Believe in Christmas

Or is it AI? Seriously, you bury body mics under wool turtlenecks and you need a human to use EQ, or you get unlistenable mud like this. Look no further than scene 1. Lindura is cute and vivacious, but she is a motormouth who mumbles, and you can't tell me you understood a word she said without CC turned on, or, until her final scene where she wasn't wearing a scarf. Forget the age difference creepiness which was omfg bad. Forget the amount of exposition needed up front to construct the hokum at the heart of this. Forget the barrels of fake snow for the scenes shot on a blazing hot day in July. Forget the truckloads of garland and ribbon in the lady's kitchen, including the garland wrapped around THE OVEN. This movie sums up what Hallmark has now reliably become, a parody of itself, creating packaged characters in packaged settings. And the story, the plot, makes no sense and does not matter.

Is it an act, a setup, or isn't it? There are hints early on that Christmasland might be giving the visitors a pretend romantic fantasy. I think it was something Em said. She and Bea are joking constantly in act 1 about everything they encounter, or will encounter, fitting perfectly in a Christmas movie rom/com. And the things that happen do fit. It seems like all the plot device boxes are checked. It is a little confusing because for a while Em seems to be accepting it as mostly real, but then she's starts honestly questioning again. All of this makes this movie a little different like a parody.

Real life husband and wife Ory and Reardon have the chemistry you would expect. Lindura's Em and Kevin Hanchard's Porter don't have quite as much partly because the story keeps you guessing as to whether he is an actor or not.

The climax is done well and the viewer's questions, as well as B and Em's questions, are finally answered maybe not completely like the viewer expects. I was still guessing at least a little.

I saw a meme about how cookie cutter Hallmark Christmas movies are, and it is so true for 80-90 percent of them. This movie takes advantage of that expectation and delivers something worth watching.

7.3 stars.

I felt my experience with this film was just slightly above average. Along the lines of Hallmark films it was not quite good enough to meet my expectations for a fully engaging experience. There are good parts, but it was quite slow otherwise.

I like all the actors and I thought they did their best and much of it was fun and exciting and there was so much potential, but it just fell flat over and over again. I don't know if it was the Director or the script, but something was stalled.

They needed to restart this one, and give it a kick, maybe some of that black coffee that she desired over the sickly sweet syrupy stuff, would give it a jumpstart in this wonderful fake fairytale Christmas town. You might really like this one, so give it a shot, but it's not quite my cup of tea.

This movie was a non-starter for us, and we bagged it about halfway through. That's a shame, John Reardon was great in one of our favorite annual watches, The Christmas Secret, and we liked Meghan Ory in Dashing Through the Snow.

Sadly, those movies were ten years ago and nine years ago respectively, and while Mehgan is still a beautiful 42, at 49, it doesn't look like the 40s have been kind to John. They chose wardrobe to hide his weight, and he had to comb some permed hair WAY forward to hide the onset of male pattern baldness.

Here's a problem, they either need to write scripts which fit some of the middle-aged actors, or simply use younger players. Presenting these actors as "young love" belies believability. I mean, those two might well have gone through two divorces by now.

Then there was this movie in particular. Meghan seems to smile at some strange times, like when she discovered, after a flat, her friend has no spare. And how did she know that since the trunk was supposed to be full of luggage and she didn't even move some around to look? Later, John comes by and offers the women a ride into town, asks if he can get their luggage, and twenty seconds later gets back in his truck and has noticeably failed to move any luggage.

Everything in town was the same old "wonderful stuff" ... egg nogg tasting, street carolers who almost whispered the lyrics as the mains walked by them, and OH GOODY, the prospect of the town's signature BAKING CONTEST! Gee!

I think the final sloppy direction that threw me was the incredible disappearing cupcake. The cupcake shop lady gives John a bag and Meghan a single cupcake, which she holds in her hand as they start to leave the shop. By the way, they don't pay. Then, when they emerge onto the sidewalk, he has his bag but the cupcake mysteriously disappears! Did she trash it in defiance of having been shamed into the bake-off? Sadly, we'll never know, because very soon after that we nuked this boring mess.

Everyone is sickly sweet and overly perky and that would make you more nauseated than the over-iced cupcake, if you could ever get it to your mouth before it vanished into thin air.

I almost never leave reviews, but this is one that I couldn't leave without comment: Those strings doing nothing but straight beats- Why did this happen at least twice? (I'm not rewatching to double check) It gave a tension that was out of place in a Christmas movie and the specific scenes.

I know what I'm getting myself into when I start a Hallmark Christmas movie, but I at least expect for the background to stay in the background! Most of the time, background music is forgettable for me, but not in this one, and certainly not for good reason.

And the final scene was the worst of all! What was in the fire? Pop Rocks? It was the loudest fire I've ever heard!