A Heidelberg Holiday

Once again, Hallmark dresses a rather unsubstantial romantic story, this time at Christmas, with the background of an appealing, historical destination. Heidi, an American artist of German heritage has the opportunity to exhibits her hand-made Christmas ornaments at the fabled Heidelberg Christmas Market, while discovering her family's roots. Hosted at the Oppermanns' guest house, she is welcomed to share their Holiday traditions and bonds with their son, Lukas, also an artist with a kin soul. With some twists and turns, that shall not be revealed, the story follows to a predictable outcome. How does it work?

LOCATION: the movie offers appreciable glimpses of the historical vestiges and the culture of this city, that I regret never been able to visit. This is a definite plus.

PLOT: some original elements are inserted in an otherwise fairly bland story.

PERFORMANCES: frankly, I am not overly impressed neither by the acting abilities of Ginna Claire Mason and Frederic Brossier or their chemistry in this production.

ATMOSPHERE: despite some charming sequences, Hallmark shows the usual superficiality in handling other cultures. Somehow, the feeling of a real German experience is missing in most of the scenes. A major omission, which could have been easy to provide, with a little attention and minimal cost, is real German Christmas music. Germany has an enormous wealth of beautiful traditional music, dating back to the Middle Age, that could have created a magical background for the action, Instead, other than a token rendition or "O Tannenbaum" and a short run of 'Es ist ein Ros einsprungen" melody, the soundtrack is quite generic and uninspired. In my book, this is a badly missed opportunity.

Overall, the film is "Christmas-y" and family-oriented, with some endearing moments and worth a look, though it could have been so much more.

It must be the mix of German and American actors that makes this film lovely. The acting is so natural (the children too) that it is a joy to watch.

The dialogues run smoothly and naturally -obviously it still is a Christmas film, so when the two leads are introduced to us, we know exactly how it's going to end.

But with all the extremely polished Christmas films around, where the production design seems to be the main character and every snowflake is personally checked and put in its place, this film is a breath of fresh air.

It's nice to hear a foreign language spoken too. The misunderstandings and miscommunications between Heidi and her German friends are very funny.

7.6 stars.

...never ship your treasures through a questionable service.

The whole theme hinges on Heidi's ornaments and the fact that she chose to go cheap and ship her valuable Christmas ornaments through a lesser known shipping company is indicative of her character. Let's shove that whole incongruence and personality fiasco aside and this becomes a wonderful adventure.

This woman gets the opportunity of a lifetime to travel from USA to showcase her handcrafted ornaments in Heidelberg Germany, her ancestor's city of origin. Her artwork is exquisite and she will be staying in Heidelberg over the holidays with friends of her grandmother.

The older son is a woodworking genius and has many works of art as well. They are immediately friends, and she spends weeks with this family celebrating the holidays German style, growing very fond of them, and they of her. Soon she and their son become more than friends.

There are some ups and downs, and many of the conversations are somewhat predictable, but the human connections feel genuine and the scenery and authentic German nostalgia are not easy to match, making this film worth mentioning.

Heidi Heidelberg has the opportunity to sell her Christmas ornaments at a very popular festive market in Germany, the country from her ancestors. There she meets Lukas, whose family is providing her accommodations. While there, her Oma (grandmother) gave her a mission to go to places she used to go in her youth.

I really liked this movie. All movies placed in Europe have a charm to it, specially If they truly are based there. I felt like this movie had a lot going on. But I think it worked: the ornaments, the tour, and even the family moments.

There was a little nod to the Hallmark movies at the beginning. One of the characters said that his countdown to Christmas starts at the end of October. Blink and you miss it. The leads had good chemistry and so did the rest of the cast.

Worth the watch.

This was really good. I've loved Ginna Claire Mason since seeing her as Glinda in Wicked so it's great to see her in Hallmark Christmas movies. She's still a little green but worked really well with Frederic and the other actors. I like that Hallmark is investing in location shoots for these movies, especially for lesser known actors. The German backdrop was stunning and I love that this was cast locally and incorporated German traditions. Also appreciated the bilingual dialogue with subtitles.

I wasn't crazy about how they resolved the missing ornament issue and I wanted a bit more from the ending. What's next for Heidi? But other than that, this is a winner that I'll rewatch again.

Also note to Hallmark: There are lots of talented Broadway actors out there. Please spread the casting love because this is a trend I'd like to see continue.