46yroldmale

Sergio Di Zio wonderfully underplays his role as Harold, the Christmas angel that has a no nonsense approach to true love. I am coming at this from a different perspective than most people who will watch this film because I have lost love to death, knowing that I will never again be with my wife during this life. Casual couples who take one another for granted may be caught up in in the same predicament as Corrine and Dave in the film if they refuse to put themselves out for love. At the center of the simple storyline is that Corrine's grandfather had to go off to war and never came back. He loved fully, but his relationship was cut short through no fault of his own. In what I think is the pivotal scene when angel Harold unbelievably asks Dave, "You're not willing to fight for her?" we see the pathos of true love and his all-consuming disappointment in casual love. I certainly felt it. I was with Harold all the way. Don't take love for granted, it's embedded in human beings and human beings are fragile creatures.

My goodness. As I am writing, this movie has a 5.8 rating. How anybody could choose to watch a movie called A Bride For Christmas and come away disappointed with this movie is completely lost on me. I mean, what were they expecting? Were they perhaps caught off guard when there was a wedding/Christmas theme? I was expecting a bride, and Arielle Kebbel was a really, really good one. She so reminds me of watching Katherine Heigl in little movies like this one she used to make not too many years ago. She is adorable here, which is what I was expecting in a movie where "Bride" is prominent in the title. I was expecting a wedding and I was expecting Christmas. Past that I was hoping for a well written script. This one is sweet, thoughtful and pretty clever considering it sticks to familiar story lines. What it comes down to is whether you want to watch a well made movie about A Bride For Christmas or you want to watch something else. When I sat down for this movie, I was expecting they'd show me a sweet movie about a cute bride at Christmas. Given those parameters, this Christmas movie highly exceeded my expectations.

Hiding behind the facade of being the perfect politically correct movie, as it turns out this may have been the most ironic movie of the year. The film does a wonderful and sensitive job of showing how gay relationships are as sweet as heterosexual relationships, evoking the pain as well as the potential of fulfilled romance in coming out. The irony, of course is that all the marketing of the movie is toward the film being a heterosexual Valentines Day movie; "She said yes!". Why keep that aspect of the film behind closed doors? If it was because they were looking for a "Crying Game" type moment it would be understandable, but I think in 2010 we are way beyond gay being shocking, and it would be wrong headed to think the movie would have you come away thinking that a loving, gay relationship is supposed to be anything less than natural.