Un Noël au cœur tendre

I thought the male lead was quite good in this. Sure his part didn't make any sense at all, but I watched it all the way through because he was such a consistently believable nice guy. The little girl was cute, a decent actress for that age, and her singing was nice.

The female lead, on the other hand, was booooooring. Wow. She wasn't given much of a script to work with, but it's like she didn't even try. Also, the script had her be mean one minute and then nice the next minute, not interested and then super interested, acting like an adult then a teen. And she was passive aggressive and had no communication skills. It's just not believable that the male lead is interested in her at all once she does a few of her intense mood swings. He'd be running the other way!

I barely made it through 30 minutes of this movie. This is the second year I've watched all Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies. This is the first one I'm unable to watch. The acting is horrible, the characters are unbelievable and I can't connect to the story. The Hallmark actors/actresses are much better because they've made so many of them. It seems Lifetime finds the most underrated and unknown actors to star in their films. I'm not wasting my DVR space for anymore of these Lifetime Christmas movies. I'm sticking to Hallmark. Sorry not sorry.

The story is totally based on the formula where mom and dad are selling the business Sadie grew up to love. But it's like the formula got lost in translation from another language. The elements are obvious, but so many things don't flow right. They don't make sense.

It starts out fine. I liked that Sadie not only didn't get fired, but she wasn't under any pressure from her boss. All the pressure was her own disappointment. Immediately her jerk of a boyfriend calls her and tells her he is too busy to join her for Christmas. At that point, Sadie is done with him. Then mom and dad drop the bombshell. And Sadie accidentally runs into Alex, the new owner, without knowing it's him. Then she has to train him. They grow closer together. Sadie meets Francie the daughter and of course they hit it off. And Sadie has to plan a big party on short notice and a snowstorm throws a wrench in her plans. All good. It's totally by the numbers, but it's going as the viewer would expect..

Then things get strange. There's the usual misunderstanding, but that's treated like a tiny blip. The ex-boyfriend comes into play, but why? The way it's done is totally pointless and the screen time would have been better used smoothing out the climax. The climax is a total cluster. The outcome is predictable, but it makes no sense how it gets there. As another reviewer points out, the character development explaining certain things is totally lacking. All of a sudden, the characters are just there. The epilogue is another thing that seems pointless - the way it's done, it's almost pointless. But then maybe it's artsy.

The acting is mostly good. Malone Thomas and Jason Burkey have mixed chemistry, but mostly it's good.

As many people have already stated, the leading lady was...painful to watch. Not sure how this particular actress got the part but I'm convinced a piece of wood would have been more convincing. (Maybe that's why she's so pouty/mopey throughout). The leading man met typical hallmark standard, though given the ability of his love interest chemistry would have been more convincing with said piece of wood. The little girl who played his daughter - well, I'm not going to be mean but it was not great. Was she cute? Yeah. Apparently that was the only requirement.

Typical hallmark plot, entirely predictable but somehow still unpleasant.

Has Malone Thomas taken ANY acting lessons ??? she was just blandly script reading - no passion - no acting - no facial expressions, nothing. The rest of the cast were almost as bad, - long pauses between lines. If this is the best that the casting director can get, even for a minor movie channel then Hollywood really is in trouble.

Please Hallmark, before casting, make sure the actors/actresses are up to a good standard of actual acting !