Tout ce que je veux pour Noël... C'est toi !

I absolutely love Kristoffer Polaha. I really liked Marisol Nichols in Holly and Ivy. Both Kristoffer Polaha and Marisol Nichols did an excellent job. All the actors did a good job. The dogs and alpacas were cute and entertaining. The overall movie was soooooooo boring. I only finished it because of Kristoffer Polaha.

The main problem with this movie was the script. It started out interesting and promising, but quickly turned to a snooze-fest. The best part of the movie was the commercials. I gave this movie a six only because it had Kristoffer Polaha, otherwise I would have given it a two. Won't be watching again.

I didn't watch this when it came out in '22 because of all the reviews, so this year I decided to give it a chance.

I guess it just goes to show how different peoples' tastes are, because I thought it was great.

Marisol Nichols has never been one of my favorites, but she and Kris Polaha were both great. This took a lot of range to pull this off, but they did: funny, sweet, sad, bitter, all the emotions you go through in life except grief.

Maybe it's just because I'm a grumpy, snarky divorced guy, but I laughed a lot, recognizing my own life and having the same reactions as they did.

There is a homosexual couple in the movie, mostly for comic relief, but they did have a big smooch. That turns a lot of people off. Amy Groening, one of my favorites, as a quirky animal painter was good .

All in all, I'm sure I'll watch it again. To each his own.

'We Wish You a Married Christmas' (2022)

Opening thoughts: My frequent Christmas film viewings (or at least those from Hallmark and Lifetime) have been something of a mixed bag over the past four or five years, with plenty of good films, many average ones and many bad ones. The premise was one of those could have gone either way ones, but still watched 'We Wish You a Married Christmas' anyway because of liking Kristoffer Polaha.

While he doesn't come over shabbily at all, 'We Wish You a Married Christmas' didn't work for me. The 2022 Countdown to Christmas batcb actually did start off promisingly, but with this film comes the first misfire of the batch. It is not terrible or one of the worst Countdown to Christmas films from 2022, but pretty lacklustre.

Good things: Of course there are a few good things. Marisol Nicholls and especially Polaha give very game and committed performances.

Also found the dog absolutely adorable and the decor and scenery are colourful and nostalgic.

Bad things: Sadly there are a number of drawbacks. Would not have minded the excessive predictability, as a result of exexuting the premise too conventionally, if the film was still at least interesting and had some charm. The story however was very thin with a very dull and over-stretched middle act. Too much of the conflict felt forced. The script is too often stilted and has toi much emphasis on the hostility and everybody being annoyed with each other and it came over as mean spirited and took away any possible charm. Meaning that the film felt pedestrian, too heavy and with very little emotion.

Didn't care for any of the characters. None of the supporting cast stand out and inject very little passion or enthusiasm, a big part of why the humour fell flat. The characters are too much like typical Hallmark cliches with nothing new and there is nothing really likeable or rootable. The two leads did lack chemistry and the constant getting annoyed and hostily meant that the love never convinced. The music is forgettable at best and there is an over reliance on unfocused close ups that cheapens the film's look.

Closing thoughts: Overall, didn't do much for me.

4/10.

We Wish You A Married Christmas (2022) -

I really liked the idea of the two leads as a struggling couple to start with, just for a change. It wasn't a case of finding old love or new love, but finding a way to make their existing love succeed. It meant that things would only get better for them and it showed that sometimes a relationship can be worth fighting for and that all it would take was just a moment away to see things clearly.

Having said that - I know that I'm a man and obviously likely to say this; but she was definitely the larger problem in the marriage, because he was obviously quite happy to keep trying, whereas she put up obstacles. It does get frustrating in these films how they always make the women out to be the drama queens, because we all know that it's the men who don't tend to talk about their feelings of express why they're upset and can cause just as much drama as any woman and sometimes more.

While I did like Kristoffer Polaha, he was handsome even if he did walk a bit like Lurch annd I could appreciate Marisol Nichols in her role, the two leading players couldn't make up for the poor execution of the story and the concept. So a lot of the incidental elements like the really special townsfolk and the incredibly fake snow added to whet became quite silly in places and also some bits that were really quite hard to believe.

Kris and Marisol seemed to be the only sane people in a whirlwind of stupid, which was a shame, because, as stated above, the change of formula was refreshing and appealing until the daft really started to grate. A little bit more thought and polish could have worked wonders on this story.

5.25/10.

This was really good. Combining a troubled married couple with existing Christmas movie tropes is exactly how you change up your movies while leaving the audience satisfied at the end. This was totally predictable but the journey was a lot of fun. Kris and Marisol had great chemistry and the supporting cast was awesome. It starts off a bit slow but if you stick with it past the first 15 min, it's a great movie.

There were some weird directing choices though. We don't need to see constant close-ups of one person when two people are having a conversation. It got to the point where it was a bit distracting but I still enjoyed the movie.