I enjoy watching Emilie Ullerup and she's as watchable as ever in this movie. But the story seemed off.
Samantha hasn't been back to her family's summer home in Cape Cod for 13 years, even though it's barely more than an hour away from Boston where she works? Huh?
She lost her mother, quickly, 13 years ago and somehow that kept her away? That didn't make sense to me. At all. Her father kept going back and, 12 years after his wife died, he met and fell in love with the lovely Helen (Rebecca Staab). But Sam never went back and took advantage of her family home in Cape Cod. Even though it's the perfect weekend getaway, for the perfect price- free.
And I get that Sam misses her mother, but I lost track of how often they had her rubbing her mother's necklace and looking wistfully off into space. We get it; she misses her mother. Even 13 years later.
Her old summer buddy Mike Phillips works at Phillips Property Agency in Cape Cod with his parents, but somehow he is being considered for a job with a "commercial leasing company that handles a lot of the high rises in London"? Why would such a company in London want to hire someone who only has experience managing residential rentals in a small town in Massachusetts? Mike has ZERO knowledge or experience with the commercial leasing of high rise buildings, and it would be in a completely different country, with different laws and different industry practices. And what's the draw to London? After growing up and living in Cape Cod? He has one married friend living there, but that friend married a girl from England.
Also, property managers don't do repair work- they hire people. Despite that, Mike is sent to try and fix a "leak at the River Street rental". And he takes a caulk gun into the attic to fix a roof leak from the inside. From the inside. What a shock that it started leaking again.
Viewers might not realize this, but freelance photographers like Samantha don't make any money. That's why the "staff position" she wants at the Boston paper is important if Samantha wants to pay her own bills and keep photography as a career and not a hobby. So it made no sense that one of the photos Samantha submitted to get the prize job (based on the theme: "Christmas, something we haven't seen") is a fog enshrouded lighthouse that isn't even lit up. And, like everything else in this movie, that lighthouse isn't even in Cape Cod.
Also, without spoiling anything, the decision making in connection with that job was somewhat disappointing. And the decision making in connection with the family's summer home seemed unrealistic.
But the biggest problem for me is that Samantha really showed no interest in either being in a relationship, or being in a relationship with Mike. She basically avoided him for 13 years without anything remotely resembling a reason to do that. Even though he was just a short car ride away. I never really saw them as more than platonic friends although I can certainly understand why Mike wanted more.
On the plus side, Emilie Ullerup was great playing Samatha. She showed real emotion and real joy. And Rebecca Staab is one of the most beautiful 60 year olds working on TV. She looked like Samantha's older sister rather than her future stepmother. She's also a talented actress and played a very likable character.
There were also some other nice touches: all the scenes with Rebecca Staab; Samantha's gift to her future stepmother; the gathering of pine cones; Santa's maritime arrival; and the matching photos of Sam and her mother (the picture of Sam was actually better than any of the pictures that Sam took).
This was probably more of a 5 or 6 star movie, but there was a comforting holiday warmth to most of the scenes and I really like Emilie Ullerup. Plus, I grade Hallmark movies on a curve.
