All I Need for Christmas

I watched the first 10 minutes of the film and almost flipped to a different movie. I wasn't familiar with Mallory Jansen (female lead) and I'd seen Dan Jeannotte (male lead) in other films and his acting wasn't great. And "app creators" are a totally over used job in Hallmark films, their writers are obsessed with them. Get real writers, all Americans aren't working in tech creating apps.

I stayed with the movie and once Dan Jeannotte's character Archer traveled to Vermont for the holidays, the movie started getting better. Dan Jeannotte's acting was better in this movie than others I've seen him in, definitely better than Mallory Jansen the female lead. The supporting cast was good and it had a good ending.

There are some great storylines going here. There are hints of some of the more common tropes. For instance, Maggie has career problems, but not exactly like so many other movies. Archer is almost unique among Christmas tropes. He is competing with his sister for the seat on the board, but is he? Archer and Piper, with her kids, have returned to the place of their one great Christmas as kids. I've never seen anything like Maggie's conundrum towards the end. Archer is the center of two relationships that face conflicts before the climax. One with Piper. One with Maggie. Maybe the one most common trope is the Christmas concert. And if the two relationship conflicts aren't enough for you, there is one more obstacle after those. I wouldn't say it is predictable.

Mallory Jansen and. Dan Jeannotte have very good chemistry. The kids are great, and so are the piggies. The dialogue is outstanding.

I didn't like a mean Emily Tennant, mostly in the sense of over competitive. She has always been a favorite of mine. I felt like she overplayed that aspect just a little.

Maggie performs twice. The lip sync is off at least the first time. I asked Jansen on X and she confirms she did all the singing. Great voice.

This is actually not far from being a really good movie. The script got a little wonky here and there, but for the most part, I really enjoyed it.

I particularly enjoyed the performances of Dan Jeanette as Archer, and Mike Dopud as Ed, both new faces to me.

The story centers around a singer, Mallory Jensen as Maggie, who is having trouble making headway in her career. Her manager suggests utilizing newfangled technology to create new music, to which she reacts angrily.

Retreating to her family Christmas tree farm, she encounters Archer who is trying to recreate the one happy Christmas he can recall. Unfortunately, he is a bigwig at the very technology company Maggie despises.

Archer is also trying to escape an extremely adversarial relationship with his sister, Emily Tennant as Piper (as a redhead no less).

It's an interesting plot, in that virtually every character needs help, and is able to offer help to each other in various ways.

Excellent supporting cast. I would particularly commend the performance of Veronica Long as Clara, who was so good as Mariah, the sweetheart actress in Lights, Camera, Christmas a couple years ago.

I have mentioned before that I am a retired musician, and I always appreciate it when I see an actor performing music for real. Kudos to Mallory Jensen for that.

Seven.

I'll give the writers credit here, since they tried to stretch beyond the most frequent of the cliches.

However, this movie was SLOW moving, and for me it took so long to develop I'd lost interest and had to regain some. The female lead was just quite unlikeable for the first half of the movie, and a little hit and miss through the second half.

The male lead was just about unbelievably patient with her and with his sister, and his sister wasn't easy to like either, right up to the "last eight minutes" climax, which is the piece of formula none of these movies are allowed to break away from.

While parts of the story were engaging, the relationship tension seemed forced and--once again--screenwriters believe they're business geniuses, which they aren't. LOL.

I've never been a bib fan of Hallmark's music themed movies- the music is usually pretty weak and pretty country. In addition, this has been a disappointing holiday movie season so I wasn't expecting much. What a pleasant surprise.

While the music still isn't great, it isn't a distraction and provides a framework for one of the underlying conflicts. Mallory Jansen has a always been a favorite and have to say this is Dan Jeannotte at his best- the most relatable believable I've seen him. In fact, the whole cast is great and (for a change this season) the important sibling relationship was given the attention it deserved as an intrinsic part of the story.

It was so nice to find a movie in this year's batch that didn't feel rushed, abbreviated or cynical. Just a pleasant, not flashy Christmas movie. I think most people will really enjoy it as I did.