Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas

I don't get it. Dolly has lots of money and mega talent. Why do a Christmas special just for the sake of knocking off another one? This so called special begins with her talking about making a special. Perhaps a throw back to Mickey Rooney's "Let's put on a show" theme. Then she wastes your time with a romp down the streets of Dollywood singing as she goes. It's cheesy as you might expect as she sits and sings with an imaginary Willie Nelson.

The coup de grace was a song in which she stands up and repeats "Go To Hell". Not once but many times. Christmas is a time for family and especially for children. Exposing them to this kind of message is very counter productive and defeats the meaning of love at Christmas time.

I had to shut off the TV after that number. I had just watched her accept a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination the week before and it rekindled my love of her music. If you're producing shows for the sake of the almighty dollar perhaps it's time to consider censoring yourself.

I expected a nice variety show, not a "movie" about her making a show. During the first 5 minutes I was thinking that was just an intro to the show, but no, it continued.

When she was singing the non Christmas'y song in the field, I was confused even more! Then the scene at Dollywood. That was just full of stage fright and overacting from all involved.

I fast forwarded it to the "go to hell" song as I saw it on a meme and wanted to hear it in its entirety. I had a good laugh and after that point, pressed stop, then deleted it.

This was too all over the place and just didn't care to see how it ended nor was I interested in seeing any of the other celeb appearances. Waaaaaaaay too much cringe for my liking.

Somewhere I got the idea this was going to be a movie rather than a variety special. I guess it was both, because it was the sort of fictional story about preparing for a TV special which, for the most part, never actually aired.

Instead, we see rehearsals, taping of musical numbers which will not air live, fantasy segments where Dolly is by herself (but not really), and preparations, with fictional characters played by actors who were supposedly in charge. So we have all the elements that would have gone into a real special, without ever seeing most of what actually would be broadcast.

And if you ignore all the details about preparations and pretend all the musical numbers and other content were in an actual special, most of it is pretty good.

Now I won't say Dolly Parton can do no wrong. I say this about Willie Nelson, who did well but really showed his age. Of course I like Dolly. Everyone likes Dolly, right?

But I didn't care for all the songs she performed. Of course she's talented and despite her age still has lots of energy. I just don't like some of the styles of music she performs, and she has done just about every style there is. I prefer the more traditional style country or Americana, and the 70s country sound that wasn't really country. But the various pop styles and Christian music that she also performed just don't happen to be my taste. Southern gospel is fine, and of course the European classical composers and other traditional styles of Christian music. But for a Christmas special, I mainly like the more traditional styles of music. I like rock and roll from when it was still called that, but at Christmas?

And I certainly don't care for something called "Go to Hell", regardless. Don't you think kids will be watching? There were kids in it.

It was probably longer than it had to be, but there was a lot of good stuff here.

I know everything on screen isn't expected to be real, but watching the Dolly stand-in dancer being flipped around & doing high kicks in Red's Diner was totally weird and comical. You can freeze frame at 21:39 and clearly see it's not even Dolly or Jimmy Fallon. Also, the Jimmy Fallon autotune was distracting when accompanied by Dolly's magical voice. Dolly has great success off playing both sides of the fence, i.e. Talking about Jesus and the Devil, but then singing about being whatever you feel like which this movie also does. She's made a point to cater to all audiences which after all, she is an entertainer, not a preacher. If it was not for the Dolly Parton singing, this would be a 1 star movie!

Lots of hating reviews on here, and I'll agree - don't expect a lot going in with storyline, character development, production quality, etc. But it's worth watching at Christmas. Get a glass of egg nog, a few cookies, and soak in some Dolly for a couple hours, it will warm your heart. When I visited Dollywood, my review was "Not enough Dolly." This is lots of Dolly. The parts with Miley, Jimmy Fallon, Willy, Billy Ray were kind of disjointed, but it was nice to see them perform with Dolly. And the closing number is still in my head the next day. I loved it, I'm glad I watched it, and you should too.