Le Noël des héros

6/10 - sweet Hallmark flick will be one to come back to in future years

I really enjoyed this movie.

Being ex military and loving Christmas, I know how hard it is to be away from your loved ones. I also loved receiving and writing letters to my sister and pen pals. So this movie really touched my heart.

This was a really nice feel good movie and I'm so glad I picked it for my 100 Christmas movies challenge.

I like military movies and i love Christmas movies so this was a win win for me. I will watch it again.

Riley Finn returns from the secret mission he left Buffy for all those years ago, to find Sunnydale much more Christmassy and Buffy to be replaced by Audrey, a local coffee shop owner and generally the nicest person on the planet!

Okay, so it is Marc Blucas but he plays Staff Sergeant Matt Evans and he still reminds me of Riley and if he appears in uniform then he is Riley and will forever be! Matt has been getting letters from one of his soldiers' sisters for the last year (not sure if his friend new about this or approved but let's not worry about that!) and when he is sent stateside, he goes to see here. Audrey(Melissa Claire Egan- an American daytime TV star turned Hallmark heroine), the letter writing sister runs a local coffeeshop and wants to expand but in the meantime she is trying to give a Happy Christmas to as many servicemen and women as she can, but is having problems getting the venue and money to do it. Her and Matt get on fantastically well, even better in person than in ink but she's busy and he's trying to decide what to do with his life, so we are going to have some bumps before the end. But it is a Hallmark movie and one that is based on returning soldiers and love and Christmas, so I'm not worried, it will all be alright in the end and Riley might not get his Buffy but honestly Audrey is nicer and less likely to stab him with a stake.

Homecoming for heroes, Christmas, love story, Hallmark you're crying, I'm not, it's you. You just think I'm crying through the tears in your own eyes!

My wife and I enjoy Hallmark movies, they are predictable with clean characters and clean story lines. This one is better than most of them. The end credits have many references to places in Connecticut, so it surely was actually filmed there.

Small town 30-something lady runs a small shop, which includes coffee from her own bean-roasting operation in the old family barn. She sends "care packages" to her brother stationed overseas. One 40-something, career sargent becomes the beneficiary of some of her goodies and they begin a pen pal type of letter writing habit.

As luck would have it he gets stationed to her area for his last weeks while he decides if he will re-enlist or not. Naturally they hit it off but an obstacle is his job offer to teach at a military school in Virginia, and she is attached to her home area.

Lots of other themes run through the story, most of them involving Christmas Holiday planning for the big yearly festival. The script is very well written and the actors are very authentic in their roles. This is, to us, one of the better Hallmark movies we have watched.

At home on DVD from our public library.

Audrey (Melissa Claire Egan), a partner in running a cafe, has been exchanging letters for a year with soldier Matt (Marc Blucas). We see them finally meet and how this has an impact on both their lives and the lives of those around them. Both a romantic drama and a salute to the armed forces, you see the story play out from the perspectives of both protagonists, which is nice. It's a good production which is very engaging with great performances, especially from the two leads.