Un Noël de rêve en Suisse

Jodie Sweetin's Alex travels the world for her job and decides to spend Christmas with her family at her Mom's new inn in Switzerland. Problem is that Mom has invited her ex and his live-in girlfriend too and Beth used to be Alex's BFF. Alex takes the unwritten law that you don't date your best friend's ex pretty seriously. It is made worse by poor communication on the part of everyone leading to hurtful secrets.

While the reunion is going on, Alex spends time with Tim Rozan's Liam who is Mom's inn manager. There is some chemistry but nothing spectacular. Liam has a son which always adds a cute factor in a Christmas story.

This is a very simple story with no great highs or lows or surprises. The acting is decent. The dialogue is OK but nothing great. The viewer gets to see some Swiss Christmas customs.

When people abroad try to make a film about your homecountry it can be really good or really bad. Here there is so much bad. There's really nothing much swiss about this film apart from the swiss flags everywhere (which we don't really have except for 1st of August). It seems like it's someones idea of what the country might be like from looking at a tourist brochure from 30 years ago and mixed it up with a clearly American house and American scenery with a view swiss mountain pictures added in as transitions.

The film itself continues to disappoint. The acting isn't great, the plot is very simple, not really believable and just flat. Having those two former friends meet with those semi love quarrels and OF COURSE the handsome hotel guy is a widower for whom the main character falls for.. i mean its just so blatantly bad.

I'm glad i didn't pay for this. What a waste of time though.

The setting and culture is beautiful, but unfortunately the fun gets lost as many of the secondary characters are insensitive, controlling and pushy yet judge the lead when she can't cope with their constant bad behaviour. Whilst I know that's sadly a realistic storyline, I struggled to watch this movie once and certainly couldn't last a second viewing, which is a shame as I liked the Swiss details and artwork. To be fair though, they maybe could do a sequel where the drama comes from uncontrollable events rather than controlling characters eg delays in delivery, accidents etc and the community (that several of the people moved there for) coming together to support each other.

While I haven't been to Switzerland (yet), from friends who have, this seemed to be a poor representation of the country at Christmas, which I'm told is pretty spectacular. I guess the holiday traditions portrayed were genuine? Did anyone bother researching?

The second issue -- as much as I adore Jodie Sweetin, there was ZERO chemistry with the inn manager, who was about as dry as toast, and pretty emotionless. I've loved watching Sweetin in other Christmas movies, as well as her Full House co-star, Candace Cameron Bure, they make cheesy Christmas movies fun to watch during the season, and I mean that as a compliment!

A Swiss Family Christmas/Merry Swissmas (2022) -

In the leading male role of Liam, Tim Rozon was not quite as sexy as his character Mutt in 'Schitt's Creek' (2015-20), but his character was still charming and attractive, because of his softly spoken and mild manner. I wasn't sure why he fell for Alex (Jodie Sweetin) though, because she was a stroppy cow and too high maintenance for his calm relaxed personality.

I liked the quantity of Swiss traditions and words used to show a different view of the season. It hasn't always worked when they've tried to do this in a film and it did seem a bit like they'd written a list of things to cover and written dialogue to connect each event rather than writing them in to an existing romance story, but it was still interesting.

I thought that the friendship, when troubled, reconciled a bit too early on. Perhaps I'm just used to the usual formula that has it all happening 15 minutes before the end, but it left very little anticipation.

And there were a couple of moments that were a stretch to believe as well. Also, Louis was too much!

With all that said, I didn't mind it and because of Tim, I probably would revisit the story again and as a way of trying to remember the Swiss Christmas ceremonies and traditions, because seasonal culture is something that I love.

669.49/1000.