beachmeisters Review of Mail Order Bride

Mail Order Bride (2008 TV Movie)

Entertaining, If You're Willing To Accept A Lot on Faith

[6/10 · 8 September 2009]

This is a story about a woman named Diana McQueen, who is trapped in a toxic relationship with a con man named Tom Rourke, who more or less forces her to live a life of cheating men out of their money. She's sick of it and would like to escape, but she's been with him for so long, she really doesn't know how to get away, plus she knows he'd follow her and hurt innocent people in the process. A friend of hers has been corresponding with a rancher in Wyoming and plans to go there to be his mail order bride, so when the friend dies of TB, Diana decides to impersonate her friend and take her place. Consequently, she has to perform a con of an entirely different nature - that of being the girl the rancher has fallen in love with through her letters. The premise is intriguing and naturally the rancher has difficulties of his own to deal with, plus Tom Rourke isn't going to just forget about Diana without searching the entire West, so there's that to throw into the story line as well. What you have to accept here is that Daphne Zuniga is 47 years old and seems kind of old for what one would think of as a mail order bride. Not that she doesn't look good. Other things one must take on faith are the ability of Rourke's man to be able to track her down, and how willing other men are to break the law and ride with Rourke when he's a complete stranger to them and they have no reason to trust that he will actually pay them, yet they're willing to risk their lives for him? But if you can overlook obvious questions such as those, then you may very well enjoy the subtle humor that this charming Hallmark presentation offers.