La Liste de Noël

It's a toss up between which is worse, the acting, the script or the background music.

I put this as background while I was setting up the Christmas Tree and i'm so glad I didn't put 100% of my attention of it because this was bad.

So, same plot as always: granddaughter goes home during the holidays because Grandma had an accident. Grandma forces daughter and granddaughter, who had been apart for a while, to spend time together while doing the typical activities of the season.

This was sad. I mean, the story itself was cute, it was about family and the romance was only the secondary plot. But, there was no chemistry, bad acting, bad direction. The whole thing was bad. Besides, they commit a felony during the movie and we are just gonna let it slide?

If we compare, Hallmark movies are Oscars worthy compared to this.

Another film about happy Christmas, with an American dream, white, blond, blue-eyed and happy families, being happy, in their perfect and happy places, cute, totally convenient, sometimes embarrassing, another Christmas film, we reveal ...

Over the past two years or so, my Christmas film completest quest (made up for primarily those from Hallmark and Lifetime) has been very interesting but also hit and miss. Some were very charming, easy to digest and lovely watches with good casts, providing that one doesn't expect too much. Others were very dull, cheesy, too sentimental and badly written and acted with excessively predictable and thin stories (due to doing nothing new with familiar formulas).

Unfortunately, 'A Perfect Christmas List' is one of the films in the latter category. Have actually seen worse Christmas films overall, but what could have been a decent warm-hearted film turned out to be anything but with nearly everything falling as flat as one can get. 'A Perfect Christmas List' is not a complete and utter disaster as there is one performance that stops it from being so, and lifts it to a very weak film with many terribly executed elements.

That good performance comes from a charming and perky Marion Ross.

Also thought that the production values were quite nice, especially the scenery.

Everything else fails. The rest of the acting is a mix of looking ill at ease to shameless overacting. Despite his part not being massive, Richard Karn does grate from trying far harder than he needed to and it does stick out. Didn't find myself caring for most of the flimsily fleshed out to the point of dullness and stale stereotypical characters, with only Ross' having much spark or rootability. The romantic chemistry is practically non-existent and the romance itself in writing is completely charmless and strained, not to mention very underwritten.

Furthermore, the music is too loud and too much of one mood. The dialogue continually sounds awkward, and is very cheesy and over-sentimental too. The pacing is sluggish (direction likewise), especially in the over-stretched middle act. The story is very thin and predictable, the final third is of the kind that has a contrived dramatic situation and ends on a very pat note. The lack of warmth and charm is noticeable and the Christmas spirit didn't seem there either, it all felt bland. Do agree that the theft scene was very out of place and brought a temporarily mean spirited edge to the story.

In conclusion, weak. 3/10.

Movie based on an old sitcom trope, as a partly-overheard, misunderstood conversation leads to hijinks, and hopefully, a happier, closer family if it all works out in the end. Unfortunately, it just isn't very funny overall, and the acting isn't the best, especially considering the presence of Marion Ross and Richard Karn. Karn was particularly underused. Not that the writing gave anyone much to work with. The few touching bits, an orphanage scene and a fun supermarket musical bit, are diluted by scenes where the cast just seems bored or uncomfortable. One bizarre scene in the middle of the film should have been cut entirely. The mother and grown daughter dress in black and commit felony theft of the top eight feet of a newly planted gigantic pine tree at a mall. It may have been intended to be funny, but it comes off as being so out of place as to be very jarring and even disturbing. The family acts like it is perfectly normal to commit felony theft and they never mention it again. It doesn't seem to fit in. Surely they could have padded the run time with something that didn't make the family seem like antisocial psychos. I docked this film about two stars for the scene, leaving it with just three. That's how badly the two minutes or so ruins the intended spirit of the movie. Blows it to smithereens. I was half expecting them to maybe kidnap or steal from some orphans, too. Take away that one scene, and it's a solid 5. All in all, like many of the made for TV Christmas movies, it seems fine for having on in the background while baking cookies, wrapping presents, etc. It certainly doesn't deserve your undivided attention.