Christmas Bedtime Stories

Steve Lund and Erin Cahill should have made for one of the best movies of the season. What do we get instead? A horrendous train wreck of a movie with clearly the worst writing and research ever done on the Hallmark channel. It is an affront to service people and veterans and instead of being happy at the ending it was like watching a train wreck. You couldn't believe this was happening on every level. The acting with these two was as always good. The actors were well cast and the direction ok. The script though should have been rewritten from the halfway point on. Who signed off on this and thought yeah this is a good hallmark movie?

We're two women who love the fluffy predictable Hallmark Christmas movies normally, as a break from the stressful real world and even the other kind of shows we watch and also love with plenty of action, violence, sex, etc. But this one ends in a ridiculous out of the blue way that destroys the whole story of the movie. It also makes no sense for how things work in the world. It's a complete fantasy ending far in excess of the bit of romantic fantasy we allow for in a Hallmark movie. It left us frustrated and wishing we had watched something else. Skip this one. Plenty of other Hallmark movies this year, (and Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV!)

This was good for 1 hour 45 min. Then it morphed into the strangest ending I've ever seen in a Christmas movie. Steve Lund was wasted in this. Love Erin Cahill but this wasn't for me. For a better moving on story, watch Christmas Homecoming instead.

Seriously, the character played by Erin Cahill just wasn't rootable at all and exhibited no character growth whatsoever throughout the movie. She started and ended the movie in the exact same place emotionally. This seems to be an ongoing pattern at Hallmark since new leadership came in. They seem to think viewers want shock value instead of predictability and usual tropes. The reason the network is successful is because people watch for predictability and tropes.

The storyline is noble, about a solder lost and a family trying to move on. But the characters and actual family story were lame. As someone else commented a total waste of Steven Lund's talent. Erin had somewhat of a good role but even that was dull. Lund had a role with more meaningful dialogue and excellent character development when he played the brother of Charlie in just one episode of the Hudson and Rex TV series than this two hour Hallmark movie. This is not the first Christmas movie of this year that has sorely missing the mark. Hope they improve over the next two months. Hallmark vs GAC seems to be watering down quality to the detriment of the actors.

I really wanted to like this movie. Erin Cahill and Steve Lund were good, but the script was awful. The attention to military detail was lacking. Was Colby a Major or a Captain? The General was not even aware of the most important detail. How he didn't know one of his men was alive was beyond me. I felt so bad for Pierce. He loved her and her daughter so much. The flashback scenes were probably the best part of the movie. The ending happened so quickly and was not believable at all. How you wrap up a movie in the last five minutes is just silly. Will not be rewatching this. I gave it 3 stars for just Erin and Steve.