A Very Merry Mix-Up

8.2 stars.

Well alrighty then. I did not expect a movie quite like this. In a way it seems like a live action Disney. Can't explain exactly how, but I feel it's mainly due to the whimsical female character...so innocent, hopeful. If there had been a Disney classic animated film about a gullible woman who owns an antique store, this would be the watchable live action remake. It's just sooooo sappy and uber sickly sweet romantic I think I need something savory to cleanse my palate.

In a nutshell, this is about a very intelligent, yet equally as naive woman who owns an antique shop that her father passed onto her after he died. She is dating a main of questionable tastes, a real "winner" of a salesman. He disdains her personality and life choices while constantly belittling her.

They are supposed to fly to his home so she can meet his parents over the holidays, but he has an important deal to close and takes a later flight. At the airport there is a mix-up with her luggage and a chance encounter with her boyfriend's brother. She ends up riding home with him and they hit it off, but she is faithful and pure in heart and won't betray the trust of her unworthy boyfriend.

A strange turn of events makes the rest of the story quite entertaining, so you gotta see this. 'A Very Merry Mix-Up' is very charming. I loved it!

A charming, if predictable, holiday romance.

Alicia Witt, as a sweet and artsy semi-ditz happily running her family's antique store, is engaged to a polished, money-focused, big-city real-estate salesman.

Through a series of cute travel mishaps on her way to meet his family for the first time, she ends up at the wrong house a couple of days before Christmas. That warm, happy family, by a credulity-stretching coincidence, welcomes and cherishes her in their extremely - but tastefully - decorated home. Of course they have a very nice son who falls for her, and shares interests and values that aren't on her fiancé's radar.

Complications, emotional struggles, and a happy resolution ensue.

Apart from that one weak plot coincidence to get her into the family, and the general niceness of both men when the chips are down, the only thing that annoyed me was the heroine's little speech at the end, in which she declaimed about a character issue that was not well set up.

Overall, a nice way to spend 2 hours while you're writing Christmas cards.

I really liked this Hallmark movie. It was actually pretty funny! Okay, so yes in real life they probably would have realized the misunderstanding a lot sooner and avoided much of the mess, but of course this is a movie and the unrealistic plot makes it more romantic, funny, and entertaining. I might even be willing to watch this one again!

Alicia appears in several of our favorite Hallmark Christmas films, and some of them are among our favorites specifically because of her. There are only a couple we consider duds (like the snow globe film). Her quirky style works for us.

This story sidesteps many of the Christmas romance cliches, but does retain one which becomes central to the film ... the bad boyfriend trope. However, it's handled somewhat differently and the plot moves past it with a couple of intentionally awkward scenes which reveal to Witt's character just how wrong her fiancé is for her and how right the new man she discovered by accident.

The movie is funny with lots of warm moments and the awkward scenes with her fiancé's family sell her changing idea of what she wants in a relationship and in her life.

I love movies like this, based on pure belief that there's no such thing as coincidence and everything happens as it should. Alicia Witt plays a perfectly innocent wise young woman, whose want to hold on to her father's memory by keeping his store is more about following your heart than your pocketbook. Her current (and wrong-for-her) fiancé, who is in real estate, encourages her to sell her memories (the store) and become a multi-millionaire because of the store's location. She realizes this man has no sensitivity or understanding of her feelings and who she really is. Of course, there's more to the story.....she had met another man in the most peculiar and humorous way, a way that probably really could happen. As it is said so beautifully in this movie, "Life is about Timing, and Timing is Everything in Life and Love.".