One of my all time favorites.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I honestly loved that they included two stories in this film. Maggie Grace and Poppy Drayton were splendid as their characters Aunt Elizabeth and young Elizabeth. They really do lookalike, you could see that the shape of their noses, voices, looks and the color of their eyes look similar. I honestly thought it was just one actress playing the two ladies but it doesn't matter, this was the best underrated film they have ever done!I was so mad to know at the very end, we didn't see if young Elizabeths lover was gonna get killed by the bandits who held them at gunpoint and stole their money. I normally don't say this when it comes to long movies as I hate when movies drag on but I think this movie however, needed to be longer. The reason being is the story seemed too short for one hour and 28 minutes. If it was one hour and probably 15 minutes more, then it would end the story probably. That was only one complaint, the rest was great. Superb acting, actors, costumes and the whole lot!

I agree with the other reviewers that this movie is different than the original story in Janette Oke's books. At first, I was confused & really tried to figure it out. I gave up on that & decided that both the books & the movie are good stories in and of themselves. So, if you loved the books, you'll also love this movie (& now the series), just go into it knowing that the story lines are different. You'll still enjoy it. The costumes are beautiful, the scenery is beautiful and the acting is well done. Maggie Grace makes a great Elizabeth Thatcher. A better one than Poppy Drayton in my opinion. Stephen Amell has turned into one of my favorite actors since I fell in love with his eyes! LOL What a gentleman!

As a big Janette Oke fan, I can't help but compare this movie to the Canadian West books, which it's somewhat based on. So here goes...In the books, which begin in April 1910, Elizabeth Thatcher lives in eastern Canada with her parents, younger sister Julie, and younger brother Matthew. (She has two older sisters who have already left home.) She has already been teaching for a while when her older half-brother Jonathan writes and invites her to come out west to teach. She accepts the offer and initially stays in Calgary with Jon, his wife Mary, and their four children: William, Sarah, Kathleen, and Elizabeth. Mr. Higgins, the man who is to assign Elizabeth to a school, lives in Calgary and tries to convince her to marry him, and when she refuses, he assigns her to a school over 100 miles away. She accepts the position and eventually meets Wynn Delaney, who happens to be a good friend of her brother Jon.In the movie, which also begins in 1910, the Elizabeth we initially meet is supposed to be Elizabeth Thatcher Delaney's niece. She lives in the east with her parents and younger sister Julie, who is much like the Julie in the book, who is her aunt. Mr. Higgins lives in the east and tries to convince Elizabeth to give him "special favors" in order to get a good teaching position nearby. She refuses, so he gives her a teaching assignment way out west, which she eventually decides to accept.Young Elizabeth reads her Aunt Elizabeth's diary, which tells about when she went out west to teach school, including how she met Wynn Delaney. The movie goes back and forth between Aunt Elizabeth's story in the past (which must be the late 1800s, unlike in the book) and young Elizabeth's story in the present.The parts of the movie about Aunt Elizabeth mostly match the story in the book, which I really like. But I wish they wouldn't have left out Jonathan and his family and mixed elements of Aunt Elizabeth's story into young Elizabeth's story. Worst of all, they don't even finish the story of Wynn and Elizabeth, and young Elizabeth's dad tells her that they don't even know what happened to Aunt Elizabeth. In the books Elizabeth stays in touch with her family, even though it's hard because she's sometimes in remote places. Later on, Elizabeth and Wynn move to a more "civilized" area, so by the time any nieces they have are grown up, they're in a place where they can regularly send letters to their relatives.The Canadian West series is interesting enough to make great movies, but instead of focusing on the great original story, movie makers have created this new niece Elizabeth and focused half the story on her. The ending made me feel like the story was unfinished, which I guess makes sense since this is the beginning of a TV series. I have a feeling the TV series will focus just on young Elizabeth and Edward, but I hope they'll at least finish Wynn and Elizabeth's story. I'll probably check out the series when it comes out, and I'll probably enjoy it.If you're hoping for a movie adaptation of the book, When Calls the Heart, you're not going to be totally satisfied and will probably be a bit disappointed like I was. But it's still a pretty good story, and it's clean and interesting without bad language, sex scenes, or graphic violence.

Sometimes when you skim the top off a book to make a movie it can really miss a lot, and/or it can make the story seem overly simple. I'm not sure where the brunette Elizabeth and Edward came from, but adding them really seemed to add depth to the story, and even though it is still technically a simple story you have to pay more attention to keep up. I like both story lines; I hope we get to keep both in the new series coming out in January. I've always liked the original Elizabeth and Wynn from the books, but I also like the Elizabeth and Edward story as well. Since Edward kind of messed up his reputation with Elizabeth, we'll need to see if she gradually gets feelings for him if/when he stays a responsible adult a.k.a. knight in shining armor. I hope we get to keep the best bits from Elizabeth and Wynn's story as well they had quite an adventure together in the books. Just off the top of my head since it's been a while since I got to sit down with the books. When he took her hiking in Banff, brought her a puppy, told her what ?winiwishy? means, took her camping, etc. The original Elizabeth was really mostly done in her head there wasn't a whole lot of interaction between her and Wynn but we don't want to miss any of what there was of it. I really enjoyed this movie like how much I enjoyed the first couple of the Love Comes Softly movies. I hope that since they are able to do the follow up in a series instead of spread out movies over years that the quality on the series will be as good as this kick-off movie is. Debbie Macomber doing her book in series instead of movies really seemed to work well for her; I hope it works well for WCtH also. I think what this movie does is make you want to read the first book again because they kind of skim over Elizabeth and Wynn's story as the new Elizabeth read's her aunts diary while having a story of her own in a cliffhanger style. I can definitely recommend this movie.