Christmas Reservations

If you watch a Lifetime or Hallmark Christmas movie and expect Oscar winning performances, your expectations are too high. I love cheesy Christmas movies. Love them. This is a cute movie! It's not slow like some can be and the stories, while they may be somewhat predictable, are cute. The supporting cast is good, in my opinion, too. I liked this movie.

I really like Melissa Joan Hart but this one did not flow. They tried to throw in too many characters and subplots that just felt rushed or like they didn't belong. I tried to like this one! Also, Carlos from Desperate Housewives kind of bugs me.

While not an award winner, this was pretty enjoyable. I thought all of the matches were pretty obvious, but handled very well. As a typical Hart-break production (Melissa Joan and her mom) it is family friendly and fairly relaxed. The young people tend to get in trouble, but their elders show the wisdom of experience. Trying to avoid spoilers, I'll just that it does ramble a bit, and the running gags are pretty tame. Romance and happiness are slow to form, but are unavoidable in the end. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a last afternoon or evening.

I'll show up to watch Melissa Joan Hart read the phone book. She won my heart and eternal loyalty with two of her early Hallmark movies: My Fake Fiance and Holiday in Handcuffs. This one isn't close to ranking with those, but it had enough positives to keep me interested in a film that was mostly by the book as far as the principal romance was concerned. Her love interest was very attractive, but the chemistry just wasn't there. That is deadly for a TV Christmas movie. However, the cast had some good secondary stars. Markie Post was reliable as usual. it's hard to believe she is almost 70 years old. Happy Birthday, Markie, by the way. The actress who played her sister fascinated with her bordering on insane grin and perkiness. They were named Tay and Kay. That was odd. Ted McGinley did a great job as a scruffy has-been silver medalist skier. Loved the Americanized Indian daughter and traditional grandmother story. But I thought her love interest was miscast. I love nerds, but... well, let's just say she could do much much better. Michael Gross was unexceptional. He was OK. There were some nice touches that added value: The back story of the Inn, the placards that introduced each "chapter," and the wrap up of all the stories was nicely done, with a bit of humor. Of course, as always, the sets looked like a Christmas bomb went off, but that's OK. I love to laugh at those crazy decorations.

I had high expectations for Christmas Reservations, I came out disappointed.

It follows the usual course of Christmas romance stories, the usual sort of Christmas cliche cuteness. The main characters don't ever really develop, from start to finish they never become more than one dimensional. Their lack of character development is compounded by a lack of script strength and story development, the unnecessary secondary characters get a lot of screen time and overshadow the main storyline.

Although the movie ends in a predictably cute way, the movie plods along much longer than it should and falls flat when compared to other comparable Christmas romance movies. Melissa Joan Hart and Michael Gross take their characters as far as they can very well provided the limitations of the script and story.