Too much of everything

hyped garbage

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Montana Sky opens with the death of the family patriarch, a man named Mercy who like Ben Cartwright fathered three children legitimately, except in his case it was daughters instead of sons. But a role model like Lorne Greene this guy wasn't. One daughter Ashley Williams stayed home and learned the ranch business. The other two were from trophy wives, Charlotte Ross and Laura Mennell. Ross is a screenwriter and Mennell is hoping to escape from a batterer whom she married.For the zillionth time an eccentric will is the thing the plot turns on. The estate after a couple of cash bequests is worth 24 million dollars and the half sisters who don't know each other have to live and work the ranch for a year for any of them to inherit any of it. Eight million dollars is a mighty powerful argument to induce the sisters especially Ross to stay and make a go of it. Poor Mennell just wants to find refuge.There's also someone slaughtering animals in a particularly sadistic way on the place. It could be Mennell's ex-husband Scott Heindl or maybe someone else also has a grudge. I have to say that the three women had some nice chemistry between them or otherwise Montana Sky would not have worked. The vast western vistas are really something, better than the mostly studio based photography on Bonanza. Ross especially impressed me as she essayed a character who saw some considerable growth in character over the course of the story.That's worth seeing Montana Sky in and of itself.

Let's let John know he should cut his hair and play only cowboy parts. This wasn't his best performance, but he does look good on a horse and has a great sexy smile. He seemed kinda uptight, but don't think he has played a cowboy part enough. I thought the women played their parts well, but was disappointed with Nate - not the right person for that part. Adam did great and I thought he was the perfect person for his part. Think the movie would have had a much higher rating if it had been a mini-series, so they could tell the whole story. No, the movie wasn't the same as the great book, but it was OK. Why can't they make some GREAT true to life - westerns anymore??

I thought this movie was excellent. John Corbett is always excellent. I thought they should have picked someone a little older for his love interest but the actress playing the lead role as the cowgirl daughter did a great job in the role. I wish John Corbett would do more lead roles. He is one of the sexiest actors around but I don't think he gets enough credit. The location picked for filming was a beautiful area. I think this is a movie I could see more than once and still want to see it again. Nora Roberts is one of my favorite authors and I can't wait for Blue Smoke to be aired next week. Angels Fall was a fantastic movie also and I hope to see it again.

I wondered how they were going to pack all of Roberts' truly great 'Montana Sky' into two hours. Sad to say, they couldn't.The basic premise packed three relationships, four, counting the sisters themselves, over a year's time, along with all the mysterious happenings within that period. Only the barest of bones of the story were touched on and even those were rewritten and reworked. Other than the names of the characters, hardly anything, including the events, how they unfolded, and how they were resolved, resembled the original story.As to the actors: Both Laura Mennell as 'Lila' and Charlotte Ross as 'Tess' fit the concept I had of them, but although Ashely Williams did a wonderful job, I couldn't see her as the 'Willa' I imagined in the book. I so adore John Corbett, he was one of the reasons I looked forward to the movie. He had the perfect personality for 'Ben', though in real life he's a good ten years or more older than the character he portrayed. I guess it made sense that 'Nate's' occupation was changed from lawyer to sheriff and Aaron Pearl was good in the re-scripted role. Nathaniel Arcand played a convincing 'Adam'.I couldn't help but think as I read 'Montana Sky', then watched it, that the novel would have been much better adapted to a mini-series. It would have allowed the characters and the events to be fleshed out and evolve as they deserved. In comparison, Angels Fall made a much better transition from book to screen in that it didn't have as much ground to cover and could afford to have some parts dropped without losing the essence of the story.