Best Christmas Ball Ever

Badly written Badly acted The only good things its got for it is the classical music and that it is a christmas movie

Most christmas movies(Hallmark, I am looking at you) are corny, they do not have original stories(There are exceptions of course) but they have some charm, they add just a bit of whatever to make them just slightly different, and the acting makes them unique

This has nothing of what makes the Hallmark movies enjoyable(I actually confused this one with the Hallmark one, which is why I saw it)

The writing is abysmal, like if it was written by someone that does not speak english without any proofreading, there are a lot of little details(Like the uncle is his uncle but not hers? I mean, we could think "Step brothers" but it is implied they are not step) and... well, pretty much everything else, just nonsensical lines and actions.

The acting is like watching that 90's cartoon action league... they are stiff, without passion, without any real acting at all, delivering blandly on screen.

It is a trainwreck of an attempt that was really disappointing.

In the movie's opening scene, our lead character Amy (Elisabeth Harnois) discovers her boyfriend's desire to have an open relationship and the fallout serves as the vehicle to launch her journey from Chicago to her brother's place in Vienna. She decides to get some ball tickets at a dance studio in Vienna. While there, a wealthy instructor Lukas (Christian Oliver) immediately wants her to be his replacement partner for a midnight ball dance competition without knowing how well she can dance. Romantic interests follow and the story follows the formula quite well to the end.

Including the unbelievability of the opening premise of this movie, there are some unsettling aspects to it. There are three men who have a romantic interest in Amy and all are quite aggressive in pursuing Amy and placing her in difficult scenarios to resist their advances. Amy would be drawn in by their attention then suddenly realizing what was happening become quite creeped-out by the situation. I'm not sure if the director intended these scenes to play this way, it was how Elisabeth Harnois interpreted her character's response to the advances or just the actors taking some artistic interpretation on the scenes. Most versions of these movies have a slow progression of "not interested" to "he's the one" by the last 5 minutes. Amy's character went back and forth in every scene and this pendulum made the movie feel quite uncomfortable to watch at times.

Overall, this movie is very much a hybrid between Hallmark's 2020 version of Christmas in Vienna and Christmas Waltz storylines. Not sure who stole whose idea on this one or if somebody at Hallmark hated this movie so much they decided they could do it better. Christmas Waltz features much higher dancing quality, set decorations and very strong chemistry between the lead actors. Hallmark's Christmas in Vienna version features a better and socially correct version of our subject movie's story. Either of these films would be recommended over this one.

Plot sets up an interesting circumstance that leads to a fun romantic back and forth. Well developed by the lead characters.

Terrible! I was excited about this movie after three years living in Vienna, but what a waste of time. Nothing in the movie makes sense. The plot is absurd, super forced, the amount of inconsistencies and illogical situations in the movie is too high, and the quality of the performances and post-production editing is ridiculous. The fake snow edited in before the ball is the pinnacle of how bad the movie is. And as well as being a terrible production, it shows absolutely nothing of a city as beautiful as Vienna. Absolutely embarrassing, and by far one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Some terrible movies are funny of how bad they are, but this one doesn't even get that 😭

The story line is pretty decent and I didn't expect the view of Vienna is that impressive

Every pros and cons of the movie have been mentioned. The Dance scenes are so amazing. Thanks for the camera team. Steady !