The More the Merrier

Rachel Boston is perfect for Alice, an ER doc who brings joy to everyone around her. She is on shift Christmas Eve night. She intends to bring Christmas celebration to all the patients in this small town hospital. The snow keeps her and everyone else there through until Christmas morning.

There isn't much ongoing plot other than Rachel's 4 job offers in other places. She swears she has to choose one of them. That choice keeps popping up through most of the movie.

Brendan Penny is the seemingly smooth and admirable cardiologist, who is actually a bit of a mess as far as internal feelings. He just arrived and is captivated by Alice, at first strictly in professional admiration.

This movie is Hallmark at its Hallmarkiest. 4 babies after midnight keep the characters moving bringing plenty of Christmas joy. For a while, that's all I needed as a viewer. The last third of the movie tries to make everyone's story an HEA, and does, but wasn't as much of a viewing pleasure partly because it was so predictable and unreasonably perfect.

It's a Hallmark movie, not Citizen Kane. Fun to watch, and fun to mock. Still, it's entertaining. It hits all the classic bullet points, Christmas themes, impending storms, humor mixed with adversity and the usual "I don't really like Christmas but...." lines mixed with " I'm from the big city. ". Worth the watch for the holidays.

Predictable & clichéd,still was enjoyable.

Was a simplified movie,that you didn't need to follow closely for understanding.

Actors to acting was fine,cinematography decent & music didn't overwhelm talking.

Wish more hospitals especially during holidays,took such care of their patients.

Not something might rewatch,unlike some movies over the years.

6.4 stars.

Not a Christmas movie that I plan on seeing again. 'The More the Merrier' is a lot of bells and whistles, but amounts to nothing. I thought they might eventually give us some genuine emotion and romance and even some humor; but this is comprised of lots of uninteresting conversations between doctors and nurses and some patients and their children (and a few other people in a bakery in town).

I could go on about continuity factors, such as the doctors and nurses supposedly being "busy", yet there are literally almost zero patients in the whole clinic. Also, it seemingly takes place in one day near Christmas. Hospital staff and patients are snowed in and there are several women coincidentally going into labor at the same time. A lot of these people seem to know each other and the town is fairly small town, although it's not THAT small. There is a cool twist near the end, but it's not impactful enough to warrant sticking around if you lose interest.

Overall the atmosphere is not believable, so it feels too tidy and too much Hallmark and too little authentic. Multiple other factors don't seem right either, such as everybody is too clean and happy and there is no pain or body fluids in a hospital, which is not realistic, and I understand why Hallmark wouldn't, but if you are going to make a movie like this, you need it to be more convincing or just don't bother.

The technical aspects are fine, the mood is set appropriately. The music is decent and it creates a Christmassy atmosphere. The lighting, editing, direction -- all fine. On the other hand, I was not impressed by the story or execution and the romance was not timed properly. On a positive, the production value and acting were good, which is why I rate it at 6.4 instead of 5.0. I had high hopes for this film with several actors that rarely disappoint, but we are left with glittery stockings full of coal.

Ummm I just read on People dot com that the protagonists met on that Hallmark cruise and REQUESTED to work together after, which makes so much sense as these two on screen together are on a rizz off as the kids would say lol. Would they say that? No matter, the banter was there, the dialogue was great. I don't know why it took so long to pair them, but please let's keep them making movies. Matter fact let's give them a Netflix small town hospital series, like 10 episodes long that runs for 4 seasons, I would watch it all.

In terms of if it's good, like many Hallmark holiday movies, not everything makes sense up, but it's mostly a great time. I would have given it a 10, but I felt that not all stories were tied up and some of the side characters stories were introduced and then dropped.