By REY FLORES
As a musician, and as a father and husband, I am always open to watching movies involving music, romance, and trying to make wrong things right.
Once again Roadside Attractions brings an enjoyable and entertaining story based on a novel by author Heidi McLaughlin.
Forever My Girl is a story about a young man from a small town who becomes a famous country music star. Through time, he pretty much has forgotten his roots and is caught up in the typical excesses of musicians who choose a life of fame, fortune, and one-night stands over settling down with a high school sweetheart — for a life of holiness, or at least of peace and tranquility.
After having stood his jilted bride up at the altar, the young and handsome Liam Page, played by actor Alex Roe, has gone on the road to stardom. Despite his wealth, he still carries an old flip phone which carries a hidden priceless treasure to him.
It is an eight-year-old voice mail from his former sweetheart, which he almost lost thanks to a careless groupie who stepped on it after stumbling out of bed the morning after an obviously immoral tryst with Liam Page.
Page desperately escapes that nasty situation and runs to get his phone fixed. Eventually the voice mail is recovered, which precedes a news report he sees on TV about an old hometown friend who has passed away.
Much to the chagrin of his manager who has him booked for more tour dates, Page disappears from the radar, paying his limousine driver to take him back home so he can attend his friend’s funeral.
Given that he knows he’s famous and doesn’t want to draw attention away from his friend’s funeral, Page attends the funeral from the shadows. He is soon seen by his former sweetheart Josie Preston at the cemetery. Josie is the prototypical all-American girl, well-played by the talented and beautiful Jessica Rothe.
With good reason, Josie is just a little miffed at our hero. She proceeds to give him a well-deserved welcome, to the gut. Literally.
As the film proceeds, Page is like a little boy trying to figure out where he went wrong. I could certainly identify with this, except that the fame and fortune have certainly eluded me to this point.
One of the surprises, which I also won’t spoil too much here, is that there is yet another little lady which Mr. Liam Page must connect with. This is part of why Josie is justly resentful for Liam bailing out on their wedding ten years earlier.
Josie isn’t the only one who is angry at Liam. His father, the pastor of the local church where Josie was jilted, is also someone with whom Liam must make amends. This was a welcome side story, reminding us that relationships with different people in our lives require different ways to make them right again.
As the film carries on, Liam and Josie start to develop a more amicable relationship as he fumbles his way back into her life, and the life of that little lady whom he had not known about before coming back home.
While I am one to stay away from romantic movies, I must say that I did enjoy watching the hoops which our main protagonist Liam Page had to jump through, as he is trying to do the right thing, despite the seemingly impossible odds.
Forgiveness, mercy, redemption, and eventually what we hope will be a happy ending are what this film entails.
Reality check. The one problem about this fictional novel and movie is that most men who screw up relationships usually don’t have the wealth which Page has at his disposal. It can be more difficult to recover the love and people some of us have lost without a boatload of money that a famous recording artist has.
As mad as Josie is at Liam — what woman wouldn’t be impressed by a helicopter ride to a sold-out show attended by adoring fans of your man?
As with most Roadside Attractions releases, this is a family-friendly movie with a solid Christian message. While it is family-friendly, I would probably recommend not taking any little kids to see it, not because kids are dumb, but because they will probably be unable to follow the story the way it’s meant to be understood.
One last observation — we are given a huge clue as to what led Liam Page astray as he sings in a huge stadium to thousands of obviously adoring fans — “Don’t water down my whiskey; can’t you see that I’m 100 proof?”
Forever My Girl opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, January 19. Visit www.forevermygirl
themovie.com to watch the trailer, buy tickets, and plan perhaps a nice date night movie with your wife or girlfriend. A great St. Valentine’s Day pick that I recommend.
Please keep supporting moral, Christian-based films on their opening weekends at the theaters. Send a strong message to Hollywood that we don’t want the corrupting immoral trash they keep trying to shove into our lives and the lives of our young ones.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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