Big Sky River: The Bridal Path - Hallmark

Big Sky River: The Bridal Path was such a refreshing change over the last few weeks. It wasn’t even a brand-new premiere but definitely worth the watch! There’s a lot going on in this movie so let’s dive right in and talk about it!

Hi, I’m Stephanie and welcome to the Magical Movie Club where, like you, I love to watch and chat about Hallmark movies. On May 25th we watched a sequel to Big Sky River called The Bridal Path.

I really enjoyed the first movie. And fortunately, everyone came back for the sequel.  Big Sky River: The Bridal Path stars Emmanuelle Vaugier and Kavan Smith. Kavan Smith happens to be one of my favorites from When Calls the Heart, and while I haven’t seen Emmanuelle Vaugier in anything else on Hallmark, I still recognized her right away from a couple of small parts she’s had on two other TV series, a couple of my old favorites, Smallville and the original Charmed! I will watch those two shows anytime they’re on!

So, the movie opens up about a year after the original ended. And I say that simply because the ex-husband was getting remarried at the end of the last one and this one opens up at their baby-shower/gender-reveal party! By the way, they really don’t recap much of anything, so I’d say you definitely need to see the original movie first or you might be a little lost about some details. 

In the first movie we saw the love story develop between Tara, who moved to Montana from New York, and Boone, a local Montana rancher and the town sheriff. This movie is about what happens next and how their kids are also affected by every one of their decisions.

Erin, played by Cassidy Nugent, is the teenaged daughter/step-daughter of Emmanuelle Vaugier’s character, Tara Kendall. We learned from the first movie that even though Tara is technically Erin’s step-mother, who is now divorced from her father, she’s the only mother Erin has known since she was 3 years old, so she loves her as her real mother. Erin even lives with Tara now in Parabole, Montana. 

But, as we see in these opening scenes, they’re back visiting in New York for her father and new step-mother’s baby shower.  Erin has made peace with her father and new step-mother.  But, her father says something here at the baby shower, "The son I've always wanted!" and Erin takes it the wrong way and the rift begins again. 

Fortunately, Bethany, the new step-mom, didn’t get much screen time because there’s something smug about her I just didn’t like very much. She acted sincere but somehow I thought she over-acted the part to an extent that I didn’t trust her. I’m probably overthinking this because again, she had very little screen time. And what was significant about this scene was what Erin’s father said during the gender-reveal. They found out they’re having a boy and Erin didn’t handle it well. She has already shown us to be a sensitive, sometimes irrational, hormonal teenager, so her reaction wasn't a surprise to me. I just wish her father had noticed her, too, and talked to her right away. But he was more focused on his new life with his new wife, and not just here at the baby shower, which also contributed to why Erin reacted that way.

A couple of days later, Tara and Erin fly back home and are greeted by a very happy Boone, Kavan Smith’s character, and his two young boys, Fletcher and Griffin. Fortunately, they all get along very well and seem well adjusted to the situation now.

Next we shift gears to a side-story about someone who was just a minor character in the first movie. Country music star Casey Elder, played by Michelle Harrison, is now living full-time in her beautiful, large home in Montana. She is alone at the house when suddenly she hears music coming from outside. When she goes to check it out she finds her music-writing partner surprising her with a visit in person. It turns out she used to have feelings for him but he was already married to someone else. He’s divorced now and their romance develops slowly, very slowly I might add, over the course of the movie. 

Now if I may interject here, I thought they spent a little too much time on this couple. To be blunt, I found them quite boring at times and honestly, I didn’t tune in to the sequel for them. But I digress.

In the next scene, Tara and Boone are off at a picnic spending some quality time together. While they were catching up, he hesitated for a moment, but then reluctantly shared his self-proclaimed cheesy feelings about her. Fortunately, she doesn’t get scared off by this anymore, which is growth for her over how she was in the last movie. 

Later, while Tara and Casey are catching up on Peter and Boone and their respective relationships, the topic of marriage comes up. And Tara admits she’s ready for Boone to propose and thinks he’s taking too long.

There is one more new character I suppose deserves a nod, and that’s Mateo, an exchange student from Madrid. He hams it up a bit here and ends up complicating Erin’s life a bit, as we’ll see later on because if you remember from the first movie, she’s already good friends with Dawson.

Now, we still haven’t gotten to the premise of this movie, but we’re about to. Boone picks up a package from his mailbox just before he and Tara go out fishing, which is a hint of things to come.  Because that’s when and where he proposes, while they’re out fishing! I thought it was pretty cute the way he “caught” an old pitcher and when Tara dumped out the water, out came a jewelry box. The only part that worried me was, well I knew she was going to say yes, but that long pause! It turns out the package we saw him pick up was the ring. He had had the stone from his mother’s ring reset into a new band for Tara by a jeweler in Denver. I like that!

Because actually, I have my grandmother’s old ring she once had reset herself. I’ve had it sitting in a jewelry box for nearly 25 years and now I’m thinking maybe I should consider resetting it, too.

Anyway, back to the movie now. What happens next, after she accepts his proposal, sets up the tone for the rest of the movie. Tara goes home to tell Erin, and Boone goes home to tell his boys, and they’re not all excited about the news. Erin is hesitant at first, but she comes around once the news sets in. As for Boone’s boys, Fletcher seems okay but Griffin does not like the idea at all!

And then there’s the wedding planning! As if planning a wedding weren’t difficult enough already, trying to blend two families and figuring out where they’re going to live complicates things even more. Not to mention some well-meaning but super-meddling friends adding to the mix. Yep, that’s a lot of pressure for Tara and Boone.

Meanwhile, Erin completely snubs her dad when he calls. Now, I’ve read a few reviews and noticed some comments about Erin saying they thought she was being a brat. And maybe there’s some truth to that, but I also think it’s normal for teenagers to behave irrationally sometimes, especially after their lives have been turned upside down with a divorce and her father was never a doting dad to her in the first place. So I’m actually more forgiving toward her here for putting her guard up. 

Now in true teenage fashion she’s also heavily influenced by her friends, or more specifically, Mateo, the popular exchange student. He becomes the center of her world for a bit, to the point that he can seemingly do no wrong. And, wow, I remember being in high school and I watched practically this exact same thing happen to one of my friends and it did not end well. So yeah, as annoying as Erin may be sometimes in the movie, I think she is also totally believable here just based on my own experience. I mean think about it, isn’t this typical of how even the Brady Bunch girls acted sometimes? I’m just saying being a teenage girl is not easy even under the best of circumstances. Add to that the hormones and the lashing out like this? Yep, it’s real.

But, it’s not just Erin. Griffin acts out a little bit, too. And not just about dinner. Fletcher asks a very good question which further complicates everything. "Where are they going to live?"

After weighing the pros and cons of both of their current houses they decide it would be best to look for a new house. And no, Griffin is not happy about that. As a matter of fact, the more Erin thinks about moving and blending their families the more she worries about her mom spending less and less time with her, too.

As the movie progresses we see that all of this change is difficult for everyone. In the next scene we can see even Boone is feeling the pressure, too. Actually, it gets even worse when he’s called out to an emergency, after all he is the town sheriff, and he forgets to check in with Tara and pick up the kids. That adds to the already mounting pressure still.

We were just getting into the second hour of the movie when something else surfaces, and that is different parenting styles. I can’t even imagine how hard this must be for them. Raising teenagers who are both your own kids is hard enough! Boone is not only used to things being a certain way, he also only has boys. He doesn’t know any more about raising teenage girls than I do. I have two boys myself. So when Mateo drives up in a car to pick up Erin to go out for ice cream, Boone, the dad and the sheriff, lays down the rules in a way she’s not used to hearing them. And neither is Tara. Right or wrong, and I’m sure everyone watching this picked sides here but, I’m staying neutral. Because the real issue, as far as I’m concerned, is how are Tara and Boone going to handle these difficult situations when they’re married?

One way or another they’ll have to do this together, and that’s for them to decide, not me.

Things finally start to look up when they pick a wedding date and even Erin calls her dad to wish him a happy birthday and they clear the air. But, something happens next that changes everything.

All this time that Erin has been hanging out with Mateo has made her old friend Dawson jealous. So he takes off in his parents’ truck to try to impress her like Mateo did. The problem with that logic is he doesn’t have his license, yet, and he was speeding. Not good! Especially in a small town where everyone knows everyone and everything that goes on!

And oh boy! What happens next is Erin blows up at Boone. Boone turns around and blows up right back at her. And then he and Tara blow up at each other. And it all ends with Tara giving up on all of it.

And you know what? That big fight affected everyone so much that it turns out to have been quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to them. And, I know that may sound crazy, but the aftermath helped everyone, including Erin and Griffin, realize just how important they all were to each other and how much they really did want to be a family.

So, I’m going to leave the details of the ending for you to watch, but I thought the ending was just perfect for them. I got goosebumps. I felt the love. And not just the love Tara and Boone had for each other, but for the kids, too! It just maybe took an outsider to point that out to Tara.

So I’ve been giving this some thought and I’ll give this one 4 out of 5. I really enjoyed this movie but I’ll admit I didn’t care for all the scenes about Casey and Peter. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I didn’t find that their love story added anything to the overall movie. Quite honestly, they were kind of dull.

So how about you?  What did you think of the sequel to Big Sky River?  All-in-all the IMDB ratings are solid for both movies. If you’re curious, over the course of the last few months I’ve sort of made my own interpretation, or analysis, of the IMDB ratings for Hallmark movies. By far this year most have ranked in the low-to-mid 6s. To me, anything 6.3 to 6.5 is about average. 6.2 and below is not great. Anything in the 5s is pretty bad. But that also means 6.6 and higher they’re pretty solid. 7.0 and up are among the best. This movie is sitting at 6.6. I personally think maybe it deserves to be a little bit higher, but it’s still a solid score and worth watching in my opinion.

Well I think that wraps up my review of Big Sky River: The Bridal Path. Next week kicks off four all-new movies for the month of June, starting with one called For Love & Honey, starring Andrew Walker, one of my favorites! After that is Savoring Paris with Bethany Joy Lenz. I like her a lot, too, so I’m expecting good things to come in June!

As always, thank you so much for being here and being a part of the Magical Movie Club. We'll be back next week to chat more about our favorite magical movies!  

Hallmark Channel's Original Preview:  Big Sky River: The Bridal Path - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: Big Sky River: The Bridal Path