Best movie of this year hands down!

Sadly Over-hyped

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In spite of its Lifetime Network title, this film's story was deep, novel'esque, and progressively engrossing, unmasking some of the consequences of mid-20th century morality. The cast ensemble is excellent as their characters' intertwine and orbit about a central character who actually doesn't have much screen time.A cinema "hobby" is identifying scenes that are among the best or most unique of their kind - the ill wind that blows in "A Very Long Engagement" (highly staged though it has the appearance of serendipitous perfection) or cinema's most intense close-up of the look of Love during a love scene in "Dangerous Beauty" (Catherine McCormack). In "Bride Flight," it's the sequence (near the end) on the airport tarmac and the steps of the DC-3 airliner, and without a word of dialogue. Fine filmmaking of a Dutch production in New Zealand - and a lovely surprise. Probably this film would rate higher if it had more English dialogue segments. Nevertheless, a really good film.

Many people will call this film a chick flick, but coming from a guys perspective it was a great story to watch. Though some comparisons will be made to the Notebook, its story has so many more layers then the notebook that there should be no comparison to it. The stories presented in the film are not only more believable but stories that everyone can relate to because they may all happen to us sometime in our life. From a filming perspective I thought they did a great job balancing the different times in their life going back and forth without confusing the audience. Another great part of the film was how they took advantage of the amazing and diverse scenery of New Zealand. Anyone who was fans of the amazing cinematography of The Lord of the Ring trilogy will love the cinematography of this film. Anyone who loved Atonement will recognize with this film as well since it has WW2 sentiments and is a period. This movie will defiantly be a contender for the Best foreign film award this year.

The first twenty minutes I wondered which way this film was going, in more than one sense. The acting was not great, the dialogues where not convincing, the scenes in the plane where clumsy and Dutch international movie star Rutger Hauer's character died not long after the beginning. Honestly, with a few exceptions I am not very impressed by the Dutch cinema, was this another Dutch movie? Then the story started to roll and got me more in its grip. The acting was getting better, sometimes real good. What I think is a pity, is that the storyline is filled with flash forwards that do not add much to the story, which is all about the life of Dutch immigrants in New Zealand in 1953 and farther. The film could have been much better if the story was told chronologically and ended somewhere in the 70's or 80's. Now there are two actors for each character, and for me, also knowing the old respectable actors from the old days, this was sometimes quite disturbing. I found it hard to intermingle a character, I saw Willeke van Ammelrooy, not the character that grew old and looked little alike with the younger woman she once had been in the film. I had strongly the impression that the known actors where mostly used to put known names on the billboards. Their parts are relatively small and of little importance for the basic line of the story.

Especially at the beginning you have to pay good attention (at least I had to), to be able to keep track of the rest of the movie. But it was a great story, beautifully put together in an epic drama that deserves many viewers, perhaps even outside of The Netherlands. I presume it must be difficult to continuously switch between the different years that form part of this movie, therefore my compliments to the editor because he managed to do a really great job successfully. In addition the New Zealand scenery adds beautiful pictures and seamlessly fits into the overall story.Although all characters, at the end of this movie, assemble for a sad occasion, the audience's feeling at the end of the movie is not of sadness but of joy because the film tells a story of how one can turn sad decisions in one's life into good things for the future.