La Partition perdue de Noël

After last year's unintentionally hilarious "Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane," in which Alicia Witt overacted during the first hour with bizarre facial and body movements (and a hairstyle that seemed to move on its own), Witt got a new hairstyle, new make-up, and cleaned up her act, giving a really nice and heartfelt performance. The old Alicia Witt is back and she is quite good. She plays a successful singer who is threatened with a lawsuit by her older mentor who is claiming that the singer stole a song. It's an interesting concept for a Hallmark Christmas movie and there are a couple of good subplots as the singer returns home for Christmas in order to find her original composition of the song. The script is uneven - some scenes are written quite well, while others are sophomoric, repetitive, or just plain filler. The cast, however, rises above the material and gives natural and effective performances, particularly Witt, Brendan Hines, and Lori Hallier as the singer's mother. On the whole, a nice story that is worth at least one viewing. Welcome back, Alicia Witt.

For us, Alicia Witt's quirky style adds to every movie she appears in, and that alone gave us reason to watch this film. It's probably our second favorite (in a dismal 2019 field) of the current year's Hallmark Christmas films.

Luckily, Alicia was included to carry the film, because much of the plot makes no sense at all. Alicia, a country singing star, must return home to find proof that will defend her against a plagiarism claim. The movie focuses on finding the original music or notes written for her song.

However, while she returned home for this purpose, she doesn't work at it very diligently. Random scenes are interspersed, and they only return to the search from time to time to remind us that was supposed to be important. During the random scenes and search scenes, innumerable people remember her singing the song in public 10 years before the song she's accused of plagiarising, but no thought of getting these memories down as testimony on affidavits is ever considered. LOL

More cliches follow, regardless, we found this to be a watchable film, but probably now the bottom of the list of Alicia Witt's Christmas offerings, and I don't really plan on repeat viewings.

She does do some singing, and we discovered that she has "singer/songwriter" in her history. So the singing was real, and she did a nice job.

Explain to me why she needs the sheet music since she has at least two people outside her family that can testify to hearing the song (and sounds like one helped perform it) long before Connie came out with her song. This is a detail I just can't enjoy the rest of the movie as a result especially since there is so much screen time devoted to it. But without the focus on the sheet music, we couldn't have had the surprise of the ultimate resolution, which I guessed early in the movie when the clue was given the first time. They did come up with a couple of nice twists at the end (even if some of it was very predictable).

Even without that problem, the story seemed forced but as noted, it smoothed out toward the end.

I am a huge Alicia Witt fan. But I can't say I thought she acted well in this movie. I didn't see the chemistry between Chase and Melody. There wasn't enough screen time between the two of them to show it (because too much was spent moaning about the plagiarism accusation).

But I loved the fact that she and others got to perform songs including original music. She posted that she isn't a guitar player (as she said, "not yet"). But she is a very talented singer, songwriter, and piano player.

I would like to see more Christmas movies like this where musically talented actors sing more than one song.

What is the name of the song sung at the end? "Merry Christmas, I Miss You" doesn't come up in my searches.

I try to watch as many Hallmark movies as I can, so this one made it to the DVR.

I want to like Alicia Witt. I really, really do. But she seems to only play, lately, the sugary sweet, sappy, too nice for her own good kind of person. She usually does this voice that sounds like she wants to be looked upon as the weak and childish woman who needs help tying her shoes. All that's missing is a pout. I'd love to see her as a character with a stronger, more assertive voice.

Also, the writing for this seems more than a little formulaic. I rolled my eyes when, in the beginning, she reminded her mentor she came to Nashville as a young girl with her "guitar and a dream."

Really? Could we toss a few more clichés in there?

As others have mentioned:

If there are SO many people who remember her performing her song while still in high school, ten years before the other song came out, why aren't they slapping some signatures down on some affidavits?

AND - for someone who so desperately needs this sheet music, she's sure not putting a lot of effort into finding it. Her quest is interspersed in the story almost as an afterthought. "Oh, yeah, so long as I'm here..."

I reached a point in the movie where I think a clue was given as to what happened to it, but haven't gotten to the end, yet, so...

This is a great premise for a movie, lost sheet music, but it could have been more solidly put together. There could have been some funny moments created in this, involving her hunt for the sheet music.

Also, I'm not loving her hair in this movie. I know that's a petty thing to mention, but I'm starting to see more flaws in the movies, which detract from my enjoyment of them. In addition, I started seeing smile lines around her eyes, which is fine. Grow old gracefully, I always say, and never deny your age. It's an earned right. But, she's still playing people in their 20's and 30's and it's getting harder and harder to accept. How about Hallmark letting her be her age? Let's let her be a mom of older children, for a change, instead of the ingenue?