Sister Swap: Christmas in the City

So, so dull.

Turns out this is part of a series that also includes 'Sister Swap: A Hometown Holiday', which I somehow missed when doing my quick research (checking for sequels etc.) before selecting a movie. Apparently, though, it's a split perspective type of thing, in that this tells one sister's perspective and that other one shows the other sister's story. Intriguing, something that 'Sister Swap: Christmas in the City' is not.

I found the story and its characters to be too nice, to the point it becomes overbearing. And I say that as someone who is used to the cheesiness and all that stuff from these sorta flicks, but even for me this felt too much. Ashley Williams' Meg is particularly jarring.

My only plus point for this 2021 release is the bits of the plot involving David L. King's Frank and Rhonda Morman's Nina. That actually held some weight to it to be fair, unfortunately it does wrap up in the typical Hallmark fashion (as expected) but even so I appreciated a less sugary, if too minimally shown, piece of storytelling.

6/10 - this concept of two connected movies/storylines in a single year is certainly a first for Hallmark is certainly new for them, but I would recommend watching it a little bit apart (as it was aired) since the two become a little redundant if double featured.

It's the companion movie to Sister Swap: A Hometown Holiday. Jennifer (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) and Meg Swift (Ashley Williams) are sisters and best friends. This movie follows Meg and her misadventures. She stays in the city and starts getting involved in planning the restaurant party.

I do like this story better. It's simplistic which is perfect for Hallmark. I like the Rashomon element of rewatching the same scenes from the other point of view. This probably needs a better Joe. He's very much a stiff suit playing a stiff suit. The best way to do that is to put a comedian in the role. In the end, I like this slightly better than the other movie. I am still going to wait for the Williams sisters to solve murders while they giggle.

Part 2. This was on my Watchlist last year but never got to it. I liked the idea of this but the execution of parallel stories across 2 movies didn't quite work. I'm not sure if it was the focus on telling parallel stories or the fact that there were 4 scriptwriters but this was an uneven mess.

So in this movie we see a lot of the same scenes from the prior movie except some of these are shown from different camera angles. There are also continuation issues. In this movie, we see Simon driving away from the city but in the first movie his mother is the one who pulls up to the Madison.

Also, it's finally made clear why the gift for the mother is so important and who Ashley's character is grieving. Based on the first movie alone, I honestly thought she was a widow like her sister. In this movie, we find out she's having a hard time because she's grieving her uncle. Once again, it's not well explained why he had such an impact on the family. And her character does not come off as someone heavily grieving in either movie.

Ashley Williams and Keith Robinson have zero chemistry and honestly I lost interest about one third of the way through. This one focused more on the love story than the first movie did but the movie was incredibly boring. I did like the food bank story though. There also were too many stories going on here so the party story didn't really get the focus it should have. Again, 4 scriptwriters? The imbalance shows.

Where was Mark Deklin in this one???

I love the idea of the Williams sisters working together but give them a mystery series instead where they both have love interests or families. This concept didn't work very well and if Hallmark really wanted to be innovative, they should have just combined these 2 movies into 1 longer movie.

This one fell flat primarily because I already knew the plot from watching the companion movie a week ago. There were a few elements added that we were not aware of and some more details, but they were not enough to save this for me. The other reason was because I am just so tired of Ashley Williams. She was like a manic-depressive without the depressive. I really wanted the depressive. A few times she stopped smiling and bouncing off the walls but the respite didn't last long enough.