Un petit souhait pour Noël

I'm always amazed at reviews of Hallmark movies that complain about predictability or flat endings! What else do they expect? That's Hallmark for ya. I like thinking there are actually people who have wonderful Christmas traditions and family gatherings. I would love to spend Christmas in a town where I could get lost in happiness!

In this movie I was more amused that once again the women playing Paul Greene's mother is his age! Ok, she's 7 years older and his Aunt is 6 years older. This has happened before with Paul. Are they trying to make him seem younger?!

Anyway, typical Hallmark and I liked it.

Sara Thomas (Lacey Chabert) is an awesome team player at marketing firm that is basically a pushover that allows others to take advantage of her good nature. At the company's Christmas party her marketing director promotes her project as his own. Santa offers to grant a Christmas list that would will only last for 48 hours. Sara wished for courage to stand up for herself. This wish takes Sara on a journey with her firm's CEO Peter Williams (Paul Greene) that includes a road trip, confronting an unreasonable client, strained family relations, and so much more.

The chemistry between Sara and Paul is believable and you find yourself cheering for them. Chabert is my favorite HM leading lady, and Williams is also a favorite.

A Wish for Christmas is the perfect movie for the meek and mild this holiday season. Hallmark's Lacey Chabert stars as a classic pushover: she brings coffee for everyone in the office, does her colleague's work, and lets her boss steal her ideas. When she makes a Christmas wish for courage, her request is granted.

Along the way in her newfound life, Lacey takes charge of her career and starts to fall in love with her boss's boss, Paul Greene. Paul has his own demons to face, and the upbeat and slightly pushy Lacey helps him return home to face them with his family. In typical Hallmark fashion, this movie is more corny than realistic. I mean, if you'd really spent your whole life being a pushover, could you tell people off and they'd accept it? But it's Christmas, so we make allowances for cheesy plot lines, tidy endings, and embarrassingly terrible Christmas caroling. Give this one a watch when it makes a repeat appearance on television; it's not the best but it's entertaining.

But if Lacey Chabert's in it and it's Hallmark I'll usually give it a solid look. Lacey has become the Queen of Hallmark Christmas movies, she's quietly attractive, distinctive, and with a little edge to her. I really liked her last few Hallmark Christmas entries, this one seemed a little forced or something. Lacey is a marketing wiz who won't stand up for herself, at the company Christmas party she gets courage from Santa, and then gets thrown into a challenging marketing pitch with company CEO Greene. I know Greene is also a Hallmark staple (who I hadn't seen before), he was okay but something about this just didn't feel right (as opposed to, say, Once Upon a Holiday where things seemed to effortlessly flow). So I would recommend it to the Hallmark hard core but not necessarily others.

Lacey Chabert has made a niche for herself in the popular Hallmark movies of Christmas. Generally her movies have been above the norm and quite good. Unfortunately this one was not.

A Hallmark Christmas romantic comedy has a narrow range of possibilities and outcomes so four factors make it work or not.

One, is it romantic. Sorry, but not here. The male leads character was a jerk who makes his employees work on Christmas and refusing to see his family on the Holidays even though he was in town. The better romance would have been between him and Lacey's co-worker. Her role should have been expanded as it would have made the movie at least more comedic.

Two, it is funny. No, this one was not generally funny nor really tried to be.

Three, is it supported by good side characters and subplots that make the story enjoyable. This is more true here but still it was below par.

Four, does it have meaning to the Christmas season. While this is kind of true here, it still could have been set in March by finding a leprechaun as easily as it was set in the Christmas season.

All in all, while to be fair there are some good moments, specifically Lacey telling off her supervisor at the Christmas party, and nice elements generally it fails to really be romantic or funny which is not a good combination for a romantic comedy.