Wilderness Love (2000) (aka: Personally Yours) Valerie Bertinelli, Jeffrey Nordling, Britt Irvin, Ross Malinger, Michael Welch Movie Review

Wilderness Love (2000)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Valerie Bertinelli in Wilderness Love (2000) (aka: Personally Yours)

Bertinelli Fancies the Wild Thing

Susannah (Valerie Bertinelli - A Case for Life) and Jesse Stanton (Jeffrey Nordling - Blue Moon) were once very much in love, they got married and had three children together. But after ten years living in a remote cabin in the wilderness where Jesse runs a fishing and tracking business Susannah had enough and after getting divorced set up her own restaurant in Anchorage. Despite the subject of their divorce causing tension Susannah and Jesse still get on and Susannah even visits Jesse with their children. It is whilst spending a weekend with their dad that their children decide that their dad needs to find a new woman and send in an ad to the magazine "Alaskan Love". Whilst their ad leads to plenty of letters from women who want to meet him the children realise that their mum is the best woman for their dad even though she is kind of dating a lawyer.

If you have watched "The Parent Trap" you might remember that it ended with the children trying to bring their separated parents back together, well that is what you get in "Wilderness Love". In truth there are other movies I could have mentioned because there have been a few made for TV movies over the years which have either focused on children find a parent a new partner, children trying to bring their parents back together or a divorced couple realising that they are still in love despite their issues. As such there is certainly an air of familiarity to "Wilderness Love" and it is the sort of movie which you can guess where it is going right from the start.

Jeffrey Nordling in Wilderness Love (2000) (aka: Personally Yours)

Without giving too much away this is where "Wilderness Love" has a problem as when it focuses on the humour of Jesse suddenly having to deal with all these women showing up and basically acting obsessed it fails to be as it intends to be. But then you have Susannah finding herself confronted by her own feelings for Jesse when the funny side of all these women showing up changes to a real possibility that maybe there will be another woman in his life. Of course this is as familiar as everything else in the movie but when it focuses on Susannah the movie gets a soul as Valerie Bertinelli emotes the thoughts of her character from how she feels about her lawyer boyfriend to how she feels when Jesse becomes close to an attractive woman called Gina, played by Andrea Roth. In fact that is one thing you may notice about this movie, it has some familiar faces such as Bertinelli, Nordling, Roth and there is also Ross Malinger who whilst a teenager in this is probably best remembered as playing Tom Hanks' son in "Sleepless in Seattle".

What this all boils down to is that "Wilderness Love" is a pleasant little romantic drama with a touch of comedy which despite being pretty familiar and obvious is a nice distraction for those who enjoy the uncomplicated nature and wholesomeness of TV movies.


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