Love to Visit - Blu-ray

Movie: Alice (Reese Witherspoon), daughter of a legendary Hollywood director, returns to her late father's summer home after the failure of her marriage to music producer Austen (Michael Sheen). Here in L.A., she wants to start over with her two daughters and gain a foothold as an interior designer. But right now, on her fortieth birthday, she feels like she's only facing the broken pieces of her life. When she meets young Harry (Pico Alexander) while celebrating with her best friends at a bar, she is flattered by his advances. One thing leads to another and the next morning she wakes up next to the young man, while his brother Teddy (Nat Wolff) and best friend George (Jon Rudnitsky) have been sleeping in the living room. And before she's even really awake, Alice has found new roommates in the form of the three hopeful filmmakers, who completely turn her life upside down - and enrich it enormously in the process. But Austen doesn't like the idea of three young men living with his ex and daughters at all.

Love Visits is a light comedy that doesn't even try to pretend anything like depth. There's no real conflict, and even characters that would have been portrayed as absolute stinkers in other films are somehow sympathetic here. It's an ideal-world film that just wants its viewers to be able to switch off and feel good for a few minutes. Director Hallie Meyers-Shyer clearly borrowed a lot for her feature debut from her mother Nancy Meyers, who was very successful in the genre with films like Love Needs No Vacation and What Women Want.

It also seems that Meyers-Shyer has put a lot of her own experience into at least the character of Alice. After all, she also grew up in Hollywood, in a world that she pays tribute to here in an honestly charming way. The script for the light comedy, which Hallie Meyers-Shyer also wrote, isn't exactly profound and can't necessarily score with extremely clever dialogues. She has, however, succeeded very well in writing a cast of likeable characters that viewers will enjoy spending time with.

Yes, this is full of clichés and is also seen through rose-coloured glasses a lot, especially towards the end. But let's be honest: it's good to be able to switch off in an (almost) completely positive movie. And it's hard to resist the charm of Reese Witherspoon, so that in the end you won't be left with a lasting impression, but at least with a satisfied feeling of well-being, which makes it absolutely worthwhile to invest 97 minutes in this movie. If you like American comedies like Nancy Meyers', you will also enjoy her daughter's debut. Worth seeing!

Image + Sound: The technical realization of the Blu-ray is on a high level. The image sharpness is very good and allows even small details to show up properly. The color scheme looks very warm and natural and also the matching of black levels and contrasts support the positive overall impression of the picture quality. The same can be said for the sound. Although there are no big effects fireworks due to the genre, the surround channels are still repeatedly occupied by atmospheric ambient sounds and the beautiful soundtrack, resulting in an overall very coherent sound carpet. Good.

Extras: The bonus material is very scarce. Both the German-language promo making of, at just over three minutes, and the interviews with cast members and the director, which also turn out to be no longer than 2-3 minutes each, offer little in the way of real information about the making of the film or the background to the story.

Conclusion: Love to Visit is harmless, but really nice entertainment. If you want to relax on the sofa and watch an entertaining story with characters that are actually just likeable, this is the book for you. There's hardly any depth to it, but it more than adequately serves its purpose. The Blu-ray presents the film in good picture and sound quality. The bonus material is short and arguably superficial and can therefore be safely ignored. For the film itself, however, there is a clear: Recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp