Five Gold Rings

6.3 stars.

I think the leads are good actors, however they don't gel. She is standoffish and he's like a lovesick puppy throughout the narrative. But she doesn't seem to notice that he's really in love with her, and we see that he has been his whole life. This lack of empathy and wherewithal on her part exposes flaws that are unbecoming of a lead character.

So as the story goes, she comes home for the holidays and is sent on a treasure hunt by her grandmother, who recently passed away. Her mother owns a retail antique store of sorts. She wants her daughter to take over the store, but she is too career oriented as an aspiring painter to take over the family business.

The male lead is an old friend of hers, seems they dated a while way back in their youth. He is now running his family's private investigator firm.

The two of them are sent on this treasure hunt. He uses his connections and she her knowledge of antiques to find the owners of five gold rings.

It would have been really good, but something was missing. I think the treasure hunt was almost pointless and there are too many coincidences. These two factors cause an imbalance that is difficult to maintain. It sort of fell flat for me. I needed a more quality romance to make up the difference, but it was absent.

I tried to like this movie. I really did. I'm a fan of Holland Roden, but the guy they got for her love interest was awful. His tone was monotonous, he had basically NO facial expressions and his eyes looked dead. It was like he was reading his lines behind his eyes. It was hard to like him and because I couldn't like him, I wasn't interested in the story. He made it boring. Every other actor had personality, but his was like rice cake. Some parts of the directing was kinda dumb, for instance, the desk scene. The close-ups there were totally unnecessary. Sorry Hallmark, but you dropped the ball on this one. You might want to send Nolan Funk for some acting lessons. I don't think he would've survived "Finding Mr. Christmas".

This is one of the occasional "hunt' movies they do for these Christmas movies. A recently deceased grandmother had a habit of finding and returning lost personal treasures before Christmas each year, and leaves five ring shaped keepsakes for her granddaughter to continue the tradition.

The stories of finding the owners and returning the rings are NOT compelling. None have any tension or real mystery involved, and are rather boring.

Holland Roden's voice is annoyingly scratchy for most of her lines, which I typically assign to nervous delivery. They should have been dubbed over in post, because she sounds terrible.

Nolan Funk is okay, but does nothing to liven up his role. His expression and delivery is continaully bland.

The romance seems to have been limited to one slip where he caught her on a sidewalk.

There is overacting for some of the secondary roles. The rival antiques dealer is supposed to be annoying, but her scenery chewing for her couple of scenes makes it moreso.

Then there was the grandmother, in two scenes at the beginning of the movie. She was so over the top sickly sweet annoying I told my wife I hoped this was one of the stories where they skip ahead and the little girl at the beginning has grown up.

Indeed that's where the story went, and I REALLY hoped the grandmother was dead. This is the first time in more than a decade of watching Hallmark Christmas films I found myself glad that a character died. Glad, relieved, and joyful.

Finally, the "relationship crisis" at the end was possibly the most stupid I've ever seen in one of these movies. Utterly unbelievable the woman would have acted that way.

Like I said, it's no tragedy if you completely skip this one.

Cute movie topic, but it was like sitting through two hours of fingers screaching down a chalk board. Actor playing Audrey ruined the movie with her annoying vocal fry through the film. The low pitch screeching voice was so distracting. There is no reason to deliver their dialogue with vocal fry. Sometimes, couldn't even understand what she was saying, because her voice was so strained. Why do they do this?! It's not entertaining, it's annoying, and just makes you not want to watch anything they are in. The director should notice this during filming and announce, "o.k., enough of the vocal fry, just talk in a normal voice!"

Could have been enjoyable if the man actor showed...ANY emotion. Anything at all. Zero expression on his face. Zero emotion in his voice ever. I started screaming "smile or something" at the screen. Ruined it all for me. And I LOVE Holland Roden. She made it watchable. But he kept it from being fun.

Aside from that it was a neat little idea and the supporting actors were serviceable. All the usual background music and predictable plot of a Hallmark film which is why we even watch these things at all.

I am dying to know if anyone else notices just how bad this actor really is. It's so distracting for me.