earnestness

The earnestness is almost as overwhelming as the ambiance.

Still, the earnestness — Ronan and Harris Dickinson, seen briefly as a kind neighbor-turned-soldier, are pros at that — decidedly outweighs the unavoidable sense that we’re on a briskly engineered studio tour of character-building pluck.

Neither does “Happy’s Place,” even as it flirts with making the youthful earnestness of Escobedo's character into a joke.

But Garfield, aided by his earnestness — and Britishness — more often comes across as a seeker, not a preacher.

The Republican senator and Democratic governor were chosen, in part, to deliver a dollop of Midwestern earnestness — and hopefully a few votes — from a region of the country that has often been crucial in determining the winner of the presidential race.