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Writer's pictureJoe Durso

FOREVER MY GIRL

My wife and I adore the storyline of FOREVER MY GIRL and the value it places upon enduring love. We find it to set love and romance on their feet. This blog is in two parts. The details will be left out of part one so that those who have not seen the movie will not have essential information disclosed, and thereby ruin the surprises.

Once in a while, it’s nice to review a good video. There is nothing like a story to capture the heart with truth, honesty, and a right perspective. I found FOREVER MY GIRL to be such a movie. Yes, it could have had other elements that would have made it even better, but as Hollywood movies go, this is a top-notch movie in my opinion.

The reviews are a mixed bag of good and bad, and I quote, “The director, Bethany Ashton Wolf, adapting a romance novel by Heidi McLaughlin, can concoct some Hallmark-greeting-card-quality shots, but has little flair for piecing them together” Glenn Kenny, The NYTimes. “This sweet faith-based romance — which is even more teen-friendly than the Heidi McLaughlin novel on which it’s based — benefits from charming performances and a notable country soundtrack” Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media.

There is the secular review that cannot get past the logistics of what happens in “real life,” but there is also the religious review that at least appreciates what can take place when Jesus enters a human heart. The movie follows the storyline of the book with one main distinction, the central meeting place is a church, where moral ideals can become more than just wishful thinking but an actual reality that makes victory over harsh circumstances possible.

The colossal question we need to answer in life is this; how should love be defined? There is one fact in the movie that makes love so impossible as to render the account as ridiculous, that fact eight-years. That is how long the love-torn lovers are apart.

Can true love endure eight years of tremendous hardship? What does the word forever mean? My grandfather set a very high standard of love. When his wife died at thirty-nine, leaving him with six children to rear himself, He became adamant that there was one woman in his life and there would be no other. Such thinking is only a fantasy in our days of “self,” but to my grandfather, it became a living reality.

These dilemmas rightly understood will allow you to enjoy this story. However, if you interpret them with pessimism, they will kill the plot for you.

The word forever in Hollywood and for many in our culture is a glib term that only has meaning when things go my way. That, of course, renders the word love meaningless. In our generation, sex has replaced romance, and love has replaced selfishness — what a sad state of affairs.

Therefore, can a 19-year-old young man love a woman so profoundly that when he walks away from her it will eventually render his success, fame, and fortune meaningless and even destructive? Can a woman left at the altar make a new life for herself and yet not find another man? This movie answers the question, I think, in a profound, romantic, and forgiving way. I hope you will enjoy the story as much as my wife and I. Lord bless!

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