Un Natale inaspettato

In Chicago, Elle Bennet (Brooke Nevin) plans to throw her college friends her annual misfits Christmas party. She's single and obsessed with coffee guy. They keep running into each other. Her boss has an emergency business issue. Despite being told to take time off, she insists on coming into the office. Maxwell Turner (Michael Cassidy) from the New York office is coming in to fix the problem. He turns out to be coffee guy.

These are two pretty people and their happy ending is inevitable due to its Hallmark pedigree. There is no drama for the first half. It's not until the midway point where the big conflict is introduced. It needs to be introduced much earlier. Even with the conflict, the tension simmers along at a pretty low setting. The romantic misunderstanding is too weak to make it into a real conflict. It's a Hallmark special with manufactured drama. It works for Christmas as holiday background noise.

It's a work movie set at Christmas. Not really anout Christmas. Brook Nevin is pretty and made the movie. Her love interest is a little stiff. I kept looking at him and thinking "he's a Reptilian" (People of Earth fans know what I mean). I am a little tired of seeing the same supporting cast in ALL of these movies. I guess Hallmark doesn't think anyone will notice...

These two may have some of the best chemistry that I can remember for this kind of movie. (I have watched and reviewed hundreds.) Brooke Nevin is especially good in this role and this movie is pure Hallmark Christmas romance.

The story is pretty straightforward even a little predictable, although the ending is still touching on two fronts and it is set up very nicely. There are the token misunderstandings which add a little suspense.

Funny BTW: when the two are supposed to be skating and talking to each other, you don't see their feet, but their strides are obviously that of walking and not skating, not even clumsy skating. This is more obvious with Max.

Another BTW: when flipping through the TV movie titles, I flipped past this one a few times because I thought it sounded trite. Trite or not, the title gives no indication of what's in the movie.

Yes, I'm watching a Christmas movie in February and no, I don't regret it. I decided to watch this because it actually had a good rate.

First of all, give Brooke Nevin more lead roles, please and thank you. And Michael Cassidy... the movie worked because of them. It also helps that they are "new" faces. The plot is quite plain, no surprises, not so much drama. And their chemistry was amazing. Besides, that group looked fun.

The best thing about this, other than their chemistry is that the characters talked to each other: I noticed twice that they came forward to the other and just asked or said what they had to say. In pretty much all the Hallmark movies they just asummed until proven otherwise, which causes drama. And that makes is so predictable. So I was pretty happy with that.

I don't know why all the negative reviews, I thought this was pretty great.

Just another Hallmark movie set at an ad agency. The story here just never clicks. However Brooke Nevin is a fiesty, frothy beauty who can carry even a boring movie up a notch. Michael Cassidy also adds some zip toi a lifeless script.