Never Been Chris'd

This was THE worst movie ever. First premise was stupid and male lead was terrible actor. Every review talks about how great an actor Tyler Hynes is but he totally phoned it in. So wooden, was actually cringeworthy. And what's with the vegan storyline. That just didn't seem to be applicable. Did AI write this? I'm sorry. There's no way that the brainiac girl suddenly wants to hang with the popular kids that ignored her 17 years earlier. She's better than that. This friendship didn't make sense. I kept expecting it to be some odd prank played in the successful girls. And again the vegan story line while he's sneaking fish. Who does that!!!!!

Naomi and Liz have been friends forever, they studied together, live together, work together. They do everything together. They are going home for the holidays where they encounter old high school classmates and among them is Chris, their old crush.

This movie barely had any romance in it. You go into it thinking that this is a love triangle, and he has to decide at the end. And it is, for about 4 scenes but a choice is quickly made. However, this situation carries our leads into uncomfortable moments, making them re think about past choices.

I personally didn't like it that much. I know these situations happen but it wasn't what I was expecting. I want to watch people fall in love, not two friends fighting and questioning the other. There clearly are a lot of unresolved issues.

This also had people who peaked in high school and kind of lived in the past and those are the worst kind of people.

Tyler's character could have easily been removed from this script (and I'm not even going to talk about the fish thing). Is this the only Christmas movie he will be in this year?

I know I push for more diverse plots but this is not what I was talking about. There were a lot of wrong things with the characters AND the plot.

You know what would have make more sense at this point? The girls ending up with each other.

This is not a typical Hallmark Christmas movie. It is, however, funny. The characters are immature and self centered without the more normal over the top "proof" of immaturity, shallowness and self absorption. They are presented in a "stupid" manner, which is not a failure of the script writing, but it is deliberate. It is comical as it was intended to be. There is no heart warming lesson (or a tying together of the story lines), no typified misunderstanding that gets rectified nor an engagement ring on Christmas Eve. It's comical as we both laugh at the characters and empathize with them. I enjoyed its edge of humor.

Best friends and successful business partners, Liz (Pascal Lamothe-Kipnes) and Naomi (Janel Parrish), return to their hometown for the holidays, where they run into former high school crush, Chris (Tyler Hynes). Back in the day, they were not on his radar, but now they actually get to know him, and they find him charming. He initiates spending more time together, which fans the flames of ardor, possibly leading to conflict between the two best friends.

While the women deal with old feelings from high school and feel friction from their mothers, they reassess their own relationship.

The strong point of this film is the believable relationship between its two female stars. This is a buddy film of sorts, so thankfully their chemistry is strong. In addition, both of them are excellent actresses with the ability to handle both comedy and drama.

Tyler Hynes is a Hallmark stalwart. Here he gives his usually-dependable performance, though the film focuses more on the females.

I'm sorry, but this felt as if it had been written by a group 16 year olds who couldn't agree on which direction the plot should take. Normally I'd rate anything with Tyler Hynes in it a 9 or 10, but this just was not a fitting vehicle for his talent. His part could have been played by anyone. What a waste of talent. The movie itself was slow, rambling and muddled and not worth the watch for me - though I did watch till the end hoping there'd be some redeeming quality, some epiphany or...something. The characters were lukewarm at best and unlikeable at the worst - not enough interest in any of them to care what happened. Guess I expect Hallmark to raise the bar for Christmas but not this time.