Christmas Bedtime Stories

The storyline is noble, about a solder lost and a family trying to move on. But the characters and actual family story were lame. As someone else commented a total waste of Steven Lund's talent. Erin had somewhat of a good role but even that was dull. Lund had a role with more meaningful dialogue and excellent character development when he played the brother of Charlie in just one episode of the Hudson and Rex TV series than this two hour Hallmark movie. This is not the first Christmas movie of this year that has sorely missing the mark. Hope they improve over the next two months. Hallmark vs GAC seems to be watering down quality to the detriment of the actors.

I really wanted to like this movie. Erin Cahill and Steve Lund were good, but the script was awful. The attention to military detail was lacking. Was Colby a Major or a Captain? The General was not even aware of the most important detail. How he didn't know one of his men was alive was beyond me. I felt so bad for Pierce. He loved her and her daughter so much. The flashback scenes were probably the best part of the movie. The ending happened so quickly and was not believable at all. How you wrap up a movie in the last five minutes is just silly. Will not be rewatching this. I gave it 3 stars for just Erin and Steve.

This was good for 1 hour 45 min. Then it morphed into the strangest ending I've ever seen in a Christmas movie. Steve Lund was wasted in this. Love Erin Cahill but this wasn't for me. For a better moving on story, watch Christmas Homecoming instead.

Seriously, the character played by Erin Cahill just wasn't rootable at all and exhibited no character growth whatsoever throughout the movie. She started and ended the movie in the exact same place emotionally. This seems to be an ongoing pattern at Hallmark since new leadership came in. They seem to think viewers want shock value instead of predictability and usual tropes. The reason the network is successful is because people watch for predictability and tropes.

Steve Lund and Erin Cahill should have made for one of the best movies of the season. What do we get instead? A horrendous train wreck of a movie with clearly the worst writing and research ever done on the Hallmark channel. It is an affront to service people and veterans and instead of being happy at the ending it was like watching a train wreck. You couldn't believe this was happening on every level. The acting with these two was as always good. The actors were well cast and the direction ok. The script though should have been rewritten from the halfway point on. Who signed off on this and thought yeah this is a good hallmark movie?

'Christmas Bedtime Stories' (2022)

Opening thoughts: This is being said with a very heavy heart. Actually really liked the premise, that and Hallmark completest sake bring my main reasons for watching, which sounded very sweet and heartfelt. Have liked Erin Cahill and Steve Lund elsewhere, though their performances and films do vary. Wanted to see some more festive films that were more recent, lower in budget and were not childhood favourites, so in a way to broaden my horizons and have been doing so since November 2019.

The second 2022 Miracles of Christmas film ''Christmas Bedtime Stories' (cute title) was really disappointed and just didn't deliver in most areas. Although there are two massive common criticisms cited against the film in other reviews, to me there were more problems than just those two. 'Christmas Bedtime Stories' was not a complete shambles, but compared to the previous 2022 Miracles of Christmas films it really underwhelmed.

Good things: Cahill and Lund are more than game in their roles and give it their all. In fact, in general the acting was fine.

The film is well filmed and looks attractive. There are moments of charm.

Bad things: Unfortunately, 'Christmas Bedtime Stories' has too many failings to recommend. The story is well meaning, but is for my tastes too sentimentality heavy and over-stretched and has too much draggy pacing and too much coming out of nowhere. The script can be too corny and could have done with a real tightening up momentum wise, a lot of talk here and not all of it necessary.

While Cahill and Lund are fine individually, the former suffers from her character being very difficult to root for and the latter has far too little to do so is wasted. The central chemistry is never fleshed out properly and is underused. The characters are too sketchy and there is too little to them to care about them enough. The music is drab and needed more variety and the direction plods.

Do agree with everybody else with the two things that ruin the film. The representation of the military is truly insultingly inept and indicative of someone who didn't appreciate what they do. Worse is the very rushed, introduces out of nowhere and idiotic ending that makes no sense whatsoever.

Concluding thoughts: All in all, weak.

3/10.