The Holiday Exchange

The dialogue is not great and the acting is average to good, and the characters were all too well-off for my liking. But despite that I sensed gay actors were probably involved in its making and that is a bonus. I did not like their lives as represented here much, but who am I to judge ? Most popular heterosexual mainstream films have the same kind of supposed glamour, and that as they say is Hollywood. The plot is easy to follow. Four guys go away for Christmas, exchanging apartments and they find love. One apartment in Los Angeles and the other in an obscure place that looked like a cute Romanian town. It borders on the unbelievable, but then a lot of films do and we accept the fantasy. Samer Salem as a writer was in my opinion the best actor, and Taylor Frey was fun and at the same time irritating to watch. All four find love and how often does that happen either in life or on film? To sum up it is escapist fantasy and so are most of Vincente Minnelli films and Douglas Sirk. This film is arguably lacking their magic, but it does have a lot of wish fulfilment and to a large extent this is the Hollywood ethos, and most do not complain about that.

Admittedly I only started this movie because it's a gay Christmas movie. In the end I really enjoyed it. The beginning was rough and the cheesiest part, but I got into it after the first act. I liked all the main characters and their diversity (the actors and their storylines). The secondary characters were all somewhat forgettable. I'm surprised Kyle Richards is at the center of the poster as she's barely in it. Overall it was predictable, but pretty good acting and a little more depth than the average Hallmark-type movie. I'm not a big movie person and tend to only watch around the holidays (mostly classics like Home Alone, A Christmas Story, etc) but this was a worthy watch.

This movie is an absolute utter abomination. That said, my two favourite things in this 'English' themed American movie is how a Mocha coffee is referred to as Coco Coffee. And also the conversation that goes something like 'he doesn't have a coffee machine he only has a kettle' 'omg how does he live without coffee?' .... WTF!!! You can make coffee using a kettle you know? Did you know?

Acting is like watching a B Movie. What makes it worst is that this isn't a B movie. This is meant to be taken seriously. As an added bonus the story is basically a rip off of the holiday which I only just re watched recently. Where The Holiday is absolutely and utterly gorgeous and cute. This is a cringe fest of badly written scenes. The only way to enjoy this is if you take the piss out of it at the same time.

This is essentially a retelling of The Holiday (with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet), which is one of my favorite Christmas movies. I'm not going to lie, this is not the movie to win awards or whatever and if you go in with high expectations (like some of the other reviewers must have) you're just going to disappoint yourself. That being said it's cute, lighthearted, and fun! I had read some of the reviews here and immediately thought I was making a mistake but honestly I don't understand the atrocious reviews. Sure, it's cheesy and maybe it's not actually filmed in Europe - so what?

In my opinion, if you enjoy the occasional Hallmark Christmas movie, this is worth giving a watch.

This is simply bad, really,really bad! The acting is amateurish and coupled to a nonsensical script, the outcome is nauseating. It's like some kind of fantasy or fairytale that has no connection to reality. The European setting looks suspiciously American, and becomes distracting. The script seems to have been written by a child. The movie goes from one painfully bad scene to another, all with the aim of creating a world of complete fantasy and silliness. While the aim might have been to produce a gay film with a happy feel and ending to it, turning it into some silly childish fantasy is clearly not the answer.