Un miracolo sotto l'albero

This was good for 1 hour 45 min. Then it morphed into the strangest ending I've ever seen in a Christmas movie. Steve Lund was wasted in this. Love Erin Cahill but this wasn't for me. For a better moving on story, watch Christmas Homecoming instead.

Seriously, the character played by Erin Cahill just wasn't rootable at all and exhibited no character growth whatsoever throughout the movie. She started and ended the movie in the exact same place emotionally. This seems to be an ongoing pattern at Hallmark since new leadership came in. They seem to think viewers want shock value instead of predictability and usual tropes. The reason the network is successful is because people watch for predictability and tropes.

The storyline is noble, about a solder lost and a family trying to move on. But the characters and actual family story were lame. As someone else commented a total waste of Steven Lund's talent. Erin had somewhat of a good role but even that was dull. Lund had a role with more meaningful dialogue and excellent character development when he played the brother of Charlie in just one episode of the Hudson and Rex TV series than this two hour Hallmark movie. This is not the first Christmas movie of this year that has sorely missing the mark. Hope they improve over the next two months. Hallmark vs GAC seems to be watering down quality to the detriment of the actors.

'Christmas Bedtime Stories' (2022)

Opening thoughts: This is being said with a very heavy heart. Actually really liked the premise, that and Hallmark completest sake bring my main reasons for watching, which sounded very sweet and heartfelt. Have liked Erin Cahill and Steve Lund elsewhere, though their performances and films do vary. Wanted to see some more festive films that were more recent, lower in budget and were not childhood favourites, so in a way to broaden my horizons and have been doing so since November 2019.

The second 2022 Miracles of Christmas film ''Christmas Bedtime Stories' (cute title) was really disappointed and just didn't deliver in most areas. Although there are two massive common criticisms cited against the film in other reviews, to me there were more problems than just those two. 'Christmas Bedtime Stories' was not a complete shambles, but compared to the previous 2022 Miracles of Christmas films it really underwhelmed.

Good things: Cahill and Lund are more than game in their roles and give it their all. In fact, in general the acting was fine.

The film is well filmed and looks attractive. There are moments of charm.

Bad things: Unfortunately, 'Christmas Bedtime Stories' has too many failings to recommend. The story is well meaning, but is for my tastes too sentimentality heavy and over-stretched and has too much draggy pacing and too much coming out of nowhere. The script can be too corny and could have done with a real tightening up momentum wise, a lot of talk here and not all of it necessary.

While Cahill and Lund are fine individually, the former suffers from her character being very difficult to root for and the latter has far too little to do so is wasted. The central chemistry is never fleshed out properly and is underused. The characters are too sketchy and there is too little to them to care about them enough. The music is drab and needed more variety and the direction plods.

Do agree with everybody else with the two things that ruin the film. The representation of the military is truly insultingly inept and indicative of someone who didn't appreciate what they do. Worse is the very rushed, introduces out of nowhere and idiotic ending that makes no sense whatsoever.

Concluding thoughts: All in all, weak.

3/10.

The movie's ending was preposterous and ruined it for me. Hallmark needs to hire some new writers - puleez! I don't want to see formulaic storylines or tropes - I'm sick of the same old, same old from Hallmark. The same story over and over with different actors in different towns. While this movie was a departure from the usual ending, it was completely unbelievable. I want to see really great stories about people finding (or in this case, losing) love. Many people have commented on the inaccuracies with military procedures, etc. This is classic for Hallmark no matter what the story is about. Continuity errors, technical errors abound on most of their movies. It's just lazy writing. They take their audience for granted and it shows.

This movie had potential until 1 hour 15 minutes into it, with The acting was good, but the characters lacked depth. The first half of the movie had a story line and kept viewers interested, while the second half was dragging and felt that it was simply a filler to complete 120 minutes.

The incredible and ridiculous ending was so unbelievable that I consider this a loss of 2 hours of my life, which I will never get back. The last 5 minutes doesn't complete this movie and attempts to explain everything,without any logic or credibility. All it does is to make the viewers frustrated and disappointed.