Forever My Girl, a slight, sunny Southern romance, begins with bride-to-be Josie (Jessica Rothe) being deserted on the altar by Liam (Alex Roe), her country-music-star fiancé, who chooses the highlight over small-town life. The story then jumps forward eight years. Liam is now a celebrity. He’s dynamic on-stage however a drunk, broken-down mess off of it. Why? He nonetheless pines for Josie, his first and solely real love. As luck (or sloppy screenwriting) would have it, Liam is enjoying a live performance close to his hometown of St. Augustine, LA, when he learns that a former high-school buddy was killed in a automotive crash. Liam hightails it to Saint (the locals simply name their Mayberry-like city Saint) to attend the funeral. Of course, he bumps into Josie and her lovable seven-year-old daughter Billy (Abby Ryder Fortson) whereas he’s there. Now, Liam isn’t any Einstein (he doesn’t even know easy methods to go about making a purchase order on the Internet), however even he can do easy arithmetic and determine that the little lady (who shares his late mom’s identify, for heaven’s sake) is his. From there…properly, you may determine the remainder, which is the film’s important drawback. Zero surprises await us.

Forever My Girl—which was written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf, and tailored from a novel by Heidi McLaughlin—clearly wasn’t made for critics or for demanding cinephiles. Its audience are Hallmark-movie devotees and folk who plunk down good cash to see Nicholas Sparks diversifications. And for that crowd, Forever My Girl works simply superb. It’s uplifting and sweetly romantic, and incorporates completely nothing offensive. Its PG score isn’t threatened; heck, if Liam hadn’t woken up in a Big Easy lodge room and located a fresh-faced groupie there, with whom he apparently spent the evening, the movie might have simply landed a G score. Having mentioned all that, even Hallmark motion pictures are likely to pit the man everyone knows will find yourself with the lady towards a good-looking dude we all know is the incorrect selection. But drop-dead-gorgeous Josie apparently by no means turned one other head in Saint over the previous eight years, which is a disgrace—to not point out unbelievable—because it robs the film of a lot wanted drama.

Roe and Rothe make a cute couple, however, alas, neither is ready to rise above the extent of the bottom-drawer materials they’ve been given. Roe is most dynamic when he’s on-stage. When he’s belting out a rowdy anthem (“Don’t Water Down My Whiskey”) or singing an endearing duet with Fortson (“Finally Home”), he’s soulful and magnetic. Not a lot off-stage. Speaking of music, the very best factor about Forever My Girl is its soundtrack, which is flooded with snippets from nation stars like Little Big Town, Josh Turner, Dan Tyminski, Lauren Alaina, and Miranda Lambert. But better of all is an all-too-brief cameo by Travis Tritt, who performs an area crooner entertaining patrons at a Saint bar, and who offers Liam a fast, off-the-cuff pep discuss. Unfortunately, his tune, “Slowing Down,” is given brief shrift. Wolf ought to have realized that she had a real nation star on-screen and slowed down her film lengthy sufficient to let him sing it. Why else is he there? It’s a head-scratching selection in a movie that’s full of them.