2018 was a mixed to unimpressive year for Lifetime Christmas films. There were a few good ones, such as 'Christmas Harmony', 'Santa's Boots' and 'Every Other Holiday'. There were also some real humbugs, such as 'My Christmas Inn', 'Every Day is Christmas' and 'Hometown Christmas'. There are Lifetime Christmas films of all years that fit in both extremes and even more so somewhere in the middle. So expectations were mixed watching 'The Christmas Pact'.
Which turned out to be another one of the films in the humbugs category of Lifetime's 2018 Christmas batch. The idea did sound sweet if predictable, but nowhere near enough is done with it and it is executed in a pretty weak manner. There are a few good things, but the flaws are many and a lot more and the worst aspects are pretty awful. Have seen some good Christmas films over the past few years as part of my completest sake, but 'The Christmas Pact' is on the opposite end.
'The Christmas Pact's' scenery is very attractive and didn't find anything wrong with the photography either.
Jarrod Joseph is an amiable leading man that deserved a better leading lady. The supporting do decently too.
Something that cannot be said for Kyla Pratt, which is like watching anaemic amateur dramatics complete with moments of over-compensating. Am going to have to be another person that really disliked her character Sadie, very annoying from having an over the top negative personality and disconnected from reality and everybody else. She and Joseph have no chemistry together, never believed their love and they didn't look comfortable around each other enough to be believable as friends. The direction goes through the motion and the music has very little character or memorability.
Moreover, the script is like a cobbling together of over-familiar cliches, and then there is the overkill cheesiness and schmaltziness of the awkwardly flowing lines. The story sounded sweet but turned out to be very charmless and bland, not helped by the leaden pacing, the over-seriousness of the tone and how too little content there was to sustain the length. The characters were pretty much standard Lifetime cliches.
In summary, very weak. 3/10.
