La Partition perdue de Noël

Alicia Witt shows her singing talent in one of this year's premiere's. I've always known her as an actor, since her days as a freaky little girl in Dune with a scary voice and puncturing finger and Cybill Shepherd's daughter in the imaginatively named Cybill, but since then she's proved her singing credentials in Nashville as well as her own albums and tours. Hallmark gives her the chance to sing and act and make a Merry Christmas.

Miss Witt plays Melody Jones, a country star(luckily she was in Nashville then wasn't it!) who is accused of plagiarising a song by her aging former partner who is no longer as successful as her, now alarms bells should be ringing straight away, so she has to return home to find the evidence that her Dad wrote the song with her. At home is her Mum, sister and niece(whose Dad is in the army and not returning home for Christmas - I have three out of three for army Dad's in Hallmark films this week, surely I get a collectors sticker for that!), her old music teacher, her old love interest, a town needing a Christmas song/production put on and the most amount of Christmas trees outside of a house and wreaths inside of a house that I have ever seen and as you know I have seen a fair few of these films).

Anyway, Miss Witt, sings amazingly well, treats her rival with honour and respect and generally makes you want her to sing Christmas songs to a family whilst snow falls outside and Mulled Wine flows freely forever! She finds the evidence, she finds true love, her niece even sings and so does her sister. The army Dad says hi via video link. Her career grows, Christmas is made right and everyone lives happily ever after but covered in a huge amount of Christmas trees - I mean, seriously what are they going to do with them all in January, it'll take ages just to take all the decorations and lights off. She's not going to have time to tour!

So, I've got Michael from Roswell, Riley from Buffy, Zoey from Cybill, a huge daytime TV star, a star from Fuller House. Hallmark continues to develop he careers of ex-teenage stars into a happily adult world.

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.

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.

The first virtue is represented by the lead couple. The second one - the admirable job of supporting actors. Not the last - the atmosphere. Result - just a beautiful film about roots, romance and a song.

6/10 - one of the better Alicia Witt Christmas movies, but still filled with a few too many of the classic tropes