Holiday Engagement

Hillary (Bonnie Somerville) is finally looking forward to a Thanksgiving dinner at her demanding mother Meredith's house (Shelley Long). You see, this thirty something, newspaper writer has finally found a great catch named Jason to bring home! Jason is an up and coming attorney, good-looking, and smart; Meredith should be happy. Yet, a couple of days before the occasion, Jason dumps Hillary! He has been offered a promotion in Pittsburgh, away from the East Coast where her family lives, and she has been dragging her feet about a move. Then, too, with Hillary talking about children while Jason is trying to concentrate on torts, the break-up seems inevitable. But, Holy Fiancé, Batman, what will Hill tell Mom? She won't! With a friend's help, Hillary HIRES an actor, David (Jordan Bridges) to play Jason's role, with the promise of airline tickets Hill won in a contest. Naturally, David has to cram to get the details right, for his last job was being a costumed cell phone! Yet, when they make it to Meredith's house, all goes initially well. David/Jason charms Meredith and gets along well with Dad and Hill's sisters (one is Hayley Duff). But, small quirks do burst forth. David and Hill never seem too "kissy kissy", causing some concern, and David makes a few small mistakes in his new role. To complicate things even more, the REAL Jason comes calling on the day of the actual holiday. What a fine mess you've got us into, Hill! This is an engaging romantic comedy that genre fans will like. Yes, its a tried and true plot but its still great fun. Somerville, Bridges and Long make a great trio, while the supporting actors are nice as well. The production also looks good, with nice sets, costumes, and art direction, along with a steady pace of direction. Nuf said, for fans, so if you are on of those, hustle to the place where you grab DVDs.

If you are avoiding this movie because you dislike the Duff sisters, fear not. Even though Haley Duff gets top billing, she doesn't get more than about 10 minutes of screen time, for much of which she's in the background, and maybe five lines of dialogue.

This movie is only slightly more improbable than a lot of seasonal romantic comedies. The trope of bringing an imposter as your date to a a family event is not really grounded in reality anyway, so if you're willing to suspend disbelief that far, it's a nice enough diversion for a couple of hours around Thanksgiving.

The cast is reasonably solid, if under-exercised, with some halfway decent comedy chops available (but not accessed) in Shelley Long and Sam McMurray. The two leads are cute and sad by turns, mostly at appropriate moments, and sing well together for one nice scene. Other supporting characters... well, they look their parts and speak their lines but don't expect to find gold in their emotional range.

The script and performances didn't quite gel, leaving plenty of avenues for both comedy and heart under-utilized. Real dramatic situations were barely nodded at in passing while the most potentially humorous moments were signalled more by the characters' laughter than by any similar urge in the audience.

If you combined 'The Family Stone' (where only Sarah Jessica Parker is lacking the necessary depth of character) with 'My Best Friend's Wedding' (where everything is deliberately shallow and the moments of heart stand out better for it), and made a college film class movie, this is about what you'd get.

When I heard the concept it I remembered me of a blockbuster film that came out several years before this one that did very well...but this one, with the weird set up, the overly judgmental mother and lack luster acting...

This is becoming a staple of Hallmark films the past 5 years or so. For every good film there's like 10 bad ones, and this one was bad.

In the end it wasn't even worth using as background noise because every time I would hope the scene I wanted was gonna get better...it got worse. Only ONE good scene in the whole film, took near the end of the film... wasn't worth it.

7.4 stars.

I've been watching nothing but Hallmark the past 5 weeks and of all the 130+ Christmas movies I've seen, this one is an anomaly. The formula is the same, but with a different feel. I am of the opinion that the whole production, and process, the very essence of this movie is a couple of deviations from the norm. This is refreshing, enjoyable, and original. I really felt the actors, all of them meshed nicely (even the Duff). The leads are both quite adorable, he's very suave, but likable and down-to-earth and the piano and singing scenes were my favorite. She has a very charismatic feel to her, far above the mainstream Hallmark in my opinion.

My ex-wife and I had that same connection, we were both in choirs growing up. I played the guitar, and a bit of piano, she sang like a bird. It's a magical thing what music can do for a relationship. Alas it did not save my marriage, but it helped us stay best friends for many years, and we collaborated with various bands and musical programs even after our divorce. You see, music is a wonderful gift.

This is quite an endearing movie, despite the various issues with the flow, lighting, and sound, which all seemed intermittently off. The script was well written, the chemistry was good, however the romance was a bit awkward, sometimes convincing, sometimes not.

19 November 2017. Somehow Holiday Engagement manages to avoid the blatant stereotypical, over the top performances of the typical romance comedies. Instead, the script allows the actors to make dumb fools of themselves in a more authentic way, putting themselves in situations that oftentimes, real people can laugh at afterwards. Like Sandra Bullock in The Proposal (2009), the dialogue is witty and intelligent, the storyline is consistent and thoughtfully believable. This a funny and enjoyable movie experience that is a notch above most Christmas romance comedies.