Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

child_of_fire18 I assumed, when I grabbed a Hallmark film with the "FHE" label on it, that whatever I was going to watch would be safe. Granted there was no vulgarity and really the film had a lot of wonderful things about it as far as being entertaining. However, I would never recommend it.. especially for families.. This is why: it portrays a woman burying her baby alive, and a pregnant woman's belly being attacked by her crazy brother with a stick with a nail through it. Both being images that one finds it hard to shake off.. especially when it comes upon you so unexpectedly. The idea of the film was fabulous.. but the content was offensive to me, especially when I considered the source... and trusted the source. Perhaps it was true to the book.. I don't know.. but if it is true to the book- then it wasn't good for FHE or Hallmark or anyone with a reputation for safe films to do.

fblackwelder This movie is a decent adaptation of the novel--however, reading the novel is almost necessary in order to get the depth of the characters' struggles throughout the film. I have used this film with students studying Vreeland's novel and they have found it a wonderful aid in comprehending the novel. While I am sure many have read the novel and enjoyed it, there is a deeper subtext that the novel implies that is not captured in the film. In each story there is a child/parent relationship that is pivotal to meaning of the painting to that particular owner. I enjoyed the performances---especially Glenn Close, who truly captured the craziness of the character Cornelius from the novel and the story of Magdelena was well told.

danielkonik This film is a history of a painting and the people who owned it over 300 years. It is told backwards through flashbacks, from its current owner, an eccentric art professor (Glenn Close) to its origin. Each chapter tells of the price they paid for their love of the painting. The individual stories are all involving, and there is a rather morbid twist at the very end you won't see coming. Two hours well-spent.

Albert Sanchez Moreno I suffered through half this film before I switched to "Dr. Strangelove" on TCM. It is yet more proof that the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" has become hopelessly bad. Glenn Close misleadingly gets top billing, and delivers a magnificent performance, but she is in less than a third of the film. Her performance as an art enthusiast makes everyone else, including the usually reliable Ellyn Burstyn, seem even worse.The film, following the pattern of such films as "The Red Violin", tells the stories of several owners of a beautiful lost Vermeer painting through the centuries. Perhaps the producers of this mawkish telefilm were hoping that lightning would strike twice, but if so, they forgot the need for subtle writing and direction, which are both hopelessly sentimental and hardly above the level of soap opera in this film. Ms. Close, as if sensing this, gives a performance that wipes away everyone else. In fact, the acting, with the exception of Close, is uniformly bad, as if we were watching a bad daytime drama in period costume.The people who made this film obviously thought that by tackling an intellectual, sophisticated subject like a great Vermeer painting they could give the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" the class it once had, but they forgot to leave behind their recent tendency for corny writing and dramatics.