Christmas Bedtime Stories

The movie's ending was preposterous and ruined it for me. Hallmark needs to hire some new writers - puleez! I don't want to see formulaic storylines or tropes - I'm sick of the same old, same old from Hallmark. The same story over and over with different actors in different towns. While this movie was a departure from the usual ending, it was completely unbelievable. I want to see really great stories about people finding (or in this case, losing) love. Many people have commented on the inaccuracies with military procedures, etc. This is classic for Hallmark no matter what the story is about. Continuity errors, technical errors abound on most of their movies. It's just lazy writing. They take their audience for granted and it shows.

The storyline is noble, about a solder lost and a family trying to move on. But the characters and actual family story were lame. As someone else commented a total waste of Steven Lund's talent. Erin had somewhat of a good role but even that was dull. Lund had a role with more meaningful dialogue and excellent character development when he played the brother of Charlie in just one episode of the Hudson and Rex TV series than this two hour Hallmark movie. This is not the first Christmas movie of this year that has sorely missing the mark. Hope they improve over the next two months. Hallmark vs GAC seems to be watering down quality to the detriment of the actors.

We're two women who love the fluffy predictable Hallmark Christmas movies normally, as a break from the stressful real world and even the other kind of shows we watch and also love with plenty of action, violence, sex, etc. But this one ends in a ridiculous out of the blue way that destroys the whole story of the movie. It also makes no sense for how things work in the world. It's a complete fantasy ending far in excess of the bit of romantic fantasy we allow for in a Hallmark movie. It left us frustrated and wishing we had watched something else. Skip this one. Plenty of other Hallmark movies this year, (and Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV!)

'Christmas Bedtime Stories' (2022)

Opening thoughts: This is being said with a very heavy heart. Actually really liked the premise, that and Hallmark completest sake bring my main reasons for watching, which sounded very sweet and heartfelt. Have liked Erin Cahill and Steve Lund elsewhere, though their performances and films do vary. Wanted to see some more festive films that were more recent, lower in budget and were not childhood favourites, so in a way to broaden my horizons and have been doing so since November 2019.

The second 2022 Miracles of Christmas film ''Christmas Bedtime Stories' (cute title) was really disappointed and just didn't deliver in most areas. Although there are two massive common criticisms cited against the film in other reviews, to me there were more problems than just those two. 'Christmas Bedtime Stories' was not a complete shambles, but compared to the previous 2022 Miracles of Christmas films it really underwhelmed.

Good things: Cahill and Lund are more than game in their roles and give it their all. In fact, in general the acting was fine.

The film is well filmed and looks attractive. There are moments of charm.

Bad things: Unfortunately, 'Christmas Bedtime Stories' has too many failings to recommend. The story is well meaning, but is for my tastes too sentimentality heavy and over-stretched and has too much draggy pacing and too much coming out of nowhere. The script can be too corny and could have done with a real tightening up momentum wise, a lot of talk here and not all of it necessary.

While Cahill and Lund are fine individually, the former suffers from her character being very difficult to root for and the latter has far too little to do so is wasted. The central chemistry is never fleshed out properly and is underused. The characters are too sketchy and there is too little to them to care about them enough. The music is drab and needed more variety and the direction plods.

Do agree with everybody else with the two things that ruin the film. The representation of the military is truly insultingly inept and indicative of someone who didn't appreciate what they do. Worse is the very rushed, introduces out of nowhere and idiotic ending that makes no sense whatsoever.

Concluding thoughts: All in all, weak.

3/10.

Steve Lund and Erin Cahill should have made for one of the best movies of the season. What do we get instead? A horrendous train wreck of a movie with clearly the worst writing and research ever done on the Hallmark channel. It is an affront to service people and veterans and instead of being happy at the ending it was like watching a train wreck. You couldn't believe this was happening on every level. The acting with these two was as always good. The actors were well cast and the direction ok. The script though should have been rewritten from the halfway point on. Who signed off on this and thought yeah this is a good hallmark movie?