Le Baiser de Noël

This story is, literally, painful to watch! Plenty of "smell the fart" acting, mixed with gobs of awkwardness and a heaping helping of truly horrible music makes the standard Hallmark schlock seem like The Godfather in comparison. This production has NO redeeming qualities. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

That I get sucked in to all the schmaltzy sap that are these standard predictable ridiculous holiday movies, short on romance and long on nothing else. And how come there is no affection or kissing or anything actually remotely romantic until the last scene? Just once I'd like to see a tongue jamming spit swapping kiss or two sweaty actors laying in each other's arms after a good romp. Instead we get a kiss that all to often looks painful, as if to say, God I hate this guy. Why did I ever take this part? Oh yeah. Because I'm not good enough to get a real role anywhere else. At least here they look like their mouth is open but no hint of a tongue anywhere. I swear the writers are just out of ideas so they stick to strict formula plots hoping it'll just work. It's like throwing something at a wall hoping it'll stick no matter how messy it is. With this one they mistakenly thought that throwing a puppy into the central theme mix would make it interesting. The acting is not the worst thing about this one and as far as I'm concerned the only thing redeemable about this movie is looking at Kevin and having a fantasy.

I tried watching this as the premise sounded good - man hoping to surprise child with a puppy at Christmas and has potential love-interest look after the pup. It was just ok. I was more upset with how they were treating a live puppy actually, you could see in some scenes (just prior to the christmas bake scene) the poor pup was yawning and wanted to sleep - pretty sure it was missing its mum and/or litter mates. He then perks up when they finally give the little pup some food, poor thing wolfed it down. These observances tell me that A/ the film shooting was far too long for the pup - B/ the poor pooch was literally starved on set before they finally fed him in a few scenes - C/ nobody seemed concerned of the dog's welfare as they dragged it behind them on a leash while walking down the street. Honestly, I was very much alarmed watching this cute puppy being mishandled for the sake of a movie. Give this one a pass.

Unlike recent dog movies this one isn't saved by cute dogs. The story of two single parents bonding is tedious and boring. She has to work and the spoilt kid can't understand how a single parent puts food on the table. The leads are okay to look at though there isn't much romance.

A Very Corgi Christmas (2019) -

If I'm being really honest I only stuck with this one for Kevin McGarry as Ben. Now normally he wouldn't have been one of the leading men that I would get too excited about, but I did like his character in this one, so the handsome face combined with that made him worth watching a bit longer.

Lauren (Kelly Kruger) on the other hand did not deserve her son Jacob (Davide Fair). He was far too nice to have to put up with her cr@p and had obviously had to grow up too quickly to deal with her putting her work first all the time.

Returning to her parents home for Christmas to find that they weren't there (Her own fault), Lauren continued to work while poor Jake and her Sister Lizzy (Alys Crocker) did everything to try and make things Christmassy with the help of the sexy guy from down the road Ben and his Daughter Charlie (Ariella Cannon). Slowly and with Ben's tutelage Lauren realised that she'd been getting a lot wrong and wasn't always grateful for the advice.

Meanwhile, Ben picked up a puppy for Charlie, but asked Lauren to look after it until Christmas for some unexplained reason. She stupidly agreed causing problems that were totally unnecessary if he'd just given Charlie the Dog on the first day he got it. It didn't help that Jacob wanted a pup too.

It was ridiculous and actually I thought that it was cruel to leave the pooch alone in Lauren's room or eventually in Ben's basement. They were very lucky that Ser Sherlock as 'The Puppy' didn't pee and poop everywhere. He was adorable though.

As with so many others like this story Lauren had given up on the festive season because someone had died at that time or it was the deceased favourite time of year, which is an idea that has been far too overused and just feels so wrong to me. Those that died would never have wanted that and it's so unfair on the children. It took Lauren far too long to realise how wrong she was too.

However with his positive outlook on how things should be, Ben was like all 3 of the 'Ghosts of Christmas' in one. He was the only real redeeming feature to the film. Although I did have to feel for Jacob, who wasn't one of the precocious varieties of child that some of these films get and was played very well.

It was one of those stories where everyone but Lauren was so perfect and lovely and did everything right, which made it a bit sickly sweet though. She was definitely a 'Scrooge' in need of redemption, but some of the others could have had some faults too.

Also the tree lighting ceremony was very lame and why did they turn the lights off so quickly? None of that bit made sense.

Overall it was just lacking a bit of heart and although the connection was there between the leads I didn't feel that it was really built enough. They needed at least one more date or fall from a ladder or snowball fight or something?

6.15/10.