A Hollywood Christmas

This was a Christmas movie around the making of a Christmas movie, which was a clever way to both make fun of the trope and explain why we need it (aka why people like it).

It tells the story of a female director who is directing a Christmas movie and gets caught up in her own Christmas movie as a financial guy shows up from the studio telling her that the Christmas movie division is being shut down and then that they have to cut their budget on this...the last Christmas movie for the studio. The first person to realize that Jessica was in the middle of her own version of a Christmas movie is her assistant Reena (played by Anissa Borrego), who is a real scene stealer.

The two actors playing the lead characters in the movie Jessica is directing where fantasticly over the top...almost cliched version of b-movie actors, but my favorite character was the completely nutty dog trainer and handler (maybe I appreciated that because I know some really nutty dog breeders).

The real story is the romance between Jessica and the studio's finance guy Christopher (Jessika Van and Josh Swickard), these two were just the right amount of sweet and played off each other well.

I enjoyed this more than I expected to and recommend it to Christmas movie fans and romance fans everywhere.

I very much enjoyed the movie, and I certainly appreciate the actors who made this "movie in a movie" setting worthy. Well acted and the movie itself moved along well as it riffed on the formulaic Christmas Movie theme. Despite other reviews that dinged the writing, I thought it was well done and entertaining. I know this is not a deep story (and that is said tongue in cheek in the movie), and nor did I want it to be. Some Christmas movies do pull the emotional strings more versus this movie, but I was fine with that, and again quite enjoyable all around. And again cudos to the lead actors for making a Hollywood Christmas Movie better than the rest.

I enjoy a cheesy bad Christmas movie, but this one went too far with force-feeding you the "formula." I think if the writers took out the role of the PA spelling out the analogy between the Director's real-life interactions and the happy-ending Christmas movies then it could have really saved the movie. I hate it when scripts are too on-the-nose and GOD that assistants voice was annoying which only made it more excruciating. I think in any real life scenario, if someone behaved like that regarding another persons love life it would have immediately shut down any chance of romance. The second-hand embarrassment I got from her pointing out the chemistry in an unnatural way was out of control. I didn't hate the acting, which is typically the issue with these types of movies, but I couldn't get past how much they shoved the plot in your face. Let me live in the fantasy that the characters have no idea they will have their predictable happily ever after.

We love bad, formulaic Christmas movies, and this is a movie about making one of those bad, formulaic Christmas movies while (mostly) following the formula itself. It's so meta lol!

It was fun to watch and the people leaving low rating reviews don't get that it is SUPPOSED to be a movie that doesn't take itself seriously with bad writing and "flat" acting! The acting actually is great, especially the actors playing the a lead actors in the "movie." It makes fun of itself multiple times, albeit subtly sometimes.

If you realize what this movie is before you watch it, you'll enjoy it that much more!

I have read a couple of reviews for this movie where they obviously didn't get that this is a deliberately awful movie encased in a deliberately cheesy Christmas movie. I admit that the first ten minutes were going hard until I realised the intentional cheesiness, and also thought that Anissa Borrego's fake voice was wonderfully awful, until I realised it was her real voice, I'm so sorry! This is simply a comedic look at Christmas movies, but done in an interesting way. Yes, it's not to everyone's taste, but when you realise how over the top it is you've got to find it funny. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it.