Ivy & Mistletoe

Please Cynthia, not another Hallmark Christmas movie on your CV!

You have to get of this treadmill, you are a talented actor and your career deserves better! We deserve better and more.

Can't comment on the film itself, but we all know the formula for Hallmark, boy loses girl, girl wins boy with some sickly slush and tedious indignation along the way, which is why Ms Gibb deserves better.

It's not a bad story but the acting is horrible. Terrible casting.

Ivy & Max over-act but they're not the problem... it's Charles. He's awful!

Not a realistic character.

It's a little too schmultzy & this stuff doesn't happen in real life.

Other than that, it's okay. I watched it all the way to the end.

Good luck.

😊

Tedious, almost plotless holiday romcom with Michelle starring as a highly-strung singleton stranded by a snow-storm in the quaint Philadelphia town of Bethlehem, furloughed with the local mayoress (Genzel) and her heartthrob son (Calafiore) dazzling the hosts with her talent for cooking amid the possibility of finding true love for Christmas.

Apart from Michelle and Genzel, the rest of the cast were unfamiliar to me although I did spot ex-'Fame' regular Cynthia Gibb in the brief incidental role of Michelle's mother.

Technically clumsy with poorly synchronised looped dialogue interspersed with uneven location recorded sound and occasionally amateurish shot framing (lots of cutaways but very few closeups), 'Ivy & Mistletoe' is a formula Christmas romcom with good intentions but limited production values (most of the apparently meagre budget looks like it was spent on the catering).

Basically the majority of the film consists of the actors sitting down eating, delivering their dialogue with monotone precision reflecting on how they've celebrated Christmas in the past, as they countdown the days to the big one. In some ways, the film resembles a rehearsal lacking the polish you'd expect when there's film inside the can.

Ultra-mild, sincere and inoffensive independent film might be too slow and talky to hold deliberate attention, but it's probably sufficient for background ambience in the days ahead of Christmas.

Not too hard to understand, easy to anticipate plot involving a young woman from a small town, living in the big city, yearns to return to simpler lifestyle. BF in the city wants to climb the corporate ladder, but doesn't realize how its done. He goes on a business trip, she goes by herself on a week long 'get away,' to a small town, simliar to where she grew up...

When she gets there, she finds out the place she's staying at is run by a widower, and his very business like daughter.

You should be able to guess the rest.....

Some of the acting is OK, some of it shows a lack of experience, but again, what did you expect. It made me feel good, even if some of the actors are just starting out, or haven't been in this type of production perviously.

I thought it was a cute ok movie but I couldn't get past the extreme plastic surgery that Julianne Michelle had. She didn't look normal. Not trying to be rude...