Love and Honor

MPAA Rated – PG-13
It’s 1:36 Long
A Review by:
The Dude on the Right

Love and Honor
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Austin Stowell, Liam Hemsworth, Aimee Teegarden, Teresa Palmer
MPAA Rated: PG-13
Released By: IFC Films
Released On: July 23, 2013
Kiddie Movie: Probably best for the teen girls.
Date Movie: Nope.
Gratuitous Sex: They get it on, but nothing gratuitous.
Gratuitous Violence: Some war scenes, but they kind of look fake.
Action: Not really.
Laughs: Nope.
Memorable Scene: Mickey and Candace just have sex and they she pretty much goes, “Oh, by the way, the cops are looking to arrest you.”
Memorable Quote: Nothing really.
Directed By: Danny Mooney

And now I bring you “Love and Honor,” a movie trying to tell a love story set under the backdrop of the first moon landing and the Vietnam War. Yes, it’s a movie set in 1969, and it looks like the movie folks raided the prop room and found anything that seemed to resemble 1969, from cheesy t-shirts, to an acoustic guitar propped next to the period-piece couch, to the malt shop, to cheesy protest signs, to the afghan that looked like it was knitted by your grandmother, and somewhere along the way found cheesy, protest dialogue to go along with it all.

Let’s start with the story basics…

Dolton (Austin Stowell) and Mickey (Liam Hemsworth) are young soldiers serving in Vietnam. The only thing that keeps Dolton focused on staying alive is the love of his girl back home, Jane (Aimee Teegarden), but sadly she sends him the proverbial Dear Dolton letter telling him it’s over. What to do? Well, if you’re Dolton and you have a week of leave; you head back to the states to win your girl back. What to do if you’re Mickey? You tag along on the trip to help your buddy.

So, our two soldiers find themselves in smallish-town America, albeit with an active war protest movement, and to stave off the angry hordes, or at least avoid the confrontation, Mickey concocts the story that they are deserting, hoping to give enough time for Dolton to reconnect with Jane, maybe even propose, and head back to Vietnam. For Mickey, though, along comes Candace (Teresa Palmer). He’s smitten and now is in a pickle of lying to her, trying to get laid, and then having to leave, and maybe fall in love along the way.

Yup, they are entrenched in war protest central, they have to make life decisions, and through it all Mickey is somehow able to keep this shit-eatin’ grin on his face the entire time, at least so says my assistant, and spout wonderfully awesome lines like “When I was 14 I was just trying to figure out how to get laid.” Granted I was two years old in 1969, but did the pretty boys really use this as a line to get in the girl’s pants back then? Someone who might have been 18 back then please let me know.

Okay, back to the review and summary.

Sadly the movie comes off more like “Let’s put some pretty boys in this movie so some teen girls will watch it and keep saying ‘Oh, he’s dreamy!’ We can build it around the Vietnam war, I mean, who doesn’t like the story of the soldier and his girl?”, when, if the material was done with a different cast and some tighter writing, rather than seeming to try to appeal to the teen girl crowd, it could have really been a look at the conflict of soldiers, the protest movement, and love.

All I know is that from about 5 minutes into the movie I couldn’t wait for it to end, and my assistant gave up after about 20 minutes. There was potential in this movie, somewhere, but it just didn’t find it. It’s 1 star out of 5, although, if you are a teen girl you might give it 4 based on dreamy and shit-eatin’ grininess. I’m sticking with 1 star.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!