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'We Wish You a Married Christmas' (2022)

Opening thoughts: My frequent Christmas film viewings (or at least those from Hallmark and Lifetime) have been something of a mixed bag over the past four or five years, with plenty of good films, many average ones and many bad ones. The premise was one of those could have gone either way ones, but still watched 'We Wish You a Married Christmas' anyway because of liking Kristoffer Polaha.

While he doesn't come over shabbily at all, 'We Wish You a Married Christmas' didn't work for me. The 2022 Countdown to Christmas batcb actually did start off promisingly, but with this film comes the first misfire of the batch. It is not terrible or one of the worst Countdown to Christmas films from 2022, but pretty lacklustre.

Good things: Of course there are a few good things. Marisol Nicholls and especially Polaha give very game and committed performances.

Also found the dog absolutely adorable and the decor and scenery are colourful and nostalgic.

Bad things: Sadly there are a number of drawbacks. Would not have minded the excessive predictability, as a result of exexuting the premise too conventionally, if the film was still at least interesting and had some charm. The story however was very thin with a very dull and over-stretched middle act. Too much of the conflict felt forced. The script is too often stilted and has toi much emphasis on the hostility and everybody being annoyed with each other and it came over as mean spirited and took away any possible charm. Meaning that the film felt pedestrian, too heavy and with very little emotion.

Didn't care for any of the characters. None of the supporting cast stand out and inject very little passion or enthusiasm, a big part of why the humour fell flat. The characters are too much like typical Hallmark cliches with nothing new and there is nothing really likeable or rootable. The two leads did lack chemistry and the constant getting annoyed and hostily meant that the love never convinced. The music is forgettable at best and there is an over reliance on unfocused close ups that cheapens the film's look.

Closing thoughts: Overall, didn't do much for me.

4/10.

Amy Groening, who played Kayla, a divorced pet portrait artist, was the best thing about this movie. She's such a bright, bubbly, attractive actress. I wish they'd put her in a lead role. I didn't really buy her friends to lover storyline (they didn't really seem like a match) but I suppose when you live in a town with only 513 people (per the Welcome to Gracious sign) there aren't a lot of options. That same limited population would seem to be challenging for her business model but hey, it's Hallmark.

I wanted to start with something positive because I really like Kristoffer Polaha and Marisol Nichols. I can't remember seeing a bad Polaha starring movie (Dickens of a Christmas was great) and Nichols was effective in the Holly and Ivy tearjerker (although I hated Christmas CEO). But this movie was a bit of a downer for me and not really that enjoyable to watch. And there were a number of things that were just off about it.

For example, the therapist played by Hallmark vet Pascale Hutton, really didn't give this couple any good advice. She cleverly noticed that they weren't "connecting" (great insight) but the best she could do to help them out was to tell them to go out of town on a vacation? They need a new therapist.

There were also quite a few extreme close ups that seemed awkward.

Separate bedrooms? Ugh. Why bother leaving town? It's bad enough that unmarried Hallmark couples never have sex but this married couple really needed to share a bed.

Why didn't they call a company like Safelight? They had nearby branches and could have had that windshield fixed in one day. They fixed mine in a couple of hours.

There's evidence that suggests the dangerous outside ornament was being purposefully dropped on cars. If so, that's messed up.

Why yell and whistle at your dog on a parade float? Do you want him to jump off?

Polaha's character really seemed like a guy willing to try and make the marriage work, but Nichol's character seemed Hell bent for divorce (blame the writer and director, not Nichols). It was all tied up neatly but, like I said earlier, these guys really need a new therapist.

There was one beautiful scene though- the one where they're in town in a large gazebo like structure that was all lit up with no one in there but them. That was lovely.

This was really good. Combining a troubled married couple with existing Christmas movie tropes is exactly how you change up your movies while leaving the audience satisfied at the end. This was totally predictable but the journey was a lot of fun. Kris and Marisol had great chemistry and the supporting cast was awesome. It starts off a bit slow but if you stick with it past the first 15 min, it's a great movie.

There were some weird directing choices though. We don't need to see constant close-ups of one person when two people are having a conversation. It got to the point where it was a bit distracting but I still enjoyed the movie.

6.3 stars.

A rare low rating for me especially since we have one of my favorite leading guys Polaha, who can really steal a scene when he feels up to it. There is little to zero chemistry between the leads and I think they try to make it seem like that is the case, but it's too convincing and it bleeds off the screen like a sliced femoral artery in a B grade movie. Only problem is, this is what I would consider a B graded Hallmark film, which almost puts it into the D graded category of all films. Why is this so bad? It's all about the lack of spark between the leads, there is nothing else amiss with 'We Wish You a Married Christmas'. If we were to improve the chemistry, I think the storyline, acting, sweetness, humor and theme would elevate this film to something in the range of 7.6 stars.

We Wish You A Married Christmas (2022) -

I really liked the idea of the two leads as a struggling couple to start with, just for a change. It wasn't a case of finding old love or new love, but finding a way to make their existing love succeed. It meant that things would only get better for them and it showed that sometimes a relationship can be worth fighting for and that all it would take was just a moment away to see things clearly.

Having said that - I know that I'm a man and obviously likely to say this; but she was definitely the larger problem in the marriage, because he was obviously quite happy to keep trying, whereas she put up obstacles. It does get frustrating in these films how they always make the women out to be the drama queens, because we all know that it's the men who don't tend to talk about their feelings of express why they're upset and can cause just as much drama as any woman and sometimes more.

While I did like Kristoffer Polaha, he was handsome even if he did walk a bit like Lurch annd I could appreciate Marisol Nichols in her role, the two leading players couldn't make up for the poor execution of the story and the concept. So a lot of the incidental elements like the really special townsfolk and the incredibly fake snow added to whet became quite silly in places and also some bits that were really quite hard to believe.

Kris and Marisol seemed to be the only sane people in a whirlwind of stupid, which was a shame, because, as stated above, the change of formula was refreshing and appealing until the daft really started to grate. A little bit more thought and polish could have worked wonders on this story.

5.25/10.