Love Comes Softly

Loves Unfolding Dream (1x6)

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Another generation of spunky pioneer women wrestles with love and life in Love's Unfolding Dream, the sixth in a series of movies based on the Christian romance novels of Janette Oke. Belinda (Scout Taylor-Compton), the adopted daughter of Missy and Zach Tyler (Erin Cottrell and Victor Browne of Love's Unending Legacy), aspires to become a doctor--but though the local doctor needs an assistant, he believes women should stay in the home. As Belinda fights this prejudice, a young law student named Drew (Patrick Levis) comes to her frontier town and soon sparks Belinda's heart. Meanwhile, Missy fights to help a woman whose husband is threatened by his wife's increasing education. Love's Unfolding Dream, like the other movies in this series that began with Love Comes Softly, follows the successful formula of good-looking young people frolicking in a tidy pioneer fantasy (even a moment of gruesome surgery doesn't have a spot of blood), combining wholesome romance, religious values, and homespun feminism. The storytelling is brisk and efficient, the performances comfortable and earnest; Compton, in a role that's 180 degree turn from her starring turn in the 2007 version of Halloween, makes a charming heroine. Fans will find Love's Unfolding Dream as satisfying as the rest of the series (though some lovers of Oke's novels may be dismayed that this movie, like some of the others, alters the book's original storyline). Also featuring Robert Pine (CHiPs) as the cantankerous country doctor. --Bret Fetzer