Trading Christmas

After watching Trading Christmas the other night, and enjoying in very much, I was astonished to see that I had only given it a 6 on IMdB.I must have been much more discriminating way back then. Or the movies that Hallmark produced were so much better across the board. After years of looking at Hallmark movies, I guess I am more surprised and delighted when they deliver a movie that has some excellent acting, a plot that has some freshness, and more than cookie cutter characters. Trading Christmas has all 3, so I bumped it up to an 8. who knows? Maybe in another 7 years, it will be a 10!

The 4 leads were excellent, and playing characters that diverged from the Hallmark template just enough. Tom Cavanaugh, always entertaining, plays a real Christmas grouch, and has a knack for delivering his real snarky lines. His slamming the door on the Prince and Princess Super-cute Hallmark neighbor children was almost a knowing send up of the usual reaction our typical nice-guy Hallmark Hero would have. Snowball fight! Snowman! Sledding! Well in fairness, he does do all 3 later on, but only when his character starts to warm up with Christmas cheer (After all this *is* a Hallmark Christmas movie.)

Gabrielle Miller, who played the bad girl in another Hallmark favorite, Holiday in Handcuffs, was hilarious. Her character could have been very annoying, but she was just off the chart charming with her pushy, assertive personality, and gives as good as she gets from put-upon Tom C. I couldn't wait until they fell in love and got together.

The older couple, Faith Ford and Gil Bellows, were less interesting, but Faith is a really good actress, and so made her nice, daughter-dependent, and small town perky Mom character likable and relatable. In a less talented actresses hands she would have been dull as dishwater and irritating. Gil Bellows was her bored, sophisticated, wealthy match. At first, I wasn't too impressed with him (wow, has he aged!) but then I realized he had a real Jack Nicholson thing going on.

The plot was pretty much a rip off of The Holiday with Kate Winslett and Cameron Diaz, but I enjoyed that movie, so I enjoyed the Hallmark take on it. Hallmark, break out your cookie cutter characters and gimmick reliant cookie cutter plots and make more like this 2011 Hallmark classic! Grab some out of work *talented* actors that are not interchangeable with any others in your usual "stable", and get some writers who aren't afraid to write characters that break the mold a little bit!

This is a truly funny Christmas movie, mostly due to Tom Cavanagh, whose crusty author with writer's block drives half of the story and provides most of the chuckles.

The movie provides travel mix-ups aplenty, and Cavanaugh's half of the story is a perfectly done antithetical romance.

The other half of the story has amusing moments, but is mostly straightforward and sweet.

The romances work, the comedy works, and the stories work.

Watch for Cavanaugh, and be entertained. :-)

Recommended.

This movie was pretty good. I love Hallmark Christmas movies, and I love Debbie Macomber's books. It is a good holiday movie, and I loved it. However I believe that the portrayal of Faith and Charles was much better than that of Ray and Emily's. It was a very good family movie with a cute and entertaining plot. My sister and mother and I watched it. We all enjoyed it, but we all agreed about the problem with Ray and Emily. Sometimes Hallmark movies seem the same, but this one is different and has a nice plot. This makes you want to settle down with a batch of cookies under a blanket and a mug of hot cocoa while you watch it.

I really liked this film. Yes, it was almost a complete copy of "The Holiday" but without the budget or the A-list stars, but it was a good re-telling of that story. The characters were easy to associate with and they were all nice people in their own way. Nobody was irredeemable.

I personally adore Tom Cavanagh, his delivery was just so fun and I could empathise with his characters need to be alone and peaceful to write. Gil Bellows came off a bit creepy, but still a nice guy and all of the leading ladies were very good too.

There wasn't a huge seasonal vibe with regards to the content to fill it, but the story brought a joy and romance that was festive. There was a tree decorating or two, but it wasn't over the top.

They have got to stop using Dead Christmas Trees though. The one in this should have been on the kerb at least a month before they made this film. It's a big peeve of mine when props and the other little details are not thought about properly, especially when everything else was quite well done.

In theory it wasn't the standard formula that most of these TV films use, which in itself as a good thing, but it was also just well put together and is definitely one that I could watch yearly.

Though I do recall seeing this many years ago, I found this more engaging second time around, perhaps not noting its merits on first viewing.

Here we have a clever plot with three strands, which sees two disparate couples finding romance unexpectedly after last-minute change of Christmas plans in the USA - where the characters are all based in different states.

The main plot has the romance, the subplot has the comedy and the third plot involves Emily's daughter, who's a bit annoying but whose own romance proves to be a useful distraction from the romance and the comedy of the two main romantic stories.

The two romantic leads have superb chemistry - I wondered if anything developed off-set? A nice factor here is that these two characters contrast strongly and live completely different lives which may explain the added frisson to their unexpected romance.

Apparently this is based on the same story that was used for the A-list screenplay 'The Holiday' with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. I've seen that and I can assure you this TV film is vastly superior, in that it is far more engaging than that big budget Hollywood movie.

The romance is right, the comedy is right - it works, and rookie romcom writers would do well to keep this one as a standard to aim for.

Though made in 2011 (TV films seem to have a shorter shelf life than theater movies) this will play on some channel a few times each yuletide.