A Valentine's Date (2011 TV Movie)
Great cast for predictable story and outrageous premise
24 August 2011
I downloaded this for Apple TV for what I call my 'ironing ans folding laundry' movie watching--I look for sweet, relaxing, wholesome movies that will not need a lot of my attention. This movie kind of fit the bill, except for the fact that the entire time I kept thinking, "it makes NO sense at all!"

Basic premise: a single mother with a high-powered corporate job in NYC is suddenly ordered back to her small Texas town where her husband (they're separated but not divorced) has filed a petition for joint custody. Apparently, this goal-getter career woman who left her slow ranching community for more excitement and more challenges is STILL dumb enough to believe she could whisk off her daughter without her husband's approval, ignore his divorce petitions, and even return to Texas to confront the situation without the aid od a lawyer. I mean, seriously: who does this?

Behind this family movie is really a typical Christian message of social morality, marriage as forever in God's eyes and religion as a social cornerstone. Well okay--I don't believe it but I don't mind it, either. I'm fine with that.

It's the total irrelevant lack of logic that gets me! The character of the woman simply makes no sense. We're supposed to believe that she packed up and run off to NY without a second glance, that it never crossed her mind that her actions would have consequences. What idiot would believe they have such rights? Furthermore, the most heartbreaking aspect is the brilliant acting of the little girl playing the daughter. Obviously she misses her dad, her grandpa, and Texas. Why shouldn't she? What kid wouldn't? And yet, simply for purposes of the story--never mind the lack of logic--we have to hear throughout the entire movie about how mother and daughter barely ever manage to visit Texas, about how the dad can barely ever visit his kid in NY, about how far away NY is and soooooo expensive... ! I mean, really! On the one hand, the mother is supposed to have this incredible job, and the granddad a large TX spread, and the dad a successful ranch and yet NO ONE can scrap together 400 dollars top for a ticket doe the kid to be there during the summer, as any kid of divorce? Who believes this crap?

Whoever wrote this is not only an idiot but also clearly doesn't get women. Either this woman is narcissistic, selfish and blind or we are never meant to like her at all. What mover loves her daughter so little that she'd deprive her of her father?
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