Katherine Heigl is beautiful. She's also developing as an actress. In Love Comes Softly she demonstrates a wider acting range than she ever showed in Roswell. With a great script she could do wonders.
The intent of the makers of this movie was obviously was to make a movie that would be morally uplifting, wholesome, and inspiring. But it demonstrates Hollywood's willingness to make movies with implausible premises, carelessly sketched and implausible settings, and unexplained inconsistencies. It was full of errors.
Heigl's character Marty is recently married, recently widowed, and recently arrived in the old West from an East Coast city. She needs a way to survive the winter (too late to make her way all the way East before winter sets in) and therefore makes a platonic marriage with a fellow named Clark (played by Dale Midkiff who used to play Darien Lambert the time travelling future cop sent to hunt down escape criminals from the future in the science fiction TV series Time Trax) who has lost his own wife a couple of years previously and wants Marty's help teaching his daughter Missy over the coming winter. Well, why the need for the platonic marriage if she's just going to live on his farm and take care of his daughter for the winter? The old West was not that proper. Also, a platonic fake marriage seems disrespectful of the institution of marriage and therefore seemingly defeats the purpose of the filmmakers to be morally inspiring. So this basic premise doesn't seem plausible or wise.
The platonic marriage premise is at least debatable. But there are aspects of the farm setting that are totally unreasonable. Where to start? Well, Marty supposedly shows up at Clark's farm in the fall. So then why do we see her watching Clark out the window tilling the ground behind a horse if its the fall? What's the point of tilling some bare ground at that point? Certainly not to plant a new crop. So what's he doing?
Also, what kind of farm ranch does Clark have? Its not clear from the scenes how he could feed himself and his daughter from that piece of land. There's no obvious area where he's been planting grain crops that looks large enough to grow enough food to make the famr viable. Also, there's not a big fenced in area where he could have a lot of cows or sheep grazing and he doesn't have a lot of cows or any sheep. So how does the farm support Clark and his daughter Missy and how did it also support his late wife?
A serious farmer wouldn't build a chicken coop building with such large gaps between the wall planks. The chickens would need better protection from the elements during the winter. Also, rain could blow thru them in storms.
In one scene meant to demonstrate Marty's lack of skills as a cook Marty walks across the room to put a log in the fire and leaves the stove to do so. In that scene how can the pancakes on the stove start burning in less than 15 seconds? Also, why is she cooking pancakes for supper? Also, why does Clark respond to the burnt pancakes by saying "I'll see what we got for supper in the ice box."? What ice box? There's no electricity. There's no ice. Its still the fall and not yet cold enough.
Its not that hard to catch a chicken in a small coop. Also, when she walks away with a chicken with a freshly cut off head the chicken's body is not twitching and there is no blood dripping out of the neck. That't not plausible. Though its amazing that a newly made movie would come so close to showing a chicken getting killed for eating.
Early on Clark tells her he's moving his stuff out to sleep in a lean-to. But when he comes in while she's bathing the building he exits which must be where he's sleeping is not a lean-to. But in the first place, why doesn't he just move out of the bedroom and sleep in the main room which has a fireplace and stove heat? After all, some other building would be way colder in the depth of winter.
There's a scene where Marty goes after a horse that has gotten loose. She catches the horse quickly because it does not run from her. She was not that far from the house when she saw the horse. The horse was not that far from here when she saw it. At the same time, when she saw it Clark was further from the house than she was. So how does she get caught out in a blizzard unable to find her way back? If there had been a real blizzard starting she could have started running back to the house with the horse. Also, it would not have been that hard for Clark to lead her back to the house once he found her with the horse because she was down the hill from the house. But how'd he even know which direction to go in to find her in the first place? Also, when he carried her back why didn't he put her on the horse and walk the horse back with them? And the next morning why did he say "A man loses a horse, he goes after it. Its as simple as that"? She was a woman who went after the horse.
The scene where Marty has a baby is not well timed. When Missy hears the baby start crying right after birth and she immediately goes into the room Marty is already sitting up smiling, covered in blankets, and holding the baby well bundled up after having a natural delivery with no pain killers. There was not enough time gone by to show her that way.
After the barn fire the remaining wood did not look partially burnt. It looked like regular wood with blackening added to it.
The final sequence has Clark galloping after her as she's riding away on a wagon train back east. There are problems with this sequence as well. First of all, why would travel across the old West in such sparsely populated areas have used multiple wagons in a train? Wouldn't one expect that for east bound traffic there'd be at most one stage coach moving by itself? Also, why were the passengers travelling in a covered wagon rather than in a stage coach? Did covered wagons get used for transportation for people who were not settlers headed outward?
But the worst of the sloppy writing comes at the end. Clark rode out after her with just his horse. But they return together to the farm with two horses pulling a wagon. Where'd the other horse and the wagon come from?
This movie is a human relationship story of hard living in the old West. The main characters are all morally good people. What is surprising is the portrayal of the religious faith of Clark. It is not trite and it comes up repeatedly in subtle and convincing ways. The story has no surprising plot twists. Its all fairly predictable.
Why don't movie makers try to make stories that make more sense? This was a made-for-cable movie. Therefore some of this story makes little sense because it must have been pretty low budget and they had to use what setting they could find to use easily. But other aspects of the movie are just plain sloppy.