Un castillo por Navidad

Is it Oscar worthy? No. Is it just the right amount of cheesy for a Christmas movie? Yes. Worth at least once viewing, the rom com story is expected and heartwarming. The acting is decent enough and the leads have a surprising amount of chemistry.

An average Christmas movie from Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert.

Like everyone else who watched the movie, I was impressed by two things... Brooke Shields and the incredible beauty of Scotland.

It's a shame that, with a population of 5.5 million people, there were no actors available to play the parts in this movie. The story line is poor enough but the pathetic attempts at Scots accents from the male cast are woeful, they land somewhere between Ireland and Whisky Galore and make me cringe listening to them. The "plot" was pretty obvious from the start but the kitch and utter nonsense presented is the worst type of portrayal of Scotland possible.

Yes it's rubbish but in the best possible way. I don't think anyone involved thought it was anything but what it is. Christmas schmaltz. It's great to see Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes as leads but there ain't an awful lot of chemistry between them I felt. It's not the worst movie but it's not the best either. It's fluff for Sunday afternoon. We'll gloss over the obvious nonsense about reality being involved in any of it, locations, accents and such like. If you're expecting anything other than a Hallmark movie you might be disappointed. It's fun, it's silly and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I get it - it's a Hallmark Xmas movie - yes, it's going to be predictable, potentially even cheesy - all acceptable for the genre. But why does that mean it has to be badly done? That the writing must be execrable? That it can't at least be professionally executed? Romantic and predictable doesn't HAVE to equal poor quality - "Bridgerton", anyone? When will the powers that be in TV land recognise that there IS a big market for happily-ever-after, but that doesn't mean we want to see bad acting, bad writing and overall, something which is just unnecessarily shoddy?! If you make it well, (to paraphrase) we will watch in huge numbers. If you do it on the cheap (like this) you'll get - well, what you paid for. And the poor reviews that go with it.