An Ice Wine Christmas

Honestly, this is really hard to watch. It's a visual mess. Random stock footage and pointless cutaways. We gave up after 10 minutes as I was worried I might get eye cancer.

First off, as someone who has worked in the wine industry in Niagara-on-the-Lake for years, icewine (one word) is picked overnight, just whenever it's been super stupid cold out for a period of days (sustained -8 or lower temps). That there is a magical prediction about this is absolutely hilarious.

But let's leave that aside for now because really, who cares. I'd be willing to look past some wildly obvious errors if it was entertaining or appeared to have anyone who has previously acted in it.

The acting (in the 20 minutes I was able to sit through before my eyes bled and brain cells started jumping off the proverbial edge) was equally terrible. It's not even funny bad like "The Room". It's just... a trash fire. I'd sooner sit through a 24-hour loop of my 5 year old nephews Christmas pageant than watch another minute of this.

I will quote a legit Xmas movie in summing this up with "Talk about pissing your money away. I hope you kids see what a silly waste of resources this was."

The plot was interesting enough but this Roselyn Sanchez? Oh my...Wayyyyy poor acting and ruined the movie. Too melodramatic; too over the top critical and a most uninteresting, not well rounded character. I never thought one person could ruin a plot. She was, most distracting with an overly negative character.

Too many TV Christmas movies are "pumped" out without real forethought or GOOD designation of actors as movie characters.

Such a shame.

This being a Hallmark-style movie you're not going to get an original plot or particularly good writing. The most you can hope for is clever dialog, decent acting and maybe even some chemistry between love interests. This has none of these. I found it so tedious that I turned it off after 20 minutes and I wasn't even really paying attention anyway (cruising the web on my tablet).

Bad acting. Really bad writing although the female lead didn't seem to follow the script anyway. The scenery was mostly Hallmark standard B-roll from Canada but ironically I don't think it was from the area where they make ice wine (Niagra).

Skip It.

There is an element of gut over science, almost of magic, in this movie. I had difficulty pushing my attitude into that realm. There are plenty of movies during the Christmas season that ask you to accept that element of magic, like when a nice old man with a white beard walks out of the picture and next thing you know there is the hint that he is flying away with his reindeer. I can usually accept that and deal with such movies as Christmas fantasy. I just couldn't tell in this movie whether the movie makers were asking us to take a similar step in our minds, or whether it was simply a matter of someone with an intuition that puts together facts subconsciously. That disconnect spoiled the movie for me. It left me confused.

I'm likewise uncertain in what I think about the acting and chemistry between the leads. I didn't see the chemistry, but it may have been because of my confusion over the other issues. Certainly Roselyn Sanchez is appealing in her character of Camilla. Sanchez has an elegance about her.

I also didn't understand Camilla's indecision over her promotion offer. She's asked several times if she likes her job and she doesn't seem to know. I can understand indecision, but in this case I didn't understand the specific reasons for it.