Virginia Minnesota

Winning lead performances and some uniquely quirky touches keep this dramedy watchable from start to finish, but an over-reliance on indie film clichés... add up to squandered potential.

The tonal shifts among mystery, folklore, melodrama and satire are neither smooth nor productively rough, and the narrative core remains unclear, lost amid the surfeit of disconnected moving parts.

It almost makes sense. It almost comes together. It's almost good. It was almost worth watching.

In his directorial debut, Daniel Stine is able to weave a charming story that's sweet, poignant, mysterious, and even surreal at times. The cinematography is absolutely stunning and it can be said this is a love letter to Northern Minnesota.

Virginia Minnesota is the kind of film you hope you run into when you head off the beaten path well-trodden with the same old ideas.

While this is surely the stuff of romcom boilerplate narratives, Virginia Minnesota prefers to wade into darker waters for the sake of more compelling, everyday drama.

But the chemistry between the female-led cast is so strong that it carries the film over any narrative bumps