User Reviews

Poorly written script. Actors can only work with what's written. This script was a disservice to the actors. Directors and Producers didn't do their job letting this film get in the can the way it is. Glad I didn't have to pay theatre ticket prices to view this disaster! Truth should have been told at the start or come out before the first wedding. You'll be disappointed if you're expecting to see Japan. None of their traditions or culture were respected enough to be included. Plus casting should have included a lot more Asian actors for the scenes set in their country! The actors who were cast did well considering what they had to work with. This script needed to be rewritten before filming started. The ending needs work. No premie born 4 weeks early looks like a 6-8 week old infant. "Truth or Consequences" should be the title of this piece of work. Nobody's going to make such poor life choices and merely exist without loosing their minds. The father figure had no business manipulating a wedding proposal at the dinner table! Anybody who thinks that type of thinking will work out for them doesn't understand....life IS...LIVING...not existing.

The first half of the movie made sense. We know Ben and Emily's backstory of how they met, but nothing ever comes out on how Ken & Emily Met. Ken acts so dorky, I can't imagine what they have in common. At the end both couples just go their merry way. Knowing their spouse is in love with the other. No mention of why Emily never mentioned Ken before meeting at the parents house. She was the devious one. Poorly written. What could have been good!

This movie made me feel angry. How could the sister still go along with the marriage after what he did to her? How could she want to be married to him, sleep in the same bed with him, and raise a child with him? I cheered when the father stood up for his daughter and punched him. I wanted to hit him too. One of the parts that made me mad was when he got mad that the sister he was in love with got engaged. He had no reason to get mad when he just married her sister. What did he expect her to do, remain single, and pine away for him for the rest of her life? Are you kidding me? I hate that I ever watched this movie.

I gave it 2 stars only because it could have been amazing. But it's so poorly executed and acted that it feels like an alternative universe where no one gets angry! How in the actual hell can a man who finds out the woman he is marrying is in love with his brother-in-law to-be just get in the car with her because her sister is in labor? Any normal person would have gotten as far away as possible! And the fact that everyone just acts like it's someone else's job to make their problems go away made me so frustrated with the characters. You're grown adults! Act like it; no one is saying to be together, since no one knows, and they have to live with that but they don't. Plus, the bizarre Kenneth is almost depressingly flat as a character. He's like a token good-guy (but also the only "asian" character in a movie that romanticizes but also manages to insult Japan). Did the writer mean to make the character (especially Ben) sound so condescending? It's how he comes across almost the entire film. The reaction of the mother at the wedding too was so bizarre. Hey, I just found out my two daughters love the same guy and yet one is married to Ben and pregnant by Ben, while the other is secretly pining away and my husband just beat the hell out of Ben but hey, sorry we'll have to cut the party early. This was just a train wreck! Jaime is in labor, yet Ben only has eyes for Emily. And then, despite all the odds and with no time to think about anything, Jaime wants Ben in the delivery room! WHAT?! I think it's safe to say almost ANYONE would want to kill him, not hold his hand!! The dad is kinda like a creepy flake- he wants to be the protector but also runs away at any opportunity, overall just written/acted like a stereotype. In fact that's a perfect word for this whole movie: stereotype. Kenneth is a total doormat, saying "oh it's okay that you love Ben just tell me what to do." Excuse me, what? Who would be okay with that? And then "I'm willing to let you go if that makes you happiest." While this is the fairytale answer, and some may see it as "mature," it so, so unrealistic. Why would he be so willing to give her up just because he thinks she loves Ben? No one does that! He says he doesn't want to know and forgives her without even blinking, since she's "all he's got." But that's not true, is it? The movie never says that, are we supposed to assume that he has no family, no friends, nothing? People don't just accept something so messed up, so painful, just because they love someone. Pain is pain, and anger is anger, but this movie acts like those emotions only exist for Ben and Emily and everyone else is just their emotional periphery. Now we cut to Ben and Jaime; she's losing the baby and all of sudden starts being the only person to make sense, crying out to Ben "I'm gonna lose you." Which would be true: he told Emily he married the wrong sister and doesn't want to be with Jaime anymore. Now that she's in labor that's changed? I'm sorry but we all know a baby doesn't change anything. If anything, Ben would leave even if he couldn't have Emily. Then, the baby is miraculously born when Ben says he won't leave. But oh no! It's small and needs oxygen (cut to a perfectly healthy, full size baby). A baby born 4 weeks early would need the NICU, yes, but it wouldn't look like the baby they show. And then the movie is pretty much over. You think that everyone has moved on since Kenneth and Emily walk off together and Jaime and Ben are seen about to drive to a family function with baby in two. But alas, the charm Emily gave to Ben that you thought he threw away in the hospital? Still on his keys. Guess he hasn't moved on after all. Oh joy. Waste of time, waste of everything. Just wanted to post the plot since I couldn't find it and wish I had known just how bad it was gonna be. And this movie didn't make me believe in love, it made me believe in revenge.

It's been years since I've taken the time to switch from the app to the online IMDB site in order to review a film. But Secondhand Hearts was so bad I felt I had an obligation to warn prospective viewers. It was mindless, soulless, plotless and should win an award for being the most boring & meandering movie I've had the misfortune to see in a long time - no small feat as there are so many stinkers these days. Since there was no plot - just a bad undeveloped story idea - I'm not sure what the ultimate message was. Life sucks and although everyone is unhappy with their status quo, life just goes on? Thanks but no thanks.

I gave it two stars for being short. It has the pastel aura of a Hallmark film, with the plot coherence of Eraserhead. The acting is poor, and all but the Emily character seem as if they got their parts through nepotism. When you have an unmemorable actor in the male lead, you wonder if he is also the producer/writer. How else would he get that part? Emily is the most interesting, though she wears a Mona Lisa Smile throughout. Maybe she knows the audience is being punked and is amused. Ben has no redeeming qualities, and that two women desire him, seems improbable. You kind of sort of want him and Emily to get together, but he's a skunk and so is the younger sister, so it sort of makes sense they end up together. But that leaves Emily in a platonic marriage with her BFF. I have no idea what the writer was going for here, unless it is autobiographical.

This film helps you understand human nature and how your choices affect your life and the lives of people around you. I think people are rating this movie down because they don't like the story or the ending. I understand. But I think of this film like literature - it helps you understand human experience and psychology.

This movie was painful to watch. Obviously, the guy should have let it all go into the past. But people don't always do what they should, and people sometimes let emotion control them.

I wish is that they had shown more about the story in Japan. I love Japan, and they obviously had the actors and camera crew there already. I would have liked this, but actually it would have made the movie too long. You need to get to the ending when you want a movie like this.

You can learn things from this film. It kept me in suspense and made me cringe for the right reasons. And I don't think it was poorly made. So I'm giving it a good rating.