Une romance de Noël épicée

As cheesy and predictable as you'd imagine.

There are worse Christmas TV films out there, but 'A Gingerbread Romance' fails to entertain even by the smallest of margins. It's all just rough around the edges, particularly with the editing and pacing.

Duane Henry (Adam) and Tia Mowry (Taylor) lead competently, with both of them having likeable qualities and giving alright performances - they just needed more chemistry together to take it up a notch. The rest of the cast are kinda poor, though most only have one or two lines to be fair.

I partly like the premise involving the creation of gingerbread houses, but it's nowhere near compelling - with Adam & Taylor's supposed rivals barely troubling them, so the story lacks any real acceleration. It's just a simple romance spread across 90 minutes.

I could tell that as a married woman, Tia didn't want to get too close to her costar. And the costar was just as flat. He was not about to cross the line with Cory's wife. I love Tia, but this was a miss for me.

Unfortunately, the chemistry between the main characters was lacking. It was a little distracting that Tia was wearing such over-sized awkward clothing. I think she was pregnant at the time, but I've seen much better attempts at covering baby bellies while filming movies. The scene with the security guard is really uncomfortable and unnecessary.

The obligatory antagonism between the leads at the beginning was annoying with little wittiness. Both characters were unnecessarily rude bordering on cringe-worthy. Some of the acting was less than stellar, especially stiff delivery by the leads. Even the ending was stiff.

On the other hand, while you could tell that Melody Nosipho Niemann is pretty young, she was still cute. The story isn't bad, albeit still not stellar. The contest idea (with promotions hinging on the outcome) is not new, but I liked the giant Gingerbread house idea. One thing I always like to see in a Rom-coms is a lot of screen time focusing on the leads rather than other circumstances and this movie does that. I just wish their chemistry was a little more exciting.

Many reviewers on this page gave reviews and ratings that made me expect something much worse. I almost gave up on it after the annoying start. But while I probably won't look forward to watching this again (which really tells me how much I like most movies), I don't think it deserves so many horrible ratings.

I agree with most of the reviews here, this is just not very good. It wasnt well made either, one of the big goofs I noticed is when they are unpacking the truck. He's lifting the bags of "flour" as if they weigh 100lbs, overacting, while she touches one bag with her hand and up it goes like a pillow. Then she lifts a bucket of "honey" up high like it weighs nothing - because clearly it's an empty bucket. How did they let this get by during filming, or at least in editing? I am sure there's more but I stopped paying attention.

Another reviewer commented on her horrible hats, lol. I think Tia likes wearing berets, I've seen her in them other movies.