The Finnish Line

We get a few of these movies each year. Hallmark takes us to a foreign country and lets our American (er, often Canadian) leads learn the culture and traditions of the holidays. Often they require a slog of tasks, failing to bring any joy or life to the treasured past (see The Christmas Quest).

But I'm relieved to see how The Finnish Line took that formula and built a very watchable movie, with drama and believe it or not - a real action sequence!

Our lead is Anya (Kim Matula), a legacy dog sled racer returning to a holiday-themed race in Finland where her late father competed. She's joined by bestie and race support teamster Elyse (Nichole Sakura). Our love interest is Cole (Beau Mirchoff), a journalist and former racer himself, who gives our lead someone to monologue to about her feelings.

I did not exactly buy the love story with Anya and Cole, as it seemed like winning the race and beating jerk-face Monty (Páll Sigþór Pálsson) was more interesting. The B love story with Elyse and Anya's cousin Lavi (Benedikt Gröndal) was much cuter and genuine.

We got to see a few fun Finnish traditions, but it didn't seem to slow down the action (again, see the dreadful The Christmas Quest). The dog sled action was great, although I've seen some dog sled folks before and none of them look like Kim Matula. Pretty well kept for the cold temps and dog hair.

Speaking of our lead. You'll recognize her from the Ghosts of Christmas Always (a rare 9 stars for me, 2022). She was also in Checkin' It Twice (6 stars, 2023), which again brought her to cold places. She's great. Nichole Sakura may seem familiar too, for those who loved Superstore like I did. I'd love to see her get a Hallmark lead role.

Overall, a very watchable movie that tweaks the foreign country angle just enough to make it fresh.

Cast Kudos: Anya's cousin Lavi (Benedikt Gröndal). Let's bring that dude to the states and just let him be himself. Loved that guy.

Measuring Christmas Magic: Was this a Christmas movie . . . Yeah, because we learned about Finnish traditions, but did it feel like Santa delivered presents on Christmas morning? No.

Alternative Movie Titles: The Paws of Christmas; Sledding through Finland; Finnish-ing My Father's Race. To be fair, the original title was absolutely fine.

I don't know why this movie got such a good review rating. While I like the story I just can not believe that they shot this movie in such a beautiful country and blurred out all the landscape scenery. Are you kidding me? Why why would you do that? Do you need lessons in photography? Those scenery shots should have been shot at F-5.6 to F-13 and not at the F-stop your camera person done them in it makes many of the scenes look terrible. Now it looks like any suburb in any country even the not so nice states in the USA. That said I think the acting was great and also the story it's one of those animal stories that warms the heart and makes you happy on a gloomy day. I wish there were many more like it.

I had high hopes for this movie, but as someone of Finnish heritage I was ultimately disappointed. Overall the acting was ok but the Finnish accents were poor and the Finnish language pronunciations were mostly incorrect. They also referred to Finland as part of Scandinavia, which is incorrect. It is a Nordic country but not Scandinavian. They also left out some of the best parts of Finnish culture and traditions that would have added greatly. I would have liked to see actual Finnish actors and someone writing the script who actually knows Finland. It was a poor portrayal that could have been more authentic instead of like Finland was Googled for 5 minutes.

This is not only one of my all-time favourite Hallmark Christmas movies, it is one of my all-time favourite Hallmark movies of any theme. In fact, apart from the expected romance, and family love, this was not a 'typical' Hallmark. Many have been distinctive by their excellent direction and/or quality performances, this story has a beautifully written screenplay that is perfectly executed acting. The actors brought brand new character types that were intriguing and unexpected. It's also fun to learn about other cultures and customs, in this case, those of Finland. I guarantee we will be looking forward seeing this movie replayed every year.

I actually had to make an account just to make this review because I can't believe what I even just watched.

No Finnish actors hired for this, no one knew how to speak or pronounce Finnish, some of the cultural facts were just blatantly incorrect and some of the town names even were spelled wrong. I don't think anyone Finnish was actually involved in writing or fact checking this mess. You know none of the Finnish characters even had Finnish names? At one point they butchered the grammar of something so bad that it sounded pretty lewd to an actual Finnish ear, which at least was hilarious even tho surprising.

I mean it's a Hallmark movie so what are we expecting but I think the minimum requirement when using another country and culture as a setting is to honor that and not use it as a butchered trope that you probably only asked chatgpt about. If you made a movie that was set in Japan would you hire Russians to pretend to be Japanese while speaking butchered Japanese off paper while your American white girl adventures there?

It's a shame because I don't think the acting for the leads was bad and the story was almost cute. I was so excited to see a foreign movie about Finland too. The girl best friend character is very cute and supportive, and of course the dogs were completely adorable and the relationship building and chemistry was fine. But I could not in good conscience recommend this to anyone who actually cares, talk about cultural appropriation.