A Royal Christmas on Ice

After last week bragging on GAF for stepping up their game this year, we come to this.

Weak dialogue, weak acting, and a contrived and unconvincing story line had us deciding to abandon this film sometime during the Christmas party scene.

Seriously, how long can you milk the angst from a dropped bakery cake? According to these writers, for a VERY long time. There was a bit of self-awareness when the female lead's friend asked her why she was so hostile to the guy (who by the way, SHE bumped into in the action, not the other way around as they continually stated in dialogue) when what happened was an accident and he went well out of his way to make it right.

Exactly.

Dialogue with the ubiquitous 'old boyfriend' was weak and unconvincing. Dialogue back with the male lead's royal family was awkward and glacial in pace.

We could finally take no more, despite the fact we're ice skating fans and were drawn by the premise.

That's what comedians used to say after a joke fell flat, not unlike this movie.

This premise of royalty meeting American commoners and giving up everything for them is the fairy tale, but how many of these schlock-fests are we going to be forced to endure?

Forced is the wrong word, I suppose: nobody made me watch this. And as another reviewer pointed out, there has been significant improvement in the GAV offerings this year. But not this one.

The lead actress had her appeal, but the rest of the cast reminded me of a local theater production.

There were some performances that were not awful: the baker had a nice way about him, and the best friend was ok.

William Baldwin didn't add anything by his presence, not that I would expect any different.

It's too bad. This looked like it might be ok from the trailer. Guess that's why they make them.

It was nice to hear about, and finally watch, what Fred Olen Ray was filming in our village (East Aurora, NY). Sticking to a tried-and-true formula of "Prince Comes to America and Falls In Love", including bits of area footage of his earlier film "A Price For Christmas", Ray and his team put together a good cast and a comfortable story, with characters worth caring about, on a fledgling network that appears to be accumulating Hallmark talent and movies, which is just fine with me - it's nice to find movies that are worth watching more than once. As far as Hallmark is concerned, they seem to be going into more contemporary stories, whereas the Great American Family channel seems to be more interested in traditional programming; both have their place.

This was probably the worst Christmas movie I've ever seen. I would find myself being embarrassed for the cast.

Abigail was a pretty girl but strange. Very negative and snarly. Obviously, her glass was halfway empty.

The scene when she is skating and just holding her arm out with a slow turn and John clapping for her was pretty bad.

John was nice looking but when he would smile his smile at her with the look in his eyes, it was freaky. In real life I would think he was a stalker and was making evil plans. Her ex boyfriend was just thrown in a couple of times, for what reason I have no idea.

In fact, the entire movie was like that, not really ever running smoothly. Throwing in a hamburger- peppermint casserole didn't help at all.

If this is an example of new Christmas movies, it's not anything to look forward to.

God bless it, I think sometimes it could be the right move to not accept the part if offered.

Unfortunately, not a great script; actually pretty horrible or it's that the casting was that bad. Maybe with better directing it might have been an okay movie. Also very little chemistry between actors. Most of the scenes felt forced like the actors were bored with the script. I was unfamiliar with Jonathan Stoddard (Prince John) but felt he was the only redeeming quality about the movie and probably why I kept going back to finish it. For the most part, he seems believable in most of his scenes. Peter Johnson (Al the baker & Santa) didn't have many scenes but I also thought he was believable.