Christmas at the Holly Hotel

These Christmas romances are normally a go-to for me. They are formulaic, yes, but feature a charming and pretty woman who goes home for Christmas and in the midst of helping her parents, finds her dream job and dream man. Good so far. Until you realise that the female lead simply cannot act, that her 'charming' attempts to get out of a well-deserved speeding ticket make her look like a spoilt, petulant teenager, and nor can her 'parents'. The direction had them all sitting at a table featuring (for some reason) two bananas, a scene so dreadfully unconvincing that one found the fruit very interesting to look at! The male lead can, at least, act, but it's a small mercy given the rest of the film. Right, on that note, there's some paint I need to watch drying to wipe away the memory of this experience.

I watched with friends, and we howled with laughter at the acting and stilted script. I treasure finding movies that sincerely try so hard to hit the mark but just never can get any scene right - they have me in stitches. I realize that it was written, directed and produced by one guy, and probably on a shoestring budget, but it does make you appreciate the effort that goes into an actual Hallmark movie as opposed to a knockoff; the way they layer in music to help with scene transitions, the sound quality, the line readings, etc. The good thing is that there are so many bad things about this movie, no one person has to carry the blame for it not working. The actors can blame the script, the director can blame the producer, the writer can blame the director. Um, maybe you can blame one guy after all.

Tragically, the actual Holly Hotel it was filmed at was burned down six months after the movie was filmed there (but they are rebuilding).

This is the second Christmas romance I have seen this year, and if you know how I choose movies, I don't make a real effort to find what is good. Still, this movie has a number of good qualities. It certainly looks good, when it does. Nice stores in an ideal small town, a fancy hotel and restaurant worthy of a larger city, and decorations for the holiday. And wonderful performances by actors with fewer lines than the leads.

Wait, no snow in Michigan? There's melting snow from earlier but the comment is made that it hasn't snowed yet. I don't care about snow at Christmas, and I regard it as an inconvenience. But in a movie like this, oh yes you want it.

Let's start with the leads. I've never heard of Jesi Jensen but she is gorgeous, resembling Geena Davis when she was that age. If you look at the photo used for imdb ... well, that doesn't quite capture how great she looks in that dress on the big day. While Kathy is somewhat uptight and never really appeals to me that much, she is quite charming and convincing as she conducts a tour of her parents' hotel. I say convincing because she hates those tours. She is intelligent and capable but never quite what I am looking for in a personality. And her focus on her career may be the most important thing, unless some miracle takes place.

Mathew? Likable enough, I guess. I don't see these two getting together. And yet if this movie fits the formula, it will happen. Will it? Regardless, the ending could never happen in real life.

But the actors with only a few lines do the best job. Two in particular stand out.

Shirley Moon Koebbe is great as the 90-year-old grandmother who wants Mathew and Kathy to be a couple. She says what she wants and doesn't seem to care what people think. After all, she's 90 and can do what she likes.

Grover McCants does an amazing job too. I won't explain how the President of the United States ends up doing this, but he reads "Twas the Night Before Christmas" as well as I have ever seen it done. He has other lines which "Uncle Tyler" delivers very well.

And we're not through. Kristen Ryda seems more like the perky romantic lead in a movie like this, but this movie calls for uptight. Still, she makes a great contribution first at dinner and then in many calls with best friend Kathy.

Andrew Dawe-Collins and Nina Kircher as Mr. Hurst and wife Nora are also great. They have a secret which it is probably best not to mention, but like Grandma, their goal is to give Kathy her holiday spirit and make Mathew a part of it.

And even Deborah Chenault-Green as the hotel's head chef, who has only one scene. And yet she is very good and should have gotten to do more. It's curious that she doesn't show up again, but the reason is the movie's big crisis. Still, the movie could have done more with her even if she was unable to do her job.

One big omission. A missing daughter and not even a phone call? Don't they have phones in Colorado where she lives?

I was not happy with the music. Let others decide whether it was good. A female soloist sings "O Come All Ye Faithful" for diners. Her style was not my taste. Other than that, there may have been some actual Christmas music, which I define as songs I already knew and not songs I never heard of which have Christmas-related lyrics. I personally didn't care for the songs or the performances. There was a montage of the happy couple shopping which had instrumental music that didn't seem familiar but would fit perfectly on contemporary worship radio. A genre I can't stand.

Family friendly? I don't recall anything objectionable.

It's a good enough movie, but like I said last week, if you watch a lot of them, this may not be all that special.

The rating according to Amazon Prime was 3 out of 5 stars. Not exactly sure why though. This movie had a cute story line, and the cast was picked well enough I guess. The acting was a bit plain as they seemed to be just memorizing their lines immediately before the scene was done. The producers definitely didn't seem to put much effort into making sure you could hear the actors clearly as there were several instances where the wind or other background noise would drown out the talking. You can tell they probably didn't have a very high budget for the movie to be made. I feel like there could have been more effort put into everything overall. Maybe someone else could do a remake of this movie and improve it immensely to a 7 out of 10 stars on IMDb?

Story is cute, but too predictable. The scenery is quaint, music is actually pretty good. However, the actors look like they never rehearsed and are reading off of cue cards. Wind blows into microphone in outside scenes. I really feel bad for the writers of the story itself, because the screenplay needs a lot of work.

I'm sure most people will be like me and not read the reviews before watching. During December we try to watch a new sappy holiday movie each night. Most of the time we find a better than mediocre movie, but this one just can't even live up to poor, even though we watched the whole thing.

In a nutshell:. Extremely poor acting, horrible wardrobe and makeup in a story that could make a decent film. Budget must have been around $1,000, and it probably still lost money.