Review: Forever My Girl

 

I’ve always been a sucker for a good ol’ romantic comedy. While I understand the criticisms of cheesy predictableness, undeveloped characters and unreasonable expectations, I continue to watch these types of movies year after year, thus leading me to my interest in Bethany Wolf’s film “Forever My Girl.”

“Forever My Girl” is exactly what you’d expect, nothing more, nothing less. Taking place in a small town in Louisiana just outside New Orleans, small town singer Liam Page (Alex Roe), leaves his fiancée Josie (Jessica Roth) to become famous. When Liam returns to his hometown eight years later, he rediscovers everything he left behind, including his daughter. The film focuses on Liam’s conflict between fame and family as well as his reflections on his choices eight years earlier.

The first thing that connected me to this movie was its romantic, homey feel. The setting is filled with quaint southern houses and big trees, meant to be in contrast with the singer’s lifestyle. Having been to Louisiana several times, I feel director Bethany Wolf did a great job capturing the culture and the nature of the town, from the large New Orleans skyline to smaller details like Mardi Gras beads on Liam’s childhood bed.

As I said before, there’s nothing particularly spectacular about this movie — it’s good, but it’s no cinematic masterpiece. That being said, there’s also nothing particularly bad. The acting was well done, especially by 9-year-old Abby Ryder Fortson who played Liam’s daughter, Billy. Some may also recognize Fortson for her role as the daughter in “Ant Man.” The music in this movie was decent if you like or at least don’t mind country music, most of it being original as it was intended to be Liam’s music. What I liked about this film was that the themes of Liam’s music change throughout the movie. Becoming less superficial as time passes, the audience can see his inspiration begins to come more from his family.

Overall, I’d give “Forever My Girl” a B for doing what it intended to do — share a heart-warming story of a man who found his way back home. Like many other romantic dramedy films, the movie was made to tug on the heart strings, and believe me, they were tugged. It wasn’t extraordinary, and it was a very average and predictable storyline. However it was still done well and very enjoyable to watch. I’d recommend saving your money until it’s available to rent on Redbox because there’s no added value to watching this movie for $10+ with surround sound, it’s simply not that type of movie.