Un Noël qui vient du cœur

Rebecca Dalton shines as Allie, a good-natured teacher laid off due to budget cuts and ended up employed by a wealthy family to decorate their home for Christmas. While there was the obvious potential for the story to go full-on Hallmark after they introduced Allie to Gordon, the overworked single dad (played by the awesome Aaron Ashmore) who neglected his two daughters, there wasn't enough screen time between the two to flesh out their employer-employee relationship, much less anything beyond. Gordon's two daughters, Allie's best friend Tony, Gordon's butler Daniel plus the old couple at the community centre left very little time for any kind of budding Christmas romance.

While the movie adds nothing new to the genre, it was at least warm from start to finish.

The one thing that really bugged me though about this movie was how bad the soundtrack was. While I get that most of these movies don't get enough budget for proper soundtracks, this one sounded cheap and hollow and clashed more than a few times with the pacing and editing, and ruined many pivotal scenes.

I hate to say this but had this movie been a Hallmark production, it would've easily gotten at least 7 stars from me.

I saw the title and expected something goofy. The beginning with the early scenes at the community center didn't convince me otherwise. But soon after it becomes apparent that this is basically the Nanny premise, even though I don't think that word ever came up. I'm glad the writers didn't use up a lot of screen time establishing Allie's unemployment. So many movies spend time setting up the unemployment, the-dumped-by-boyfriend, or up-for-promotion premise. The scene at the community center was needed to establish relationships that come into play later.

The tone of the movie is quite upbeat with a couple of minor exceptions. The rival girlfriend is gone fairly quickly. Once the premise of the nanny at Christmas is established, the plot is predictable with one exception. Clearly there is going to be a conflict just before the climax, but this conflict was a poor choice. Personally, I don't see how anyone with Allie's experience with kids could have allowed it to happen.

Rebecca Dalton and Aaron Ashmore has a nice chemistry. I've seen Dalton before a few times and I thought this role was good for her. She does the optimistic artistic woman very well. She is also a very beautiful woman which probably causes some people to dismiss her acting.

The actors were all wonderful in their own lane but together their chemistry didn't work well which made their acting terrible. It's a christmas movie that does make you feel a little bit warm, but the warmth doesn't succeed as it contains the same story for a lot of movies.

It is a sweet story with a rather weak script. I was a bit worried at the start, as the first 20 minutes or so were not so good; there were some awkward acting and dialogue, I thought. For example, the 'clean the bathroom' line at the Santa Squad shop (when they were at the bubblegum dispenser) seemed odd (as opposed to funny, which I think is what the writer was going for there). That said, the movie did improve. Rebecca Dalton (playing Allie) had a decent performance. The scenes with her and the children were the strongest scenes of the film. She did a good job here, giving off a warm and fun vibe to her performance. Aaron Ashmore (playing Gordon) was not bad. I prefer him in Killjoys (he is great in that series) to this. He had some awkward acting at times, especially early on and towards the end of the movie, I thought. The chemistry between the two was not great. However, his scenes (towards the middle) with Allie and the children were warm and fun. He had a good performance in those scenes. The supporting cast was pretty good. Chris Sandiford (playing Tony) had a kind and gentle vibe to his performance, which I liked. The two children, Molly Lewis as Iris and Hattie Kragten as Rose, both had cute performances. Again, for me, it was the scenes with them and Allie or them with Allie and Gordon that were the strongest. The scenery, props, and sets were fine, though I was not a fan of that house. Did anyone notice that the two large snowmen were made of cotton balls? You could see the fibers sticking out. It was strange as the two smaller ones were clearly made of snow. Overall, it is a good enough Lifetime Christmas movie with some fun and cute family scenes.

How could you not love a simple love story -lonely children, hard working dad, beautiful help. Forget about picking the storyline to pieces and sit back and enjoy it - it's a Xmas movie! Bring it on.....