Believe in Christmas

7.3 stars.

I felt my experience with this film was just slightly above average. Along the lines of Hallmark films it was not quite good enough to meet my expectations for a fully engaging experience. There are good parts, but it was quite slow otherwise.

I like all the actors and I thought they did their best and much of it was fun and exciting and there was so much potential, but it just fell flat over and over again. I don't know if it was the Director or the script, but something was stalled.

They needed to restart this one, and give it a kick, maybe some of that black coffee that she desired over the sickly sweet syrupy stuff, would give it a jumpstart in this wonderful fake fairytale Christmas town. You might really like this one, so give it a shot, but it's not quite my cup of tea.

Or is it AI? Seriously, you bury body mics under wool turtlenecks and you need a human to use EQ, or you get unlistenable mud like this. Look no further than scene 1. Lindura is cute and vivacious, but she is a motormouth who mumbles, and you can't tell me you understood a word she said without CC turned on, or, until her final scene where she wasn't wearing a scarf. Forget the age difference creepiness which was omfg bad. Forget the amount of exposition needed up front to construct the hokum at the heart of this. Forget the barrels of fake snow for the scenes shot on a blazing hot day in July. Forget the truckloads of garland and ribbon in the lady's kitchen, including the garland wrapped around THE OVEN. This movie sums up what Hallmark has now reliably become, a parody of itself, creating packaged characters in packaged settings. And the story, the plot, makes no sense and does not matter.

The actors in this movie deserved a better script than the one for this movie. They have shined in other Hallmark movies but this script made that impossible. It was so painful to watch this Christmas movie! The movie could have possibly built on an earlier Christmas Land movie as a foundation and continued the story. It could have introduced problems with keeping Christmas Land as a thriving enterprise and the issues that presented its inhabitants. That might have made for a more interesting storyline and given the actors more to work with. Maybe Artificial Intelligence could have embellished the script!

I almost never leave reviews, but this is one that I couldn't leave without comment: Those strings doing nothing but straight beats- Why did this happen at least twice? (I'm not rewatching to double check) It gave a tension that was out of place in a Christmas movie and the specific scenes.

I know what I'm getting myself into when I start a Hallmark Christmas movie, but I at least expect for the background to stay in the background! Most of the time, background music is forgettable for me, but not in this one, and certainly not for good reason.

And the final scene was the worst of all! What was in the fire? Pop Rocks? It was the loudest fire I've ever heard!

Why has no one mentioned the age gap of the supporting characters? I can't find Lindura's actual age, but in the film she looks like 20 and her love interest looks 70. I thought their initial interaction was maybe two people who thought they could be long lost father/daughter.

I don't know if I can finish the entire movie or I might just have to skip to the end. We all know Hallmark movies are far fetched and just meant to be feel good movies at Christmas, but just seems off. I like the main characters in other movies I've seen, and I know they're married in real life so maybe that's why they seemed like they got too comfortable too soon. Being a guest at "Christmas land" you'd think there would be activities for her to be doing rather than spending alone time 24/7 with him.