There is the common premise of a Hollywood starlet going back to her home town to rejuvenate and hiding from the press. She meets a local and spends time with him while working on her Christmas activity checklist.
The obvious conflict occurs early and revolves around Alyssa being ratted out to the paparazzi. There is a significant sequence revolving around that and her trying to find who did it. I was put off by her assumption that it was Jake since he was trying to shield her from them right at the beginning. But Alyssa kept going back to blaming him. There were enough hints from earlier that made it easy for the viewer to guess the real culprit.
The movie revolves around the 25 year old movie that launched Alyssa's career and cuts from that movie are woven into the story as a kind of flashback.
The acting is fair to poor. Sets and scenery are cheap. There is a scene near the end which I will say is a parody on influencers or podcasters. Two of them are doing interviews of locals at a big event. The acting by the interviewers is either parody or it is so bad that it would rank high on the list of worst ever.
I thought the story wandered at times and had some rough transitions, which also could have been poor editing by the network showing this 2 year old movie. There wasn't a lot of tension or surprises and no great highs or lows.
