Il sapore del Natale

Did the use a chef as a consultant on this movie, it's hard to believe, the good is ludicrous. The sugary food and sickly plot may give you diabetes. It's all standard stuff, from the cute meet to the blossoming romance and irrelevant sub plots but it will put you in a Christmassy mood if you aren't overly worried about realism.

One of those cosy Christmas movies you have on in the background whilst wrapping presents.

Festive production design, sweet story, solid acting.

A warm gingerbread hot chocolate.

This film is so profoundly bad I started an account entirely to write that.

The acting is laughably bad, the storyline horrendous, and the attempts at characterisation juvenile.

I had the mispleasure of having this playing whilst I changed in a Liverpool Hotel room and I nearly requested a refund on my entire room the strength of how badly it stunk the place out.

Offensively bad.

Scarlett is a goddess among chefs, according to her own mind. She is right about everything. Only the most sophisticated dishes will do. And that is her attitude through more than half the movie despite the fact her business is struggling, her partner is trying to push her to new and simpler for the holidays, and she goes on a cooking retreat to gain inspiration.

The instructor of the retreat is a rival from her past, James, and she is resistant to everything he wants to pass on. It comes to a head about halfway and her creation gets no praise from the rest of the class, but she seems unphased. So, James' solution is to tell the entire class to take a holiday as a break from class. Finally, Scarlett and James spend some quality time. Even then, Britt Irvin and Zach Roerig have no chemistry. And I wasn't impressed with the acting of either of them. Usually at this point there is a budding romance that gets threatened by a conflict. The conflict does come and is the result of Scarlett's arrogance but there is no evidence of an actual romance despite the fact that the story continues as if there is one.

The story might have been mediocre, but the portrayals of the characters by the lead actors left it far worse than even that.

Why do Lifetime and Hallmark think we want to see characters like Scarlett? Arrogant, snobby, with a failing business, but we're supposed to root for the person who can't grasp that others are affected by her stubbornness and refusal to change? Enough. Not only is she a bland, off-putting character, but the story is weak. Even with Christmas movies being predictable 99% of the time, if a lead wasn't so ugh, we could let the plot slide. She's utterly awful.

Next, is the romance in the room with us? For some reason, Lifetime cannot do romance and they may have one believable Christmas romance a year. Usually those movies will involve actresses you've heard of like Tia Mowry-Hardrict, Tatyana Ali, and Jana Kramer. The budding romance between Scarlett and James (?) is not there at all. Her attitude is so poor, why would he be interested in her? Why are these personalities never a turn off? I also don't like how she treats her business parter and presumed best friend. As if her opinion on the restaurant doesn't matter. Honestly, this might have been better as A Christmas Carol story or something similar where she actually has to experience and reflect on the consequences of her actions.

I know it's a 3 yr old movie but I hadn't seen it before today. It'll be the first and last time.