Holiday in Handcuffs

A friend of mine recommended this film to me. I am glad I took his advice. This film was very good and it's one of the better Christmas Television Films I have ever seen.

In this film a Trudie (Melissa Joan Hart) is an aspiring painter working as a restaurant waitress. With the pressure to please her parents (Timothy Bottoms and Markie Post) building, she misses a job interview and gets dumped by her boyfriend just before Christmas, and she has a nervous breakdown. Stressed about going home for the holidays without a boyfriend, she kidnaps David Martin (Mario Lopez), a random customer at the restaurant in which she works and introduces him to her parents as her boyfriend, Nick.

Lots of great moments and so well made. If you want a great comedy to watch you won't go wrong watching this!

An utterly ridiculous premise. A girl breaks up with her boy friend, and kidnaps a guy with hand cuffs to get him to pose as her boy friend for Christmas with her family. Make sense? Of course not, but it doesn't matter.

Even using her Sabrina powers, I doubt the tiny MJ Hart could over power Mario Lopez. Nor is it likely the parents would be fooled by this absurd scheme, especially when the guy starts yelling to them for help! Well, it's a rom-com, so anything goes. On top of that, the Christmas theme demands the exact sentimental outcome you'll see coming more than 50 light years away. Even if you can't give it the poetic license it needs (a lot, lol), you can still laugh at how ludicrous the whole thing is.

Silly nonsense, but utterly harmless. For a brainless diversion, this one, believe it or not, works.

The plot to this Christmas television movie is pretty flimsy. It relies upon characters to act completely illogically. For those of you don't know it already, I'll give a rundown. Basically, Melissa Joan Hart is a screw-up whose parents nag her about her life. She somehow manages to snag a rich, good-looking boyfriend. He dumps her right before they are supposed to meet her parents at a cabin for Christmas. So she has what I would call a psychotic break and kidnaps Mario Lopez. How she does this is the beginning of many far-fetched happenings in the movie. Basically she plans on using Lopez as a stand-in for her boyfriend at Christmas with her family.

The movie is surprisingly funny and the characters likable. However, prepare yourself for lots of convenient lapses of logic in order for the plot to work. Lopez allowing himself to be taken prisoner. Lopez not trying very hard to escape. Hart's family believing her ridiculous excuse for why Lopez is claiming to be kidnapped. Lopez getting a phone and not calling 911. After alerting his girlfriend about what happened, he decides to go along with Hart's plan. His reasoning made no sense really but it's needed to allow his hostility towards her to cool for the inevitable happy ending. Still, it works more than it should, in large part due to the likability of the cast.

Give it a shot if you see it on TV. It's better than most TV movies these days. But if you have ever been in a relationship with someone as unstable as Hart is here, you might feel less generous about the film and its premise.

I love Christmas movies!

I watch as many as I possibly can throughout December, but let's face it... the plots can be kind of redundant for Christmas movies.

Holiday in Handcuffs presented a NEW story line. While it was a little predictable as plots go, this particular story was new.

It was funny, warm, and light-hearted. The story is a "chick flick" but, even my husband laughed throughout.

Growing up with Saved by the Bell and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.. it was fun to see Mario Lopez and Melissa Joan Hart "all grown up." If you're looking for fun, light-hearted, holiday fare with an original storyline... I recommend this movie.

As far as ABC Family movies go, this one was at the top! Everyone could act and practically none of the lines made me even close to cringing, which is what normally happens when I watch a TV movie.

Miss Hart did a great job and wasn't in the least a cliché character. I was a little dubious at first about Mario Lopez being her love interest in the movie, but it worked out really well.

Another thing that I was happy about was that it didn't to the boring, repetitive "Christmas is about spending time with your family" failed plot. It actually had interesting characters and a funny plot line.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to have a good time watching a movie.