The More the Merrier

Rachel Boston is perfect for Alice, an ER doc who brings joy to everyone around her. She is on shift Christmas Eve night. She intends to bring Christmas celebration to all the patients in this small town hospital. The snow keeps her and everyone else there through until Christmas morning.

There isn't much ongoing plot other than Rachel's 4 job offers in other places. She swears she has to choose one of them. That choice keeps popping up through most of the movie.

Brendan Penny is the seemingly smooth and admirable cardiologist, who is actually a bit of a mess as far as internal feelings. He just arrived and is captivated by Alice, at first strictly in professional admiration.

This movie is Hallmark at its Hallmarkiest. 4 babies after midnight keep the characters moving bringing plenty of Christmas joy. For a while, that's all I needed as a viewer. The last third of the movie tries to make everyone's story an HEA, and does, but wasn't as much of a viewing pleasure partly because it was so predictable and unreasonably perfect.

Ummm I just read on People dot com that the protagonists met on that Hallmark cruise and REQUESTED to work together after, which makes so much sense as these two on screen together are on a rizz off as the kids would say lol. Would they say that? No matter, the banter was there, the dialogue was great. I don't know why it took so long to pair them, but please let's keep them making movies. Matter fact let's give them a Netflix small town hospital series, like 10 episodes long that runs for 4 seasons, I would watch it all.

In terms of if it's good, like many Hallmark holiday movies, not everything makes sense up, but it's mostly a great time. I would have given it a 10, but I felt that not all stories were tied up and some of the side characters stories were introduced and then dropped.

This was far from the worst Hallmark movie I've ever seen, but I had to rate it lower due to the blatant advertising for a pharmaceutical company and the poor acting black hole that it seemed to produce. At several points I worried my eyeballs would fall right out of my head due to the amount of eye rolling I was doing.

It's a Hallmark movie, not Citizen Kane. Fun to watch, and fun to mock. Still, it's entertaining. It hits all the classic bullet points, Christmas themes, impending storms, humor mixed with adversity and the usual "I don't really like Christmas but...." lines mixed with " I'm from the big city. ". Worth the watch for the holidays.

If you are a fan of the old General Hospital soap back in the days when the action used to play out in the hospital itself, this one is for you.

It is very episodic as Pine Grove hospital staff and patients get snowed in on Christmas Eve and various medical matters are resolved. But, it's entertaining because of the likable performances by Rachel Boston and Brendan Perry and a very good supporting cast who are also sincere and realistic in their portrayals, particularly Iris Quinn (as Ruth), the always interesting Carmel Amit (as Elena), and Lucia Walters (as Catherine).

It's not thought provoking in any sense of the word, but it's a relaxing way to spend an hour and a half that will leave you feeling pretty good.