Natal Sob Medida

Warning: not for the hyperglycemic or the lactose-intolerant!

I was expecting to hate this based on low scores and poor reviews on here...BUT, shamefully, I liked it!

It's cheesy & sugary and yet it works at the superficial level it was created on...it's better than it should be, and I've seen worse.

Not so keen on the male lead and his overly preened eyebrows but the leading lady had a nice presence, and both worked well together.

This could turn into an annual 'guilty pleasure', for many viewers!

I watched this movie expecting it to be better based on the rating here, however, I was unpleasantly surprised. The main problem for me was the leading lady, she felt like "acting nice" and her facial expressions were cringy. No chemistry between her and the leading man as well. I couldn't bother finishing it.

After so many Hallmark Christmas films, Christmas Made to Order is just...comfortable. Not surprising, not touching, not sweet. Only comfortable , in many scenes against Alexa PenaVega and Jonathan Bennett, each giving fair jobs but the expected chemistry between them being only a sort of...sketch. Her hard effort to be the lovely young woman, his try to be the expected architect, the total unrealistic end are, for many reasons, too much but, like many Hallmark productions, it is saved by secondary actors , by the eulogy to family and by not very bad humor. And, sure, the spirit of Christmas is the first savior.

It was nice to see a movie with a very different plot/setting of the usual working formulas.

The underlying message of the movie: "believe" is beautiful and very Christmas-y.

The camerawork is decent, the dialogue is at sometimes unbearable and the acting (individually) is fair.

However, o rated this film with 4 instead of the usual 5 for Christmas movies because, in my opinion, the two lead characters share no chemistry whatsoever.

The theme of follow your dream is a drum beaten pretty loudly in this movie.

The story premise of a bachelor hiring a Christmas decorator/planner isn't unique but it works out in this movie. Interesting climax too.

Alexa PenaVega is a lot of fun in this movie. I like optimistic characters and she's all that here. But I'm not so sure that her acting comes off as natural. Likewise Jonathan Bennett for acting. It's not that either one is bad, but sometimes a shot or a line just doesn't seem right.

I recently noticed (too late, I fear) that Hallmark likes throwing in Easter eggs this year (little surprise treasures for the observant viewer). In this one, watch for a photograph of PenaVega and a special someone.