Harvest Love
Release Year: 2017
Director: Christie Will Wolf
Writers: Sandra Berg, Judith Berg, and Christie Will Wolf
Stars: Jen Lilley, Ryan Paevey, and Brendan Sunderland
Where to Watch: Prime Video
Review Overview
Holiday score: 6
Is “harvest time” a holiday season? Is “sweater weather” a holiday season? Is “the days are getting shorter, the weather’s getting colder, I need to wear a puffy vest all the time, and fill my cup with pumpkin spice everything“ a holiday season. Yes, for some it is. I’ll allow it.
Romance score: 2
This may be the laziest romance I’ve ever witnessed. Romance stories are best when the protagonists have to work to make it work. These two work less at this romance in this movie than a nepo-baby working as a production assistant on their mom’s new movie.
Producer “Blue Ivy, can you get me a coffee?”
Blue Ivy “Um, I don’t do coffee. Jason, take this guy’s coffee order.”
Producer “Who’s Jason?”
Blue Ivy “Jason? He’s my assistant. He does all the basic stuff I don’t want to. Jason, talk to this brah. I’m already bored of this convo.”
Producer facepalms and screams into the void.
Blue Ivy “Jason, you better get moving. This guy seems pretty stressed out without his coffee.”
Comedy score: 1
This is strictly a holi-rom and no com.
The Full Review
Today I am reviewing the movie Harvest Love. Harvest Love is the story of Luna, a surgeon and single mother living in Seattle. She’s the perfect doctor. She is caring, competent, and has eyes as big as the harvest moon. The kind of eyes a small-town farm boy could get lost in. The kind of eyes that make delivering bad news a positive experience.
Doctor “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you only have a short time to live.”
Patient “Uh-huh.” <Staring deeply into her eyes.>
Doctor “You brain appears to have a parasite that is eating it’s way through your logic and love centres.”
Patient “Oh sure.” <Eyes glazed over like a Krispy Kreme.>
Doctor “We think it’s from watching too much TV, specifically romantic holiday movies.”
Patient “Sounds great doc.” <Smooths his hair.>
Doctor “Don’t you hear me, man! You will DIE if you don’t stop watching these terrible movies.”
Patient “Whatever you say doc.” <Winks>
Doctor “Don’t you know there is a website that tells you the best romantic holiday movies? It’s called WhitStrong.com. Please check it out, if not for your own health, then for those you love.”
Patient “I love you doc.”
Annnnnd scene. Was that a plug for my website…on my own website? Brilliant, simply brilliant.
Anyway, Luna doesn’t feel like the perfect mother for her son Andy so she decides to take him on a vacation. A successful surgeon with a single child, where might she take her son to win him over? Disneyland? No, too obvious. Disneyworld? No, too many gators in Florida. Legoland? No, too commercial. How about a pear farm? Yes, that’s perfect! What child has not dreamed of spending a week on a pear farm in a random small town? I never got to do this as a child and it’s the biggest regret of my life…except for watching this movie. (Ooops, did I spoil my review?)
OK, let’s address something right now. If you are paying attention, you saw that I said “pear farm” and not “pear orchard”. That’s because this is how the movie refers to this…place. They have no animals nor any other grains or vegetables so it has to be called an orchard, right? Right? The place where they grow fruit is an orchard, RIGHT!?! Tell me I’m not crazy!!!
Luna and Andy arrive at the pear orchard and meet Will, the man in charge of the “farm”. Will is smart, he has the degree to prove it. He is capable. He’s has successfully managed Luna’s family farm for years. And he is handsome. Just look at his thick head of wavy hair. Why I haven’t seen hair that beautiful on a Will since Glee.
Will Luna connect with her son Andy and keep him from a life of drugs and gangs? Probably not. Once he gets a taste of that pear hooch, he’ll be hooked for life. Will Luna let the country into her big city heart? The secret is that the county never left her heart. Will Luna and Will find love on the pear farm? No, because it’s called a pear ORCHARD! Tell me I’m right…please. I’m losing my mind here. Well, to learn the real answers to these questions you would have to watch Harvest Love, but you probably shouldn’t and here’s why.
Holiday Score: 6
I know most people think that Halloween is the only holiday at this time of year. OK, and Thanksgiving. Wait, there's also Remeberance/Veterans Day. Dang, there are a lot of holidays in the fall. OK, but for many people, harvest time is also a holiday. It is the culmination of a year’s worth of effort. For families working a farm or an ORCHARD, harvest time is when their hard work pays off. After the harvest is over they usually celebrate, hopefully because of a good crop. I’ll allow harvest time as a holiday for the many people who celebrate it. While I think this movie may not do a good job of showing just how much effort is required to harvest a crop, I still think it is relevant.
Romance Score: 2
Earworms. The…things that have given children of the 80s the most nightmares since Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. If you were born too late to see this absolute gem of a movie, you’ll have to ask your parents about the worm scene. I still get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.
Anyway, earworms are also songs or sayings that just won’t leave your head, even though you’d do anything to stop hearing Dead or Alive sing You Spin Me Round over and over again in your mind. One of the earworms I’ll never forget is from a commercial from the 80s for the investment firm Smith Barney. In the commercial, an old white dude wearing a bow-tie says the catchphrase “Smith Barney. They make money the old fashioned way. They EARN it.” His emphasis on the word earn makes me want to jump through the TV and punch him in his rich, pompous face. Just thinking about it now, I have to add another item to my list of regrets, not finding this dude and telling him, “Do you know why I am going to punch you in the face? Because you EARNED it.”
Why am I waxing nostalgic about some earworm of an 80s commercial? Because for all the mental anguish it caused me, when it comes to romantic movies, that catchphrase could not be more true. We want the protagonists to EARN their love. It should not come easy. Love is not a cake you make in an Easy Bake Oven. It requires effort and patience and forgiveness and love and sometimes ninjas.
In a holi-rom-com, we want to see the couple struggle like Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck deal with “Plans, Trains, and Automobiles”-esque catastrophes in Forces of Nature. A very underrated rom-com, in my humble opinion. We want to see tension between our protagonists like in You’ve Got Mail. When Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are together you feel something is pulling them apart and yet also pushing them together. Sometimes we want to see the protagnoists dislike each other, hate each other, even loath each other entirely like in 10 Things I Hate About You. You couldn’t wait to see how the characters in that movie would cross the line from hate to love, even though you knew it was going to happen.
In Harvest Love the characters earn nothing. There is minimal struggle and none between the main characters. There is zero tension. When Luna and Will are together it is all love and rainbows and lollipops and pumpkins and pears and warm blankets and cool pillows and snow on Christmas and the last day of school and the biggest slice of pizza and a good alibi and clean sheets and calling shotgun first, and of course puppies. Always puppies. I’m gonna hate myself for saying this, but they just didn’t EARN it. Eww, I felt those heebie-jeebies like a worm entering my ear.
Comedy Score: 1
Move along, there’s nothing to see here folks. Nothing at all to see.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for an Autumn themed holi-rom-com that earns the romance and your time...you should probably look somewhere else.
If you don’t like tension or challenges or questioning anything at all including whether it is called a peach farm or peach orchard...then you should watch Harvest Love.
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