Christmas in Maple Hills

Good actors. Poor script which makes the story line fall way short. The movie plods along in a mundane plot line with no side plots, distractors, MacGuffins or anything to add some character to the movie. Each scene is quite sterile with minimal characters, action and emotion. It seems as if the producers limited cost by avoiding extras and scenery. Without interesting dialogue, the writers easily whipped out some lines and left it at that.

The female lead supposedly grew up on a ranch but comes across as a city girl. I could not believe she was a country girl who loved the outdoors and farm life. A basic plot is the determination of who actually owns the land. However, from the beginning, I never had any emotional tie to idea of the lead losing her family land and being evicted. No suspense at all as to how the ending would play out.

Good story line that falls way short in entertaining. So much potential. So little result.

This was my favorite Christmas movie of the 2023 season on the Great American Family network (and in my top 5 overall of the 2023 Christmas movies on both Great American Family and Hallmark). It was not your typical predictable GAF/Hallmark Chritsmas movie. It had much more to the plot and I really enjoyed the storyline solving the mystery of the lead character's grandmother's love story via flashbacks to the WWII era. There was good chemistry between the actors in both the modern day timeline as well as the historical timeline of the grandparents. Each year there are only a few movies I would rewatch the following Christmas season and this movie will be one of them.

Marcus Rosner and Emily Alatdo knock it out of the "farm" with chemistry in this well-written, excellently cast movie!! Supporting cast is outstanding also!! Love Amanda Jordan and Adrian Spencer, Zarin, Thom, Bukola, Daneilla, Andrew and the man who played Emily's brother----they all do a FABULOUS job in their respective roles!! Thank you to them for being willing to bring this AMAZING STORY to life!

Celebrate Christmas present with mystery from Christmas's past to uncover the family not talked about secrets. Sheds light on relationship challenges in the main romance as well as the supporting romance and dad/son relationship. I love how this movie incorporates honor to our Military who sacrified for our freedom and exposes what the military personell go through during battle.

Once again score BIG for Great American Family for being willing to show this on their channel.

The movie was rather slow , even with decent actors. Around half way through, the obligatory Hallmark mixed race couple shows up. It's always unexpected and they work on you like that. I don't like being manipulated, and that's what it feels like. Aside from that, the script is also a downer. I didn't feel very enthused after watching. The only redeeming quality was the scenery and the country feel. However, as someone else mentioned, the lead actress seems very city girl type. I think this movie would have worked better with a different leading lady such as Lindy Booth , or Danicka McKellar. The leading actor was generic as most of them are.

Ok, despite what I perceived as "professional" reviews preceding this one, I was very impressed with the real life message that probably went over the heads of the other reviewers.

My wife when she was in HS was given an assignment to interview her grandparents about the WW 2 era, she chose her grandfather.

As it turned out, her grandfather had been awarded the SILVER STAR for an action vs Natzi Germany over a bridge battle. He had never talked about anything form that war with any of his kids or relations. No one knew this had happened, he wanted nothing to do with that war

Whoever scripted this movie, was completely aware of this behavior in actual warfront vets, the entire movie revolves around this theme.

I was not overly impressed with the acting, there was very little if any actual farm activity with our hard working farmers. I'd give this thing maybe a 5 or 6, except that the central theme is so powerful, and so overlooked.