A Royal Christmas on Ice

It was nice to hear about, and finally watch, what Fred Olen Ray was filming in our village (East Aurora, NY). Sticking to a tried-and-true formula of "Prince Comes to America and Falls In Love", including bits of area footage of his earlier film "A Price For Christmas", Ray and his team put together a good cast and a comfortable story, with characters worth caring about, on a fledgling network that appears to be accumulating Hallmark talent and movies, which is just fine with me - it's nice to find movies that are worth watching more than once. As far as Hallmark is concerned, they seem to be going into more contemporary stories, whereas the Great American Family channel seems to be more interested in traditional programming; both have their place.

First, the presence in cast of William Baldwin was the attraction to see this film who uses, again , old image of the prince , incognito, in Unied States, for an ambitious project , becoming, again, off course, so predictable, victim of Cupidon.

But the story just works, in decent and, for few scenes, just beautiful manner and this fact real matters.

A good detail - the good humor, skating and friendship and the gentle shadows of depression and new chance as gift.

Not great, not memorable but that pleasant Hallmark far to be boring or silly.

In fact, all being so predictable , it becomes just the old story repeated for new encounter . And it sounds not so bad, honestely.

That's what comedians used to say after a joke fell flat, not unlike this movie.

This premise of royalty meeting American commoners and giving up everything for them is the fairy tale, but how many of these schlock-fests are we going to be forced to endure?

Forced is the wrong word, I suppose: nobody made me watch this. And as another reviewer pointed out, there has been significant improvement in the GAV offerings this year. But not this one.

The lead actress had her appeal, but the rest of the cast reminded me of a local theater production.

There were some performances that were not awful: the baker had a nice way about him, and the best friend was ok.

William Baldwin didn't add anything by his presence, not that I would expect any different.

It's too bad. This looked like it might be ok from the trailer. Guess that's why they make them.

After last week bragging on GAF for stepping up their game this year, we come to this.

Weak dialogue, weak acting, and a contrived and unconvincing story line had us deciding to abandon this film sometime during the Christmas party scene.

Seriously, how long can you milk the angst from a dropped bakery cake? According to these writers, for a VERY long time. There was a bit of self-awareness when the female lead's friend asked her why she was so hostile to the guy (who by the way, SHE bumped into in the action, not the other way around as they continually stated in dialogue) when what happened was an accident and he went well out of his way to make it right.

Exactly.

Dialogue with the ubiquitous 'old boyfriend' was weak and unconvincing. Dialogue back with the male lead's royal family was awkward and glacial in pace.

We could finally take no more, despite the fact we're ice skating fans and were drawn by the premise.

The story is a spin on the royalty, post-injury ice skater, and failing business tropes, but it works. The acting, with the exception of the small role of Stephen Baldwin and the promising actor in the lead male role, is inexcusably terrible. Everyone either over or under acted. I could hardly get through it, and my expectations for these movies is pretty low.

It also seemed incomplete, because the rest of the royal family was set up to be revisited, but wasn't. That part of the story was just dropped. They rushed to the unrealistic and unbelievable ending.

Not to be picky, but they could have spent an extra 15 minutes to teach them to ice a cupcake. That was ridiculous.

Don't waste your time.