Movie Info Release Date: January 19, 2018 Rating: 8.0 Directed by: Bethany Ashton Wolf Produced by: Mickey Liddell, Jennifer Monroe Screenplay by: Bethany Ashton Wolf Story by: Heidi McLaughlin (based on the book) Starring: Alex Roe, Jessica Rothe, John Benjamin Hickey Music by: Brett Boyett Cinematography: Duane Mankiller Forever My Girl is a 2018 American romantic drama film written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf. It follows a country music superstar (Alex Roe) who sets out to win over the girl he left at the altar eight years before (Jessica Rothe). Abby Ryder Fortson, Travis Tritt and John Benjamin Hickey also star. It was released in the United States on January 19, 2018. It received negative reviews from critics, who denounced the characters and chemistry between actors and compared it negatively to Nicholas Sparks films. This rather astonishing movie begins with a lovely young bride-to-be, Josie (Jessica Rothe), abandoned before even getting to the altar by her high-school sweetheart, Liam (Alex Roe), who’s absconded in pursuit of music business fame. Eight years later, Liam is a stadium-filling country music star, as well as a promiscuous drunk. (The credible songs are mostly by Brett Boyett.) His one nonstandard-issue eccentricity is an attachment to an ancient cellphone, which contains Josie’s last voice mail message to him. On a New Orleans tour stop, he learns of the death of his best friend in nearby Saint Augustine, the town from which he bailed. On impulse, he heads there.While the Prodigal Son of scripture returned home after working out a heartfelt plea of forgiveness, Liam just shows up. Are there hard feelings? Sure, but they’re the softest hard feelings you’ve seen in any work of fiction, or nonfiction, ever. Also turns out that Josie, as fresh and lovely as ever, has an adorably precocious moppet of a daughter, Billy, whom she has named after Liam’s long-deceased mother.T here is no talk of potentially seven years worth of unpaid child support; no mention of formalizing any sort of custody arrangement. This group must somehow form a family, as the “Brady Bunch” theme song says, and so it goes, with one dopey speed bump that presumes to explain and erase Liam’s damage. The rest is pure romance-novel wish-fulfillment. The director, Bethany Ashton Wolf, who adapted the screenplay from, yes, a romance novel by Heidi McLaughlin, can concoct some Hallmark-greeting-card-quality shots, but has little flair for piecing them together. The lead actors are very pretty. Based on a YA novel by Heidi McLaughlin, the endearingly old-fangled Forever My Girl is basically a stretched-out country music song with eye-catching Southern visuals and a familiar loop of lovelorn sorrow topped with uplift you can see coming from scene one. The woe comes on fast when a dewy young bride named Josie (Jessica Rothe) gets jilted at the altar by her high-school sweetheart, Liam, a pretty, green-eyed fellow with a lot of fetching chin stubble. He and his music are nicely played by Alex Roe, who is British but not so’s you’d notice. Eager to hit the big time, a panicked Liam takes off for New Orleans, though why he can’t take Josie with him is a mystery that will languish unexplained until shortly before the close. Eight years pass, and we find Liam, a deeply unhappy country music god in all the usual ways — drugs, booze, groupies. He writes and performs songs with blaring themes like “I’d Give it All Up for You.” Concertgoers, average age thirteen, are ecstatic, but Liam sits around pining over a message on an ancient cell phone until a convenient tragedy propels him homeward. There he lands in deep doo-doo with a singularly unreceptive Josie, to say nothing of his entire hometown populace and his father, who happens to be the local pastor. Liam may have been golden among the fleshpots of New Orleans, but when he first blows into town, everyone wants to slug him or ignore him. Everyone, that is, except for a feisty young girl named Billy (Abby Ryder Fortson), who is lumbered with dialogue better suited to a cocky teenager, and who is destined to bestow much-needed character-firming on the prodigal from out of town. Writer-director Bethany Ashton Wolf has a deft way with actors, and Peter Cambor is especially good as Liam’s long-suffering but humane manager. Watch, Download and Stream Forever My Girl 2018 Full Movie Online Free in HD Quality In any Internet Connected Devices anywhere anytime. The movie flows along atmospherically with a country soundtrack corralling our emotions. The problem is not the well-worn plot or familiar characters, but the fact that Wolf adds no depth or complication to either that would make the film her own. Marinated in country-music mythology, Forever My Girl extracts every last ounce of juice from the potent fantasy binary of small town integrity versus big city sin, before marrying the two with minimal fuss and bother that must have looked plausible on paper. One sermon about forgiveness from the pastor, and instant turnaround ensues. Copious hugging ensues as well, and in a trice Liam is happily digging flowerbeds and coming on like a mature family man. Of running time necessity, the love of his life defrosts more slowly, until at last we arrive at the statutory eleventh-hour lapse the almost derails Liam’s makeover, but helps him get in touch with the source of his pain. Not that anyone in this pleasant, glib movie has to sacrifice a thing. Josie may be a small-town girl, but it turns out that she, too, knows how to play to the roar of the crowd in the fleshpots of New Orleans. Cakes are had and eaten, all’s well between the country and the city, and that’s a wrap.Romance novelist and screenwriter Nicholas Sparks cornered the market on a subgenre he essentially invented — exceedingly pleasant, Southern-set epic romances (between young, attractive, white, Christian, heterosexual couples). But this is a subgenre that overwhelmingly appeals to a female moviegoing audience, so it’s about time female creators have been given a place to shape the voice and perspective of these stories. Writer-director Bethany Ashton Wolf has adapted Heidi McLaughlin’s novel in “Forever My Girl,” a tale of love lost and found. Love is lost when homegrown country pop star Liam Page (Alex Roe) ditches his high school sweetheart Josie (Jessica Rothe) at the altar during a frenzy surrounding his first hit single. Eight years later, he’s become the Justin Bieber of contemporary country music, an instantly recognizable, overly-entitled enfant terrible pursued by rabid mobs of fans and photographers everywhere he goes. Sad news from his hometown of Saint Augustine, La., sets Liam on a course back home, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering manager Sam (Peter Cambor) and high-powered Hollywood publicist Doris (Gillian Vigman). No one at home seems to be all too pleased to see him either. Not his dad, Pastor Brian (John Benjamin Hickey), and definitely not his ex, who slugs him a good one. The only one who seems remotely interested is — drumroll, please — his 7-year-old daughter, Billy (Abby Ryder Fortson), whose existence comes as a complete surprise to Liam.
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