My Christmas Dream

7.6 stars.

Let's get this out of the way first: the kid has all the great comedic parts in 'My Christmas Dream'. A tough act to follow. Of course, the director makes the young boy seem like an adult, way too smart for a 6 year old, and I'd venture to guess he's older than 6 in real life, but that's beside the point.

Danica McKellar gives us her usual stellar rendition of a female who can be hard and cold, but deep down is soft and tender. All of her roles are similar, featuring the same personality in most of her performances. She is driven, yet malleable, harsh when she needs to be, yet compassionate underneath it all, seemingly gullible, but sharp as a knife. I like this character in a Hallmark female, ergo, I like Danica's portrayal in just about everything. I think we are seeing her true personality in what she does on screen. Sure, it's limited to that, but I like it enough to give her a free pass. Yes, the story is not original, but you can taste the higher quality film that it is.

The rest of the cast take a backseat to McKellar and little boy, but it's a well balanced Christmas tale of what it means to treasure family and the dream of true love over career and aspirations.

Christina (Danica McKellar) is the top manager in a midsize town for a department store called McDougalls. Christmas is approaching and this pretty exec is a bit stressed. For one, she has to develop their annual Xmas window display but has been unable to hatch a good idea. Then, she gets word that the chain store's founder, Victoria (Deirdre Hall) is coming to look things over. Ouch. Thank the Lord for her bright and cheery assistant, Holly (Christine Lee). Normally a workaholic, Christina has no time for a personal life. As Victoria is arriving, Chrissy has an unfortunate accident with a can of falling white paint. The culprit, single dad Kurt (David Haydn-Jones) has been a great worker and instantly apologizes. But, Christina is miffed. When Henry, the custodial manager, decides to let Kurt go, she does nothing to save Kurt's job. This is not the Christmas spirit at all! Two other matters occur at once. Victoria announces that they are seeking a head honcho for a new store in Paris. A Francophile, Christina soon yearns for this job. But, first, she has to deal with an unhappy six year old customer, Cooper (Christian Convery) who gets to Santa's throne a few minutes too late. What's the little boy's wish? To make his Dad happy this holiday season! Christina promises Cooper that she will relay the message to Santa but, ho ho ho, it turns out Cooper's father is the fired Kurt! By hook or by crook, Cooper arranges meetings for Christina and Kurt, for the little lad is smitten with the pretty manager himself. Can love snow down on a Christmas match? But, wait, what about Chrissy's Paris hopes? This lovely film is a new entry in the glorious Hallmark repertoire of Holiday movies. Very welcome it is! McKellar and Haydn-Jones make good love vibrations, being talented and attractive, while Convery is simply a doll. Deirdre Hall never ages and is also very fine as the kind but demanding boss. Other wishes fulfilled are nice sets, costumes, a sweet script and a sure direction. How many fans are there for Hallmark romantic movies? It must be in the billions by now and they will like this one, too!

The little boy Cooper is the best part of this story...and he is relentless.

"Ok, ok you win, sad Christmas story."-Kurt

Christina is a store manager, up for a big promotion to start a branch in Paris. She has a lot riding on this year's Christmas display. She meets an artist under unfortunate circumstances and ends up having to come back to him with hat in hand to help with her Christmas display.

This holiday romance is all about the tough choices women continue to have to make in business...to have a family or to have career aspirations.

A little melancholy for Christmas...but Cooper more than makes up for it.

Despite loving Christmas and having no bias against Hallmark Christmas films (far from it and this has been said before quite a number of times in other reviews of their work), the premise did not really excite me. Striking me as being too much of typical Hallmark and pretty old-hat. Saw 'My Christmas Dream' as part of my quest to see as many Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas films as possible, something that has been happening on and off for nearly a year.

'My Christmas Dream' is okay but for me despite good things not much more than that. Hallmark did do worse Christmas films that year and overall, they also did better. In ranking, 'My Christmas Dream' is around low middle on both counts and was actually quite close to being in the worst category (with the worst of the bad things being pretty awful). While not quite a nightmare, this was not near close to being a dream of a film in my humble opinion.

Am going to start with the good things about 'My Christmas Dream'. It looks nice, well shot with lovely scenery. Wasn't impressed by the music on the whole, not unusual for Hallmark, but there were some pleasant and nostalgically festive parts.

There were a couple of decent performances. David Haydn-Jones is a charming leading man and Deirdre Hall is classy support, brightening the film up when she appears.

Hallmark regular Danica McKellar however didn't do it for me, she has a cliched character that is not likeable or rootable at any point in the film. Really hate it when films and such exaggerate negative character traits, which Hallmark did a lot with their female lead characters, and that was the case with Christina and when you add McKellar's over-compensating she quickly became very annoying. More insufferable though was Christian Convery as the most irritating character in the film, due to his whining and such getting excessive. McKellar and Haydn-Jones don't have much chemistry together, they seem uncomfortable around each other and never felt their love, while the romance is very rushed and underdeveloped. Few of the characters are particularly interesting and more tried and tested Hallmark cliches done with more spark elsewhere.

Regarding the script, that was mostly very stilted and cheesy as well as dreary with too much blandness to have any sentimental value. The story never comes to life and because of doing absolutely nothing different with a premise already done to death is very predictable. It is also very thin, especially early on, there is a lot of credibility straining centering around the job and what effect it would have on the family (not very honest and somewhat mean-spirited) and there is a real lack of charm or anything to connect to.

In conclusion, has good things but just okay. 4/10

Christina, the manager of McDougal's flagship department store, is determined to land the manager position for their new Paris location. She sets out to impress Victoria, the store's owner, by creating the best holiday display in McDougal's history. However on the day she is to meet Victoria the imperatively dressed Christina gets paint spilled on her by a worker in the department store that she manages. He gets abruptly fired. However later on their paths cross again and Victoria ends up needing this man she just fired to help her with a Christmas window display. If this display rocks upper management she then will get to live her dream a manage a store in Paris.

Now this film is good. My major complaint is that the film shows that women are forced between "Career and Family". Many successful women in the past 50 years have managed to do both. This film however makes it look like that "If you don't have a family you are never happy". For once I would like to see a Christmas movie where the woman does choose a career but it also happy with that choice. Trust me that would make a great Christmas film!