Meu Sonho de Natal

7.6 stars.

Let's get this out of the way first: the kid has all the great comedic parts in 'My Christmas Dream'. A tough act to follow. Of course, the director makes the young boy seem like an adult, way too smart for a 6 year old, and I'd venture to guess he's older than 6 in real life, but that's beside the point.

Danica McKellar gives us her usual stellar rendition of a female who can be hard and cold, but deep down is soft and tender. All of her roles are similar, featuring the same personality in most of her performances. She is driven, yet malleable, harsh when she needs to be, yet compassionate underneath it all, seemingly gullible, but sharp as a knife. I like this character in a Hallmark female, ergo, I like Danica's portrayal in just about everything. I think we are seeing her true personality in what she does on screen. Sure, it's limited to that, but I like it enough to give her a free pass. Yes, the story is not original, but you can taste the higher quality film that it is.

The rest of the cast take a backseat to McKellar and little boy, but it's a well balanced Christmas tale of what it means to treasure family and the dream of true love over career and aspirations.

The little boy Cooper is the best part of this story...and he is relentless.

"Ok, ok you win, sad Christmas story."-Kurt

Christina is a store manager, up for a big promotion to start a branch in Paris. She has a lot riding on this year's Christmas display. She meets an artist under unfortunate circumstances and ends up having to come back to him with hat in hand to help with her Christmas display.

This holiday romance is all about the tough choices women continue to have to make in business...to have a family or to have career aspirations.

A little melancholy for Christmas...but Cooper more than makes up for it.

Despite loving Christmas and having no bias against Hallmark Christmas films (far from it and this has been said before quite a number of times in other reviews of their work), the premise did not really excite me. Striking me as being too much of typical Hallmark and pretty old-hat. Saw 'My Christmas Dream' as part of my quest to see as many Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas films as possible, something that has been happening on and off for nearly a year.

'My Christmas Dream' is okay but for me despite good things not much more than that. Hallmark did do worse Christmas films that year and overall, they also did better. In ranking, 'My Christmas Dream' is around low middle on both counts and was actually quite close to being in the worst category (with the worst of the bad things being pretty awful). While not quite a nightmare, this was not near close to being a dream of a film in my humble opinion.

Am going to start with the good things about 'My Christmas Dream'. It looks nice, well shot with lovely scenery. Wasn't impressed by the music on the whole, not unusual for Hallmark, but there were some pleasant and nostalgically festive parts.

There were a couple of decent performances. David Haydn-Jones is a charming leading man and Deirdre Hall is classy support, brightening the film up when she appears.

Hallmark regular Danica McKellar however didn't do it for me, she has a cliched character that is not likeable or rootable at any point in the film. Really hate it when films and such exaggerate negative character traits, which Hallmark did a lot with their female lead characters, and that was the case with Christina and when you add McKellar's over-compensating she quickly became very annoying. More insufferable though was Christian Convery as the most irritating character in the film, due to his whining and such getting excessive. McKellar and Haydn-Jones don't have much chemistry together, they seem uncomfortable around each other and never felt their love, while the romance is very rushed and underdeveloped. Few of the characters are particularly interesting and more tried and tested Hallmark cliches done with more spark elsewhere.

Regarding the script, that was mostly very stilted and cheesy as well as dreary with too much blandness to have any sentimental value. The story never comes to life and because of doing absolutely nothing different with a premise already done to death is very predictable. It is also very thin, especially early on, there is a lot of credibility straining centering around the job and what effect it would have on the family (not very honest and somewhat mean-spirited) and there is a real lack of charm or anything to connect to.

In conclusion, has good things but just okay. 4/10

I like this film, because I have spent so many years working in retail that it is enough to make you forget what Christmas is all about, so I can understand Danica Mckellar's character. However, I don't really rate her as an actress, there is something about her that is comedic, that takes away from the more straight acted element of the film. David Haydn Jones is gorgeous and I would let him paint me any day and he plays his part well too, but the star of this film is Christian Convery who plays the little boy, Cooper. He is absolutely adorable.

The main premise of the story, creating a Christmas display in less than two weeks is highly impractical and very unlikely, but I suppose it does it's work here as part of the magic of Christmas and a way to bring two people together, but I think I would have liked to have seen them studying the past a bit more to really make me understand why the MacDougall's history was so important.

Also, if Holly, the Assistant Manager can't cope with the Manager taking an afternoon off, what does she do when she's on holiday? Should she really be left alone to run the store?

Also, a lot of the props are just wrong, this is something that a lot of these films need to work on and once again they have the crappiest Christmas tree, that's already half dead.

It has a nice quota of Christmas and I'm a sucker for a love story, so it still wins for me.

Let me start by saying I have low standards when it comes to holiday films, as they all follow the same template while the actors are interchangeable. Also, I have a huge girl crush on Danica McKellar and have since I was a kid. I didn't think she could ever do wrong. Now I know even bias can't save My Christmas Dream.

McKellar's Cooper was downright unlikable, and unlike every other holiday movie where the character slowly evolves, she never quite got there. Haydn-Jones did a fine job looking pretty, but his role didn't exactly call for much other than being a father and love interest. The kid started out fairly whiny and annoying but eventually saved this film for me. So very cute! Not much chemistry there, but I really blame the lacking script. Their entire journey from introduction to reunion felt scattered and incomplete. It was almost as if they were only attracted to each other because they had to be...because it's Christmas and that's what good-looking people do. I don't really recommend this movie unless you have watched every other Christmas movie Hallmark airs.