"More Than Chance" (2010)

I watched the first half of this movie--and for a night when I was being extremely picky about what I was in the mood to watch, that was pretty good.

Good Qualities:  I thought the beginning handled portraying abuse very tactfully.  By no means is abuse something that should be glossed over, but by doing such, it allowed this movie to stay family friendly while acknowledging its place in the story.  The story concept was intriguing, and there was enough story bread crumbs to keep me watching for 45 minutes--and as I said before, that's saying something on a night I was in quite the finicky mood.

Challenges:  The acting was B-level acting [perhaps because it comes out of the religious drama genre which has a style of acting all its own--a style very different than "Hollywood"]--a style much like what would happen if someone said, "hey, we have a play to put on in 3 weeks.  I know we really should put in 6 weeks of time, but it's too late for that--But, I don't want us to drop it either.  So, let's go ahead and do something."  So, they put on a decent show, but didn't have the time to sink into portraying the characters with any depth--and for an emotional topic such as abuse and trust and friendship--character portrayal is central to the action.  Instead, the emotional engagement of the characters/actors was relatively flat-line to what it should have been.  As for plot line/script--I followed, and understood some of the jump and jump choices made in the scenes written and selected; but connecting these together with any unity and with character motivation, there were times I couldn't see how some of the jumps could be realistic.  I'm not saying they couldn't happen that way in "real life", but it just seemed like there were scenes missing--scenes that would've helped sustain the emotional thread that should've been there, and definitely would've helped some of the plot connections to be more effective and understandable.

Since I haven't finished this movie, I can't speak to either the ending or if where the beginning of the movie was leading actually made it to the finish line.  Nevertheless, it was a movie at least worth considering.

I'm not sure at this point if I will ever resume watching this movie or rewatch this movie in its entirety, so I'm going ahead and posting what I think of the first half.

Signing off.