Holiday Date

The first temptation about a Hallmark film is to define it as nice. Obvious, if the subject of film is Christmas. In this case , lovely can be more precise. For Matt Cohen job and, off course, for fine ... meet of Christmas and Hanukkah. Yes, it is the expected comfortable film. But not only. It is amusing, it has inspired twists, it is seductive, touching and ...not so bad. Predictable, off course, but charming in just good way. So, lovely. And just lovely.

First, let me admit I'm not Jewish so I can't truly understand the objections some would have to this movie. I'm guessing many Gentile families might go overboard to celebrate Hanukkah if they wanted to make their daughter's "boyfriend" feel at home. Yet, based on the comments of a local radio host, a guy who is Jewish and loves family-friendly Hallmark movies, he loved the humor in this movie. Like him, I laughed out loud more than once. I thought the chemistry between the two leading actors was believable. I loved Bruce Boxleitner's "Walter" and his harrumphs of disapproval. Look for the humor in the story; a step above the stereotype. The cast is charming.

Really enjoyed this movie. It is not often that I laugh out loud during a Hallmark movie, but this was a fun movie. Brittany Bristow should have been a lead long before now.

Hallmark scores high with Holiday Date. The entire cast makes the movie a joy to watch. Lots of fun, laughter and a greater understanding that the season has lots to celebrate.

Make sure you put this movie on your to watch list. Leaves you smiling.

This movie doesn't get an award for originality of premise -- we've seen two other movies where the female lead takes on an impostor as her boyfriend or fiance.

In this one, her boyfriend breaks up with her just before they are supposed to travel to her family home for the holidays. Having given him a big build-up to her Christmas-devoted family, she winds up taking an actor home with her to pose as "Ethan", her erstwhile boyfriend.

There is a twist here. The other "imposter boyfriend" movies had the "imposter" reluctant to take on the task. In this one, the "impostor" is an actor who is eager to experience a small town, family Christmas to prepare for a possible role he auditioned for, and he takes on the opportunity with relish.

Of course, complications ensue. The writers did a good job of keeping the complications interesting and amusing, and the actors did a fine job of taking the "funny parts" off the page and making them funny on the screen -- which doesn't happen from some scripts.

We got quite a few chuckles out of this one, and that makes any movie worth watching.