feel as if my time was a complete waste of time.

Video:

"Love´s Unfolding Dream" is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen. This is a made-for-television film and typically and historically these films are presented in full-frame, so "Love´s Unfolding Dream" is already one up over a large number of made-for-television films. The transfer itself is decent. Colors are natural and nicely saturated. The dusty browns and lush greens of the frontier look very good and skin tones are warm and accurate. Detail is average, but that isn´t necessarily a bad thing. There are no discernable flaws in the source materials and the digital mastering is perfectly acceptable. I couldn´t call "Love´s Unfolding Dream" a knockout on DVD and it suffers against the bigger and glossier Hollywood films, but for a Hallmark presentation, it looks quite good.

Audio:

Sound quality is passable with "Love´s Unfolding Dream" as the television picture comes to DVD with a Dolby Digital 2.0 matrixed surround mix that brings across the ever-important dialogue quite accurately and intelligibly. The musical score is minimal and I can´t honestly recall any moments in the film that was enlightened by the music. This is a front-heavy mix that does not use rear surrounds or the .1 LFE subwoofer for much of anything at all. This is a sappy romantic picture and films such as "Love´s Unfolding Dream" never push the envelope when it comes to audio, so while it isn´t anything to shout about, the DVD release is technically proficient enough to please those in the film´s target audience.

Extras:

"Love´s Unfolding Dream" does not contain anything that could typically be called ´Value Added Content.´ The DVD menu allows for movie playback, language selection, scene selection for the film´s twenty four chapters and some trailers. The trailers do not include those that automatically play upon booting of the DVD, but there is one for "Mama, I Want to Sing!" and another for "Garfield Gets Real." So, if you count the previews and these two DVD trailers, there is about ten total minutes of promotional bonus materials. I can´t say I was expecting anything in the area of extras with this release and my expectations were met.

Value:

I´ll say it again, I am not part of the target audience for the Michael Landon, Jr. teleplay-based "Love´s Unfolding Dream." In fact, I am probably about as far away from the target audience as you can get. The film is predictable, overly sappy and you could hardly call it original. However, the characters are all quite likable and the relative unknowns that portray them all do a decent job and watching the characters´ stories unfold makes "Love´s Unfolding Dream" entertaining enough to watch it at least once. The DVD features average sight and sound, but no true bonus materials. Those that enjoy the Janette Oke adaptations on Hallmark will probably enjoy this, but I´d be hard pressed to recommend this as even a rental for those outside the ´target audience.´

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