Un Natale stellato

The cast was great and the story was amazing. Me and the wife really enjoyed it. James Welch Henderson Arkansas. 11/21/2020

This movie follows the tradition of Romeo and Juliet. There is serious and unreasonable enmity between the two. So much so, the Julie's dad says to her at one point "I thought I had raised a daughter who understood the values that this family holds." Apparently he intended to raise her with the values of hatred and unforgiveness. Do Rick and Julie end up dead on the floor after taking poison? I'm pretty sure we can all guess the answer to that.

The story is pretty basic and predictable. While the Romeo and Juliet story is not new and has been done many times, it is a slightly different approach to a Christmas story. Actually, Christmas is not as central to the details of this story as it is in many holiday movies. We don't find the writer checking off one tradition after another just to meet some quota. However there are really no surprises. Jonna Walsh and Nick Ballard connect well even if they are a little stiff, especially Ballard. The feud seems unreasonable in our day especially when we learn the true history of it.

Sure, the emotion is in few crumbs form. But, for a predictable love story using Christmas as pretext and Romeo and Juliet as tool. A long conflict. The love of children and the letters afterlife. A Christmas tree . The wedding after an year of concilation. Nothing new, nothing original - the title is the best proof-. But working in decent manner. And , in essence, that remains the most important detail. So, the emotion as lead virtue. Sure, not so real but ...nice.

Although a simple story line, I am quite sure that there are literally millions of men and women who have lived the rest of their lives regrettably for listening to their closest loved ones (fathers, mothers, aunts, or uncles) and for years wondered to themselves "...if only I had listened to my heart" and not to my relatives about that one true love of my life.

The family surnames are really hokey (the Spruces and the Pines) and much like the Hatfields and McCoys who owned adjoining farms, so do the Spruces and the Pines whose livelihood depends on the Christmas season when their Christmas trees bring in the majority of their annual income. Gradually the audience finds out what the two male tree farm owners Dave Spruce, (Ken Cheeseman) and James Pine (Tom Kemp) decades old dispute is about. Darn it if James daughter Julie Pine (Jonna Walsh) and her new found love in Rick Spruce (Nick Ballard) who is Dave Spruce's nephew is going to be ignored merely on a decades old dispute between the two (2) tree farm owners.

How the decades age old feud is finally put to an end becomes emotional (at least it was for Mrs. Shullivan and I) and for the next few scenes this Christmas themed film is worth watching.

I rate it a a solid 7 out of 10 rating.

6.4 stars.

This is a very rudimentary film from start to finish. It's about two families. One family has the last name of Spruce. The other family with the last name of Pine. These two families have had an old rivalry going back decades. They are at odds with one another, yet they live on adjacent properties. The whole town is aware of this unsettled dispute of some sort between the families. This sort of movie has been done many times. Inevitably one child of a family falls in love with a child of the other family, and they are under a lot of pressure to break up due to old grudges. Some films have displayed this theme in an entertaining and fun way, this one is not so fun.