Mission : Romance de Noël

Eloise Mumford should be one of the Hallmark Queens by now. My initial reaction was that she was too beautiful to play a 6 year Marine vet, but she really captured the angst and confusion of her character.

Sean Faris' judge, on the other hand, was wildly unrealistic both in and out of the courtroom. I'm a lawyer and I've never seen a judge smile so much or behave so oddly in court. And, as other reviewers have noted, the townsfolk (and the staging) had a creepy Stepford/Body Snatchers feel.

There was also a line about how a local tree farm donates 1,000 trees to vets every year. That also seemed wildly unrealistic.

Still, there are some sweet moments and a great ending.

And Eloise Mumford.

Marine Veteran and dog lover finds herself stranded and gets a welcome from the town she can't even imagine. Both leads are great Sean Faris as Joe and Eloise Mumford as Grace.

Enjoyable, worth a watch. Have tissues for the ending!

7/10 - festive Hallmark Christmas flick full of joy and familiar tropes and honors veterans across the world

From multiple scenes in the movie you can pretty well guess how it will end. However it still pulls at your heartstrings.

Sean Faris and Eloise mumphord were in Christmas with Holly and to be honest they had better chemistry in that movie than in this one.

But all in all it is a fantastic movie

Animal lovers, take your first step in the military Christmas genre with A Veteran's Christmas. It stars a woman who was honorably discharged and misses her K9 dog, who was not discharged along with her. It just breaks your heart when she looks at pictures of them together on her phone. She may get a healthy dose of the Christmas spirit when she gets stranded in a small town (yes, this is a Hallmark movie), but she still misses her dog terribly.

I loved Eloise Mumford's performance. She really seemed like a veteran. Her eyes were never fully happy, and it was very clear she'd seen the horrors of war. Her mannerisms were masculine and sometimes stilted, successfully putting across her awkwardness at civilian life. But besides Eloise's convincing performance, the rest of the cast isn't much to write home about. It feels like a movie that was made by a church group - which is fine, but it doesn't have the best production values or most interesting screenplay out there. There's also a heavy religious theme to the movie, which will appeal to some and not to others. For a simple movie with an unexpected tug on your heart (yes, I teared up at the end), check this one out. Grab your hankies for a double-feature with Holiday for Heroes.