A Christmas Star

An interesting topic but the script is weak. Sara Canning was miscast, she overacts. Daniel Lissing is good, believable as a county ranger. The rest of the cast are ok. The story got dumb towards the end. Nice location.

Up and coming female astronomer in New York crunches data and figures out there is a 78% likelihood a yet undiscovered meteor shower event will take place on one of five days leading up to Christmas. And the prime viewing location is a peak just outside a small upstate community. So she gets clearance and takes a telescope with her to the location. (All filmed in Canada.)

Once there she finds a mixup with hotel reservations and is aided by a local family that own and run the hotel, she is put up and befriended by all of them, including a nice man who has been told his ranger job is being eliminated for lack of funding. As things unfold and complications with the Christmas festival and its bright lights make things a bigger challenge, the astronomer and the ranger begin to take a serious liking to each other.

My wife and I watched it at home on Amazon streaming. It is a cute story with attractive people, very much like a Hallmark movie. Just don't take any of the highly flawed astronomy seriously. Plus, they even got "reflector" and "refractor" telescopes mixed up in the dialog. But hey, it's just a movie.

It was a nice story and acting was good, but it was hard for me an old astronomer type to not ignore the "Literally Glaring" faults in the filming. Come on, massive lights at the mountain cabin with no electric service there? Roaring fire and lights right next to the telescope. Massive lights below and only turned off the extra Christmas lights.

Light reflecting off the atmospheric humidity would have destroyed any good telescope reading at the cabin. Total lights off for quarter mile and a flashlight only used to setup is all that is allowed. Been then and done this often. But then they could not film a true professional astronomer in action in total darkness.

So I let that all pass and enjoyed the story and good acting by all. They should have at least not placed 1000 Christmas lights on a remote mountain cabin. It did not look remote at all.

I do give them credit for at least trying an astronomical story line. GAC has been good with their stories and acting but too glitzy for this story to come true.

My astronomy-loving husband and I both LOVED this movie. It focused on the relationship between the characters and not just a superficial "romance." It also showed realistic problem-solving involving the differences in the characters lives. My favorite 2021 GAC Christmas movie!

The premise was a promising one and the setting was quite unique for a Christmas film. Have liked the leads in other things too, with more familiarity with Daniel Lissing. So this average rating and mixed feelings review has not been given as someone who hates Christmas or who had the intent to hate it, actually the complete opposite on both counts. Despite the basic formula story wise being not much new, there was still a lot of promise because of being intrigued by how it would work around the setting.

'A Christmas Star' was one of those mixed feelings sort of films. It is not a terrible film and there are far worse films out there. It is also not particularly good and could have done more with the premise and the setting, it also ends a lot weaker than how it starts. 2021 was a very up and down year for Christmas films, of which this is neither one of the best or worst, and of GAC Family's films of the ones seen it's not near as good as 'Much Ado About Christmas' but is much better than 'The Great Christmas Switch'.

Will start with 'A Christmas Star's' good things. It is nicely photographed and has a quite magical atmosphere in its best parts. Always love nostalgic festive soundtracks, and 'A Christmas Star' is no exception to that. There is nothing mean-spirited about it and there are moments of charm and heart.

Lissing does a nice subtly charismatic amiable job in the male lead role and most of the cast are fine despite having to work with stereotypical roles. The film starts off very well and really liked the setting.

Sarah Canning however came over as very stiff and the chemistry between her and Lissing is very uneven, with it generally needing a lot more spark. The dialogue has its moments but really could have done with more energy and too much is very forced and cheesy. The direction tends to be routine.

Furthermore, the story is the kind that starts off well but the second half is too conventional and silly and then rounded off with an unrealistically over neat cop out passing for an ending.

Concluding, watchable but far from great. 5/10.