LOVE BY ACCIDENT

Name: LOVE BY ACCIDENT
Item: LOVE BY ACCIDENT
Author: Tess Farrand

"Predictable but Enjoyable and Positive"

Content: +1 Moderately questionable elements. (Discernment required for young children.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Summary
Audio

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

Based on a Harlequin romance novel, LOVE BY ACCIDENT follows Daphne and her godmother Fran after they crash their motor home in a small Midwest town. The doctor tells Fran she needs a few days’ rest. So, Daphne convinces Fran to actually rest by fake dating the town mechanic, Matt, who just so happens to be fixing their motor home. However, the fake dating doesn’t seem so fake after all as Daphne and Matt begin to develop feelings for one another.

Airing on UPtv, LOVE BY ACCIDENT has plenty of conflict to keep viewers interested, but the love story seems a little too good to be true and predictable. However, the movie has a strong moral worldview, with great redemptive messages about forgiveness. The main characters learn how to forgive themselves, family members and situations that happened in the past in order to move forward with their lives. Family, both blood and adopted, is extolled and seen as a blessing. With not very much objectionable content, MOVIEGUIDE® finds LOVE BY ACCIDENT to be a worthwhile family movie for older children, teenagers and adults.

Content:

(BB, CC, Ro, PC, Fe, L, V, N, A, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong moral, pro-life worldview with strong redemptive messages about forgiveness where the main characters learn how to forgive themselves, those that wronged them in the past and situations that happened in the past, loving others in your life and considering them to be blessings in a time of hurt is discussed, getting engaged and having a baby both extolled, with some Romantic elements as two people fall in love and learn that loving others and letting themselves be loved is important, and some politically correct, feminist elements where lead female character studies Jane Austen books and the roles of economics, equality and fairness for women in the time of writing them

Foul Language:

No obscenities but two light exclamatory profanities (one OMG and one OG)

Violence:

Motor home crashes into a side street in a town, but no one is hurt

Sex:

No sexual immorality or sex scenes though couple pretends to date but fall in love anyway and eventually kiss several times

Nudity:

Man pulls shirt up to wipe sweat from face and his stomach is seen

Alcohol Use:

Wine and beer are drunk casually in multiple scenes

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Some deceit and there’s a dysfunctional father/son relationship, but it’s resolved in positively the end.

More Detail:

Based on a Harlequin romance novel, LOVE BY ACCIDENT follows Daphne and Matt as they fake date in an attempt to please Daphne’s ill godmother, Fran. Airing on UPtv, LOVE BY ACCIDENT contains some enjoyable conflicts and great moral, redemptive messages of forgiveness, but the love story is too predictable.

The movie opens with Daphne and her godmother, Fran, getting in an accident in their motor home in a small town in the Midwest. After the crash, a random man from town runs over to help Daphne and Fran get help.

When she gets out of the motor home, Daphne explains to the police officer that she and Fran are driving from the East Coast to the West Coast to spread Fran’s late husband’s ashes. Daphne says that Fran experienced a dizzy spell while driving because of her terminal cancer.

An ambulance takes Fran to the hospital, and Daphne finds herself stranded at the scene of the accident. The man who helped them after the crash, Matt, comes over and offers to take Daphne to the hospital to see Fran. After Daphne knows that Fran is okay and just needs a few days’ rest, she asks Matt where the town would take her motor home to be fixed. Matt tells Daphne the motor home is at his house because he’s the town mechanic.

Cut to Matt’s house. Daphne is sitting outside the motor home as Matt works on fixing it up. The two strike up a conversation about Daphne’s thesis for her PhD, which is about women in Jane Austen novels and the economics, equality and fairness in society at that time. Matt also learns that Daphne lost her parents at a young age. The conversation about Jane Austen novels intrigues Matt, so he ends up going to the library to rent the movie PRIDE AND PREJUDICE to impress Daphne.

The next day, Fran return to the motor home and is ready to get back on the road, even though the doctor told her to rest. Daphne is uneasy about Fran driving and isn’t ready to continue the trip. Fran has always encouraged Daphne to get out from behind her romance novels and meet a real man and fall in love. So, Daphne knows if Fran thinks she’s dating Matt, Fran will want to stay longer.

When the time’s just right, Daphne kisses Matt, and that’s all the convincing Fran needs to stay longer. Daphne and Matt decide to fake date for a few days, but the feelings they develop for each other aren’t so fake after all.

LOVE BY ACCIDENT is incredibly predictable with average acting. Although the movie has plenty of enjoyable conflict with both of the main characters, the love story seems a little too good to be true. The audience learns that Daphne is very uninterested in dating from both Daphne herself and Fran. So, it seems odd that she’s so quick to fall for Matt in just a few days.

That said, LOVE BY ACCIDENT has a strong moral worldview, with great redemptive messages about forgiveness. The main characters must learn how to forgive themselves, family members and situations that happened in the past so they can move forward with their lives. Family, both blood and adopted, is extolled and seen as a blessing. With not much objectionable content, MOVIEGUIDE® finds LOVE BY ACCIDENT a worthwhile family movie for older children, teenagers and adults.