12 volte Natale

Might as well get the "G" word out of the way up front, as this likable Christmas TV movie shamelessly groundhogs its main plot device from a better-known earlier movie, the two twists being that this time it affects a female and that it occurs (or should that be recurs?) on Christmas Eve.

Amy Smart is the girl whose Christmas Day can't get started after a Christmas Eve fall in a department store sees her day rewind every time the clock strikes twelve. From there we see her make the anticipated journey from a truculent self-obsessive who won't accept her new step-mom, creeps out her ex-boyfriend who's obviously moved on from her and finally rudely walks out of a blind date with a handsome young widower to a regular Christmas angel who rights the lives of everyone she bumps into before finally making up with them all, including the guy as she finally gets past her twelve days of Christmas spell.

Smart is amiable in the lead part, a lightweight cross between Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anniston and the circular time motif is deftly handled even if some of the situations she resolves are more sugary than a cane plantation.

Nicely shot around New York in bright December sun-light, this was an attractive, undemanding, feel-good Christmas movie worth seeing once, but just the once!

I liked this move. It is sweet and good hearted. But it is, more or less, a remake of "Groundhog's Day." And that's not saying that is a bad thing,

Kate is stuck in a past she cannot shake. She had an ex-boyfriend that she feels she missed the bus on when he is moving on with his life. A death of a mother. Her father dating a very sweet woman she disapproves of for no other reason than it isn't her mom. So she wishes that she could fix things. Well, in movies like this, some magical force fulfills this.

Now she's an unwilling participant in re-living this one day.

Ordinarily, I would say, the repetitive nature of these incidences would be aggravating and painful to re-watch. I dismiss them since we're suppose to be going through the same process as Kate. She has a blind date with Myles (Mark Paul-Gosselar's character...who inexplicably doesn't have a listed name in IMDb). His character is really improbable conglomeration of everything sweet a girl would want in a guy. He doesn't exist but only to be tolerably normal. Then the onion begins to peel. Because most of us need a lifetime to discover the person in front of us. Kate is in purgatory to be sure. And so...which could easily derail us into not caring, OR worst turning against Kate. Director James Hayman skates so fine on that line, he finds the joy in being able to repeat her world. Well, entertaining to us anyway. I think the message is clear...which was clear for "Groundhog's Day"...we're resigned to a lot of things in our lives, until we break the pattern. And that pattern is to give into what sometimes the world wants for us. It's not giving up, it's embracing it.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for this movie. So, if you venture to watch it, keep this in mind...great performances. Mark-Paul Gosselar is surprisingly low-key. He's every man. A good center. Nothing spectacular in his life...just so simple. He has dreams, but they don't interfere with his good deeds.

You will feel good you took the time to watch.

No Spoilers:

Before I say these mean things allow me to first point out that the movie was pretty enjoyable and if you are looking for a light easy holiday movie and have already burnt through all the really good ones, then go ahead and watch this. It isn't bad, just not deserving of "really good" or "great". It is actually a little good. 5/10 would be "just okay", which is why I'm giving it a 6/10, because it wasn't boring and did make me smile some.

In the beginning of the film they showed her as being very shallow. They made the mistake of never showing her as having wised up. She continued to be shallow through to the end. Yes she wizened a little, but not enough.

The movie never really gets deep enough to allow Amy Smart to show off her acting skills (she is a proven good actor). Not much of anything very heartfelt happens. No tears shed. No real feeling of caring for the characters.

Some of the plot feels a bit carelessly thrown together as if with a mindset of "yeah this will fill in the basic romcom blueprint good enough".

Felt like another movie training people to think that everyone is mystically fated for "the one" and that marriage is everything. Ironically it actually tries, for a brief moment, to suggest that her obsession with marriage instead of enjoying the day was the cause of some of her past problems.

Anyways. I kind of enjoyed it, but it felt shallow like the main character.

I have pretty low expectations for movies of this genre, but this one really surprised me. The script wasn't cringeworthy, the acting wasn't cringeworthy, and the story, though it's pretty predicable, wasn't littered with clichés. Not only I was able to watch past the first 20 minutes, but I would actually watch this movie again.

This was a surprisingly fun and charming holiday movie.

It does hit the familiar tropes of the groundhog day trope of repeating from the same moment, and the romantic element.

However, the heroine very quickly figures out her repeats don't have to keep repeating exactly the same. She learns about life, and herself, and uses the days to try things she was afraid of, and get to know people in her neighbourhood.

Although there are some leaps and it's not entirely clear just how many repeats she gets - or, despite the title, whether she gets 12 dates with the same fellow - this is a charming movie with a bit more depth than the average holiday rom-com.