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 2024 movie "Believe in Christmas" from director Christie Will Wolf found its way to my 2024 Christmas movie marathon. Sure, I had never heard about it, but that hardly mattered, as I do enjoy watching movies I am unfamiliar with. But I can't claim that I harbored the biggest of expectations to the movie, as the movie's cover was rather generic, even for a Christmas movie. But of course, it is not really fair to judge a movie by its cover alone.

I have to say that writers Maggie Dallen, Anne-Marie Meyer and Christie Will Wolf collectively only managed to churn out a script and storyline that was taken straight from the how-to-write-a-sappy-Christmas-movie guidebook. But hey, if you enjoy archetypical sappy and campy Christmas movies, then you're in for a treat here. If you sit down to watch the movie as a casual viewer, as I did, then you're not really in for a particularly memorable viewing experience. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that "Believe in Christmas" is a bad movie, not at all. It was just formulaic and generic.

The only face on the cast list that I was familiar with was leading actress Meghan Ory. It should be noted, though, that the acting performances in the movie were fair.

"Believe in Christmas" is not a movie that will ever get a second playing on my screen. It just simply wasn't outstanding in a vast sea of similar movies out there. And it didn't have the contents to be a Christmas classic.

My rating of director Christie Will Wolf's 2024 movie "Believe in Christmas" lands on a four out of ten stars.

Former foster kid and big city girl Beatrice Thompson (Meghan Ory) gets convinced by her best friend Emilia Rhodes (Lindura) to spend the holidays in Christmasland. While in this Christmas loving town Emilia convinces Beatrice that the town can't be this perfect...that the people are paid actors and are creating a Hallmark-like holiday romance experience for the two of them...only unbeknownst to Beatrice, she was identified early as a Christmas Grinch and put on a different path. That path includes a real tour of Christmasland from their inn keeper Carol's son Ethan Crane (John Reardon).

I actually enjoyed this Hallmark holiday romance and it was nice to see a real-life couple in the lead role. Their chemistry was easy and effortless, which was really comforting and believable. The story was a little different for a Hallmark holiday romance in that it poked fun of the genre a bit, it was cute and endearing instead of awkward and I liked the moment when Ethan promises Beatrice can ask anything and he will tell her the truth. I loved the honesty.

The town was super Christmas-y and I like the skeptic approach, but foster kid or not it's hard to believe an adult has never decorated a Christmas tree. I think Christmas fans and romantics will really enjoy this one.

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!