MOVIE REVIEWS

Review by Peter McGinn

I thought I would try this movie for a couple of reasons. It received fairly good ratings for a Hallmark holiday film. You know, those feel good, snow and miracle-filled films they crank out every year. Also, for several years we had our Christmas Day lunch at Chinese restaurants, so on some level it resonated a little. I made it through to the end, so that is an improvement over the norm for these films. It was, well, okay. All of the elements: the writing, acting, main plot, all okay. I do have to say there were an awful lot of subplots to keep track of. And yet, here it was less than 90 minutes long and it seemed longer than that to me. That can’t be good. And the Own the Lib crowd must have been seething over all the multiculturalism. And sometimes the outdoor scenes with snow in piles or on roofs, seemed fake to me. At one point a character was shoveling snow on a lawn for some reason. Weird. So I guess I have established that it was okay, though not destined to make any rotation to watch again during future holiday viewing.