Love at the Christmas Contest

Completely meh. It is frustrating to watch a movie that seems to insult the audience.

The female lead is wearing a wedding ring through the entire movie.

The Christmas trees for the decorating contest were all horribly obviously fake. The sunflowers and roses from a florist were all obviously fake...

The storyline was overdone and predictable.

The cast seemed bored to death with their roles.

At least politics and agendas weren't thrown in our faces constantly like the releases from Hallmark.

Casting was at least not the same old faces, but the same old faces are definitely more entertaining.

Sigh.... Next.

When I heard GAC had come along and was presenting itself as a clear, family-friendly alternative to all the wokeness going on at Hallmark these days, I was happy about it. I still am.

And it's only natural that it would take some time to get up to speed with the casts and scripts and crews necessary to make good movies, so I cut them some slack. You have to walk before you can run.

This, then, is one of those fledgling efforts.

High school boyfriend, a widower with an adorable and precocious daughter is in town for the holidays. Paths cross with a nursery owner who's recently lost her mom. She enters a tree decorating contest to honor her, only to discover the ex and daughter have entered too.

Commence bonding, near-miss episodes of physical affection, misunderstanding and resolution.

The lead actress is sweet, but the male model lead is a little stiff, and there is little chemistry between them. Daughter is adorable, and the requisite relationship-pushing best friend has some good moments as well.

The theme of the decorating contest is the meaning of Christmas. Not to give anything away, but Charlie Brown knew something these people don't.

I guess there's still a gap between family friendly and Christian themes.

A so-so effort, but I would still encourage them to continue their noble quest.

After a good start, we've been disappointed in the last couple of GAF releases. This one simply had no fire at all. The story lacked originality, and the only tension was the 'same old' one of the leads has to leave town for their career.

When the acting wasn't flat, they leaned HARD on dripping sentimentality, and they couldn't be satisfied with just one dead mother to make the Christmas season melancholy, they doubled down with TWO!

Thankfully, you won't have to pull out the hankies, because none of the actors could put forth enough genuine emotion to transfer their supposed grief to a viewer.

This won't be on our rewatch list, obviously, and I can only recommend it to a Christmas list completist. There are MUCH more interesting, entertaining, and moving films available from both this year's releases and reliable "rewatches" from the past.

One of my favorites in this type of genre. The writing and story is thoughtful and clever about a drama based around a Christmas tree decorating contest for the town. I wish my town had something like that as it is such a cool idea. A perfect family and love story for the holidays. The acting from the leads was great and the directing and production all first rate. Really impressed with this flick overall and I highly recommend! The colors really pop on the screen, and just beautiful sets and backdrops of Christmas decor and cozy homes. I found the story to be very touching on how new beginnings can occur despite going through great losses of losing loved ones, especially your mother as what is the case in the story. I have seen other Mar Vista movies, and ones written by John Burd and I was very impressed. This is the first film I have seen that he directed as well and I look forward to seeing more from him like this! It's nice to see Hollywood put out good-natured films again like this.

The locations were ok, but not many of them. I assume this was a small budget movie and they couldn't afford a better known lead actress and actor. The pair have no chemistry and that makes this production look like an amateur stage play, directed by someone with no directing experience. The best actors were the supporting ones, stand outs Triana Browne and Colleen Elizabeth Miller.

The script - plot and dialog are bad, snooze material starting with the tree decorating contest which was boring. If the script and direction were better it could have helped this movie and the actors. I wasn't looking for an award winning production, just something that doesn't look like a B/C level movie.