Il Natale di Molly

Who dutifully queued up to heap "10s" into the early IMDb rating score, explaining how a lackluster and forgettable X-mas romcom started out with the sort of numbers you would expect to see for the likes of BLADERUNNER 4 or AVENGERS 12. This is the first co-production of Discovery+ and the Food Network, which is interesting. When the History Channel went into the production business, they took risks and those risks paid off bigtime -- VIKINGS, for ex. No such risk taking here! This is a by-the-numbers boy-meets-girl-in-quaint-smalltown that could have been penned by any high school film class. The sponsors even picked MarVista to produce, a company that has popped out more assembly-line X-mas films than there are stars in the sky. The leads are generic, the story is generic, the plot arc is generic, and the town so unremarkable it may as well be CGI. The only thing that pops are the many cooking vignettes and tasty edibles. Which is of course what you can find on the FOOD NETWORK 24/7. Without all those cumbersome actors, stray bits of dialog, and other distractions.

Gag-worthy in all respects. Pie-faced Ree Drummond, the phony "pioneer woman" from Food Network makes her "acting" debut in this wretched concoction that must be aimed at moribund residents in nursing homes who can't get out of the TV room. They don't deserve it.

Though the story seemed good on paper, the bad acting and the awkward execution were two elements for disaster. They were just too obvious to ignore. Plus, everyone in that town were too mean to the main girl who was ignorant and spoiled, yes, but not that bad of a character to be treated that way.

I absolutely love all Christmas movies, and of course some are cheesy, but the bad acting in the first five minutes of this one made me turn it off! It was too cringey!

Well, chances are that if you, like I did, thought that this 2021 Christmas movie titled "Candy Coated Christmas" was going to be a generic run-of-the-mill Christmas movie, then you are right on the dot.

Yeah, this is one of those sappy, cheesy romantic Christmas movies that appeals to those hopelessly gone in a romantic notion. While for the rest of us, this was a semi-watchable, albeit insanely generic and predictable Christmas movie.

The storyline told in "Candy Coated Christmas", as written by Ellie Kanner, Joey Plager and Alex Yonks, was just one that was riding high on every single cheesy Christmas trope that exists out there. So if you enjoy the sappy romantic Christmas movies, then director Ellie Kanner delivers a movie that will appeal to you here.

I wasn't particularly impressed, nor entertained by what the writers delivered in "Candy Coated Christmas". In fact, I actually dozed off twice and was in dreamland twice throughout the course of the movie. I woke up with an unknown amount of minutes having passed, and had no problems catching up on the story.

The acting in the movie was adequate, I will say that much. I wasn't familiar with the cast here, except for John McCook. It was a shame that Jae Suh Park didn't have a larger role to play in the movie though.

"Candy Coated Christmas" is not a movie that I will recommend, especially not since there are far better Christmas movies out there, even in the sappy romantic end of the genre.

My rating of "Candy Coated Christmas" lands on a three out of ten stars.