Holiday in Santa Fe

Gia, Mario's daughter steals the show. Nice to see family emphasized. My son-in-law is Salvadorian and has 5 sisters. They took care of him during the Salvadorian civil war. I loved this movie and recommend it to anyone with family. I originally watched it to see Mario Lopez. I'm glad I did.

I lived in Santa Fe for many years. It is a unique and wonder filled place to live. The scenery for this movie brought back tons of memories. Which was great, but that and the good parts could not cover up the bad ones.

This could have been a good movie if not for the following...

1. Having Mario Lopez. Guy can't act.

2. Hank Chen. Ditto to #1.

3. How can you be in Santa Fe in winter and not show actual cold weather? It is over 7100 FT above sea level and in the middle of the mountains. Get your weather straight people. Adding coats doesn't cover it.

4. In the kids video dedicated to her grandmother, wait what is it that I hear?... The SIMS 3 music! Does EA know?

5. Anyone who can show any place in New Mexico at Christmas time and NOT include Biscochitos knows absolutely nothing about the holidays in NM!

The rest of the cast was great!

To the creators, in the future get your info straight. It is insulting to do otherwise.

None of the Hallmark/Lifetime or related movies are good but they're usually okay enough to put on in the background and not feel too offended by. I mean they are all the same, formulaic, and predictable. This one was atrocious, though. The acting is so contrived, the story makes no sense, and the pandering to what the creators think is New Mexico culture was just awful. As some other reviewers suggest, these people really know nothing about New Mexico. The bigger concern I have, though, is they know nothing about movies and telling a story. I can usually at least find something entertaining- this was painful!

Everything about Santa Fe culture is massively traditional here. We do make and eat a lot of tamales, that is true. But we do not eat mole or chile verde often. We are known for our unique chile and it is far different than mole or chile verde, where as chile verde is tomatillo based and mole is a complex sauce, our red and green chile, as its called, is a simple sauce of our unique pepper and almost nothing else, unlike mole which is up to 26+ ingredients. What a missed opportunity to order something Christmas and then brag to the girl about how good the chile is.

During Christmas in Santa Fe we make and eat biscochitos, a very special spiced shortbread cookie. We eat enchiladas. We eat chips and salsa. I have never seen a pepper eating contest on the plaza. If we had a winter fest it would be called winter "fiesta". We do not toss ham. We eat our ham with our families and red chile.

New Mexico truly does have a unique dialect that is interwoven with Spanish but not at all in the way it is portrayed in the film.

We are speak of our founding date as 1598, when Don Juan Oñate arrived here.

They kept saying how special it is here for Christmas but missed the mark on everything. Not one mention of farolitos, luinarias. No talk of posadas or the numerous farolito walks

A bunch of the little things they showed are Mexican like the papel picado, the corn husk flowers, the milagro hearts. Not even a single retablo or bulto was shown

They didn't even light the Christmas lights on the plaza.

Mario Lopez didn't even have a Zia tattoo on his neck/hand.

Empanadas are not really a staple of our cuisine as they lead us to believe. Maybe enchiladas would have been a better choice but there was ZERO mention of an enchilada at all. Billy the Kid was NOT jailed in Tia Sophias. The jail was actually where Collected Works is now at Galisteo and Water Street. Do we really have multiple donkey statues around that people steal the tails off of? I never knew that. I also never knew we had a sherif that wore a green and tan suit. (hint: we don't)

We do not have an antique Christmas truck that drives around and hand out presents. We have awesome low riders do that. Unrelated to Santa Fe, when the sister is making a glass ornament you see her "finish" without taking the piece off the pole and putting it in the annealer. Eye roll!! Come on! Who goes on a date at Rockin Rollers? The scorpion pepper is from Trinidad.

A Gift Shop Christmas/ Holiday In Santa Fe (2021) -

As much as I loved Mario Lopez in 'Breaking The Surface' (1997) and before that he was always my favourite in 'Saved By The Bell' (1989-92), I have not been impressed by any of the made for TV Christmas films that he has done so far and this one was not an exception. He was also looking very plasticky, almost as if he was wearing a mask.

I did like the fact that Emeraude Toubia as Belinda wasn't a b!tch to start with. So often the execs are horrible and completely clueless at the beginning and have to go on a journey to realise the importance of the business they're trying to take over, but she was a nice character from the beginning, while Mario as Tony was the more conceited one.

Her assistant, Kevin, was so annoying though and overall the film was incredibly cheesey and none of them were the best actors.

I liked the Santa Fe "Mexican" element though and it was very cheerful. It certainly didn't have that gloomy filter that some of them have had and it was bright and colourful.

Early on, I had considered turning it off, because it did seem quite cheap, but I was glad that I stuck with it, because it was so cheery.

The final unveiling of the art by his Sister Magdalena however was embarrassing, because it was absolutely hideous. It's poor quality attention to details like that and poor props that are the difference between a good film and an okay one.

I wouldn't rush to watch it again, but the Santa Fe take on things did make it interesting and I would never say that I would turn it off in the future.

4.75/1000.