Georgia (Rachel Boston) attends her ten year high school reunion where she clashes with an old rival, falls back in love with her high school beau, and reunites with her best friend Ben (Jonathan Bennett), who has always been in love with her. I give made-for-TV movies a lot of leeway. I don't expect great things from them. Even more so if they are Christmas themed. This is a schmaltzy, cheesy, predictable movie. But that's not why I dislike it.
I dislike it for a few reasons. First, the characters are incredibly immature. None of them act like grown-ups. They all act like they're still stuck in high school. Considering "what have I done with my life since high school" is a recurring theme in the movie you would think it would be addressed at some point. Perhaps some characters coming to conclusions about how little they've grown up. But no, they're all just juvenile throughout the entire thing from beginning to end. Second reason I dislike it is you have wasted and unnecessary characters. The wasted would be Marilu Henner and Harry Hamlin. Henner's role as the mom is very small and she really adds nothing to the plot. Hamlin is there as comic relief. Both actors are given next to nothing good to do, although they both outshine their younger costars in the personality department by miles. The unnecessary would be characters like Ben's stalker or Georgia's dad, who appears in one scene just to be a jerk to his daughter and is never heard from again. I felt like that subplot needed some closure. The stalker seemed to be there just to let us know Ben actually does date and isn't the pathetic loser he seems to be, pining away ten years later for a girl who acts like he has no penis.
Which leads to the biggest problem with the movie: the romance. That's what we all watch something like this for right? Well the romance fell flat for me as Georgia spends the entire movie fawning over some douchebag jock while walking all over her best friend, who is obviously in love with her. Georgia's inevitable revelation about who she really loves comes in the most insincere and forced way possible. I was left with the feeling that Georgia was settling for Ben. The way Rachel Boston portrays Georgia seemingly in heat over the ex while acting completely unattracted to Ben left me cold. There is nothing that gives me any indication that she is as sexually attracted to her friend as she is to the douchebag jock. The writing is partly to blame but really the chemistry between the actors is nonexistent. Even at the very end there's still something stiff about them. This is very poorly handled material, even for TV. I mean this is cookie cutter assembly line stuff you know? If you mess this up, you really suck.
