A Carpenter Christmas Romance

Pretty little Christmas liars! Lfg. So cool to see Sasha in modern lifetime Xmas movie. I'll definitely recommend this. I love female characters like her that goes for her man!

Most holiday movies are too boring. This has some jazz to it. It'd be great if PLL crew were all in this movie. Sasha is great underrated actress/very pretty/also has pizzazz when acting. I had a huge crush on Ali in PLL. Definitely has some drama without being too cheesy. It's beginning to look a lot like murder is another LMN/Christmas recommendation.

Even the Kelce/Swift movie isn't too bad! A wedding for Christmas is another good one.

Many enjoyable Christmas movies come out each year, and I always look forward to watching them. Unfortunately, this one didn't meet my expectations. Directed by Jake Helgren and based on a screenplay by Sarah Drew, it features Sasha Pieterse and Mitchell Slaggert in the lead roles. However, both the direction and performances felt disappointingly average. Mitchell Slaggert's bewildered expression will stick with me for a long time!

The story begins with a successful novelist retreating to her family's farmhouse to write, where she reconnects with her old crush, a carpenter working to revitalize the town. While they work together to rekindle the Christmas spirit, the film falls into a realm of cliché and predictability, with forced chemistry that seems to be a ploy for extra cash from critics.

This one definitely doesn't make my list of recommendations!

I didn't like the fact that the leads were childhood exes. I prefer to watch a relationship develop in front of me, not 10-20 years before the story picks up.

The lead woman spent the first half of the movie gawking at the lead man. It started early with a shirtless scene, and the movie really never let it go. Physical attraction is a key part of relationships, but it isn't the most interesting storyline to follow.

The lead man is portrayed as some sort of perfect man. He has a perfect body, perfect hair, he is calm, he is a physically strong carpenter, he was a great athlete, he was a military man, he cured Ebola, he solved racism, and he refuses payment from all of his customers because he is just that amazing. Mary Sue characters like this are completely uninteresting!

The setting is nice, and the movie is a decent background option. Just make sure you have something else to do so you don't spend 90 minutes rolling your eyes.

This movie is straight off the pages of one of those trashy romance novels adorning grocery store shelves. This is so predictable and cringey. The lead female can't act but I suppose the role doesn't really call for acting, just showing off her assets. This is like watching late night 90s Cinemax (aka Skinamax). The story and plot are non-existent. We stopped watching after about twenty minutes when we realized how bad it was. Then again there is that other actress who played the blind girl in PLL who shows up in these types of movies and she can't act either. However, she is still better than Sasha.

Andrea walks into her aunt's house she is borrowing and hears something. She grabs a fry pan as a weapon. Then she sees the rugged shirtless Seth in the kitchen. So many other movies would have some sort of antagonistic blow up, but in this one this is where it starts simmering a quiet and almost modest sensuality. The dialogue is subdued containing subtext between the two former high school sweethearts.

While the idea of a writer looking for solitude to do some editing or writing is common, the reason she is hiding is unusual. I've heard of uproar over political things, but this much uproar over killing off a character seems too much.

Another unusual element is the town disaster - a fire that took out a popular inn and several homes. The writer, Sarah Drew, takes this, Andrea's novel, and a couple of other things to tie them all together for a climax. Drew is so multi-talented.

The acting is good. I alluded to the chemistry. The dialogue, like so much else, is understated perfectly. The simmering turns into sizzling. Not so much witty sizzling as a quiet sensual sizzling.

When I saw the synopsis, I expected more of the usual unexciting stuff, but what I found caught my attention and kept it.