Never Been Chris'd

Best friends and successful business partners, Liz (Pascal Lamothe-Kipnes) and Naomi (Janel Parrish), return to their hometown for the holidays, where they run into former high school crush, Chris (Tyler Hynes). Back in the day, they were not on his radar, but now they actually get to know him, and they find him charming. He initiates spending more time together, which fans the flames of ardor, possibly leading to conflict between the two best friends.

While the women deal with old feelings from high school and feel friction from their mothers, they reassess their own relationship.

The strong point of this film is the believable relationship between its two female stars. This is a buddy film of sorts, so thankfully their chemistry is strong. In addition, both of them are excellent actresses with the ability to handle both comedy and drama.

Tyler Hynes is a Hallmark stalwart. Here he gives his usually-dependable performance, though the film focuses more on the females.

Never Been Chris'd (2023) -

The two lead girls, Naomi (Janel Parrish) and Liz (Pascal Lamothe-Kipnes) were a bit much right from the start, as were Chris' friend group and all of the parents.

Naomi and Liz got progressively worse as the film moved on and I couldn't work out how Chris (Tyler Hynes) would ever fall for either of them. He was far too cool a character to be involved with any of the rest of them. But thank God for him, because we all know that I wouldn't have made it to the end of this film without Tyler's charming good looks and cheeky suaveness. Ultimately he was far too talented to be in this film surrounded by such terrible co-stars too. He was so effortless compared to everyone else's forced enthusiasm and extreme deliveries. They were all "On" all of the time and what I believe the kids call "Extra" and not in a good way.

I definitely thought about turning it off whenever Tyler wasn't on screen.

In the beginning I kept expecting some magic wish granting old lady to appear and give the girls a chance to go back in time and change things, because it seemed to be going that way, so it was a surprise that it ended up being just a constant stream of reuniting with people from high school when the two girls went home (To their small town) for Christmas whilst hoping to hear whether their app would get funding.

I did however like the fact that for the most part it was unclear who the gorgeous Chris would end up with and I was actually hoping that he would turn out to be gay so that the story would be all about the girls friendship being tested instead, just for something brand new from this genre. Although I did appreciate that this was a differently styled storyline anyway.

I also liked the inclusion of Hannukkah celebrations which wasn't forced and explained some of the festival's details and actually helped to make the film more festive and Christmassy somehow, with a generally warm and family orientated vibe of celebration and food.

The two ladies faced some decisions about their future as the film progressed and what they would do about their mutual attraction to Chris. This caused some obvious friction, but actually made the film less silly, because they were finally behaving like adults.

I enjoyed the general premise, but I felt that it could have been delivered a lot better and that some tweaks might have made the story even more solid, but in the end it was Tyler that saved it, because I would never have stuck all the way through it for just the giggly girls.

5.59/10.

This was THE worst movie ever. First premise was stupid and male lead was terrible actor. Every review talks about how great an actor Tyler Hynes is but he totally phoned it in. So wooden, was actually cringeworthy. And what's with the vegan storyline. That just didn't seem to be applicable. Did AI write this? I'm sorry. There's no way that the brainiac girl suddenly wants to hang with the popular kids that ignored her 17 years earlier. She's better than that. This friendship didn't make sense. I kept expecting it to be some odd prank played in the successful girls. And again the vegan story line while he's sneaking fish. Who does that!!!!!

This movie was a big disappointment for Tyler Hynes fans. He did his best as usual but the storyline stunk! I'm not a fan of the actress that played Naomi anyhow. I watch everything with Tyler Hynes in it so they had me watching it regardless. I just think his talents were wasted on this piece of fluff that was more a teeny plot than an adult thing. Tyler Hynes is Tyler Hynes so you had me regardless of how bad it was. The two girls act like they are still in high school and Tyler's character was the exact opposite of his high school character. Who came up with this fluff?

I just hope his next project will showcase his talents better and have a little more umph to the plot! Love you, Tyler!

I'm sorry, but this felt as if it had been written by a group 16 year olds who couldn't agree on which direction the plot should take. Normally I'd rate anything with Tyler Hynes in it a 9 or 10, but this just was not a fitting vehicle for his talent. His part could have been played by anyone. What a waste of talent. The movie itself was slow, rambling and muddled and not worth the watch for me - though I did watch till the end hoping there'd be some redeeming quality, some epiphany or...something. The characters were lukewarm at best and unlikeable at the worst - not enough interest in any of them to care what happened. Guess I expect Hallmark to raise the bar for Christmas but not this time.