Lead with Your Heart (2015)

Pretty Good

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Lead with your hearth is an OK movie: good, not great. It's a family movie which you can see with everyone, including kids and teenagers (and talk about later). It is not the typical romantic comedy, and there is no melodrama either. The characters represent very normal people facing a real issue. Few twists and turns but enough to keep you tuned. A couple for twenty years. But the nest is on the verge of becoming empty with all kids in college. Wife and husband have different tastes and have to face the challenge of a great job opportunity for one of them that may make them drift apart. The plot follows from there. Sober and good acting. Enjoyable.

This is not a fluffy Hallmark romance comedy. It shows in an entertaining way a very real issue between couples not necessarily just ones that are married a long time - having things in common and being interested in what interests the other spouse. William Baldwin has a rather strange expression on his face but the rest of the cast is good.The couple are empty nesters, she likes the ballet, he likes baseball. Do couples really have to like what the other one is interested in? Or is it okay to have separate interests? More Hallmark movies could be like this - prettily made but still deal with a real life problem.

This hallmance takes a surprisingly mature approach: None of the silly misunderstandings, overreactions, juvenile antics, or unnecessary conflict for the sake of following the stock romance formula. Although nothing much happened, it kept me engaged with refreshing surprises along the way. His woman friend whom the kids think are making a play for their dad turned out to be just really nice, wise, and only a friend; Her handsome divorced boss really was nothing more than a nice boss; the immature irresponsible lifelong buddy not only does not seduce the husband into bad behavior, but gives him some heartfelt touching advice about working on his marriage from the perspective of actually being a still grieving widower. Both were somewhat at fault for losing touch with each other, and not making an effort to share each other's interests. Their problems were molehills, however, not mountains. Refreshingly, they don't lose their perspective and blow things all out of proportion. I really appreciated how the husband sacrificed his love of small town life and his socially conscious (but probably low-paying) career and agreed to move to the city to support his wife's once in a lifetime career opportunity. Too often, the husband or wife's career is sacrificed on the altar of what the children want, the family home, and wholesome small town/country living. This Hallmark movie's message is that home is where the heart is, not some idealized lifestyle.