Lucky Christmas

I am not usually too picky when it comes to cheesy holiday movies, and it takes a lot for me to not finish any show or movie once I have started watching it. However, I was so annoyed by the stupidity of the characters that I turned it off less than halfway through the movie. A Christmas movie should put you in the holiday spirit. Not this one. Instead of settling in to enjoy a festive movie, I became more and more irritated. The plot was convoluted and predictable. While I have no complaints about the majority of the actors and their performances, I could not stand to look at the leading man's buddy for one more minute. He was repulsive in character and so unappealing in appearance that it was hard to believe anyone would be his friend or go along with anything he wanted to do. I could not stand looking at him for another minute. If ignorance doesn't get under your skin, maybe you will enjoy it, but otherwise, avoid this movie at all costs!

Well, I use to like the most Christmas movies but this one was a hard one to really like. Actually I found it very stressful to watch. Even the end was stressful and gave me no relief, as these movies use to. I will not be more specific because I don't want to give any spoiler.

It started with bad conditions right away. Several characters were unlikable from the start. They made bad decisions and made you very much question their characters and moral. After that it was hard to feel any positive feelings for them and to really root for anyone.

Their relationship also made several not credible jumps forward that made me surprised. It felt very rushed sometimes. Overall the movie felt unprofessional at several occasions. Other times they acted well and it felt credible.

So with a plot where they wouldn't have made these questionable things and some better direction this movie could have been much much better. It had some potential.

Now this movie is 14 years old and Hallmark seems to have learned. So according to my opinion they now makes much better movies, without such questionable decisions and characters in the leading roles in them.

Elizabeth Berkley is once again the freshest thing in an otherwise stale movie, this one made-for-TV. Sorry yuletide concoction attempts to equate car theft, a lottery win, ice hockey and last-chance boy-girl romance with the holiday spirit. Financially-strapped single mom (whose husband disappeared somewhat mysteriously before the story begins) has her car stolen with a special "Christmas lottery ticket" in the glove compartment. Of course the ticket is a winner--worth an underachieving one million dollars--and of course the guy involved in the car-nabbing is a handsome bachelor with a soft spot for struggling moms and their offspring. Berkley actually manages to make her scenes tender and believable, however the rest of this Hallmark Channel presentation is rather bedraggled.

"Lucky Christmas" has an opening that might tempt some to think this won't be a very good film for the holidays. But once it gets past two grown men, Mike and Joe, drinking beer as they toss Joe's family mementos into a barrel fire, the story takes on some new twists and angles with a single mom her young son.

The lucky aspect of this film is a state lottery in Michigan that each week from Thanksgiving to Christmas will pick a winner for one million dollars. The plot develops around that when the singly mom, Holly, has a winning lottery ticket about two weeks before Christmas. But several things happen that keep her from having her ticket to cash in by midnight on Christmas Eve.

These characters will come together, along with a few more, in an unusual and refreshingly different Christmas movie. The three principals in the cast are all very good. Elizabeth Berkley is Holy, Jason Gray-Stanford is Mike, and Michell Kummen plays Holly's son, Max.

This is a good Christmas film about hard work, trust, kindness and family. Most people should enjoy it.

About ten minutes into this Hallmark Christmas movie, I was thinking that this was going to a variation on Rene Clair's 1931 movie, LE MILLION, in which a poor man in a Paris tenement wins the big lottery -- and loses the ticket. Alas, despite some good acting, particularly from Jason Gray-Stanford, best known for his role as the klutzy police detective in the MONK TV series and good work by Elizabeth Berkley as the chef who could really use the million-dollar lottery ticket, this is a rather straightforward story without much in the way of jokes .... a comedy if not a farce. In addition, the problems that hang over the movie for almost its entire length serve not to make it suspenseful -- will he figure out how to get that ticket back to her without blowing his chances? -- but mildly depressing.

Still, the story is a good one, the actors are very good and if the direction makes me think that the point is the money, rather than the people.... well, maybe it is.