My Christmas film viewings over-time have been a very mixed bag. With some surprisingly good hits, where regardless of how predictable they are succeed in being full of charm, warmth and heart so succeeding in being light-hearted and undemanding fun. But also some quite big misses, where the characters are not likeable, everything is forced and shallow with implausibility too in some of the worst cases, the acting and writing being weak and basically with just nothing to them.
Despite being a long way from perfect or being a complete hit, 'All About Christmas Eve' is thankfully closer to the former category. Certainly not a film to humbug on. As far as the 2012 Christmas output as part of my Christmas film completest sake goes, 'All About Christmas Eve' is in the high middle category (one would not think that looking at the rating here though) and does decently with one of the more intriguing premises of a Christmas twist ('Sliding Doors' with a festive twist), even if even more could have been done with it.
It does try to do a little too much, a danger with parallel structure stories, with too much crammed in in terms of events and characters and the switches from story to the other are not always seamless. Parts weren't explored all that well, with the identity of the person calling the girlfriend agreed being too vague.
At times the dialogue went too far on the cheese factor and was vulgar. Gib Gerard is very wooden as well.
Wooden is not something that Haylie Duff can be described as, she plays her role with a good deal of verve and charm. Connie Sellecca has fun as the boss character. Chris Carmack isn't as interesting but he seems at ease and engages with the material. The chemistry doesn't seem forced. The direction is not always in control of the story but there is enough skill on display. Neither the script or story are perfect in any shape or form, with the script particularly being easy to criticise, but the story does intrigue and provoke thought and doesn't come over as dull.
It is very professionally filmed and the locations are simply beautiful. A lot of Hallmark's Christmas films suffer from being over-scored, meaning being too constantly used and too loud. That isn't so big a problem here generally. While the characters are not meaty or original, none of them annoyed me and nor did they bore me. The leads were easier to connect to than expected. They also had personality traits that appealed and any negative traits were not exaggerated, which can be a common problem with female lead characters particularly in Hallmark's Christmas output.
Overall, decent if unexceptional and not always focused. 6/10.
