Christmas Hotel

This has been one of my favorite Christmas movies so far this season. The lead actors have wonderful chemistry and the scenery is beautiful. The ending is kinda predictable but I would watch this movie again.

Once the over-acting parents appeared on the scene, that pretty much did it, and set the tone for the rest of the film. I have seen better acting in amateur productions, and these are professionals !!!! Maybe for many it was their first role as they left acting school, but some were so wooden they would be better of taking up carpentry as a career. The script didn't help, so zero points for the scriptwriters.

In essence, not worth staying in for.

Corporate fixer goes back to her home town to make peace with town folks opposed to the evil empire. Besides being derivative, the premise is forced as are many of the other plot points. It's especially forced when Erin's brainstorm idea magically changes everyone's attitude instantly. The story just doesn't make sense. Like many of the other Christmas movies, the protagonists quest their way to reaching their stated goal, but I really didn't care. I didn't care about the hotel, and I didn't care about the obvious building romance. It's all just more of the same thing within nothing new or special.

The acting is poor, especially those playing Erin's parents and other supporting characters. Sets seemed cheap and uninspired especially when you consider that the Windsor hotel chain is supposed to be ultra high end.

Moreover, so many details during the movie belied the idea that this was an upscale hotel trying to impress investors with high end tastes and values. It goes beyond the fact that the hometown atmosphere Erin was promoting isn't really compatible with those high end values. Christmas movies so often rely on DIY mentality and this movie does the same while creating the hotel infrastructure and getting it ready to open. That isn't high end.

Logistical details in the climax are clumsy and forced. So much in the movie was as if the writers never bothered to learn anything at all about their subjects. Also, I couldn't get over how consistently Erin exhibited childish and unprofessional behavior in the face of her boss.

In a Christmas romance, there is always the question of chemistry between the leads. Good chemistry often goes a long way toward compensating for faults in the story.I don't think these leads had enough screen time developing chemistry, at least I didn't see it.

As the movie builds toward climax, the plot followed the exact same patterns as so many other Christmas movies. There was nothing new. Nothing special. The viewer could almost predict each and every plot progression as it happened. I make much of the derivative, unoriginal, and clumsy plot. I realize that with only a few refreshing exceptions, most of the Christmas movies are going to be that way. But in this case it is a matter of degree. This movie seemed to me that it was extreme in that regard.

Christmas Hotel (2019) -

The basic concept of this film was strange to start with. The hotel was already in the town, so it was unclear what the locals were moaning about? New management really wouldn't change things for the town that much and in the end they did only change for the better.

However they would never have been allowed to go off brand. Their hotels would all have to serve the same food and look identical. The corporate business world hates unique identities which is usually where the issues in these films come from, so it was a tough one to buy this time. It would be lovely to think that a corporation would be so freely happy to adapt to the area instead of the other way around, but that really only does happen in films.

It wasn't bad overall though and I would say that it was probably the best that I've seen from Tatyana Ali since she was in 'The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air' (1990-6), because some of her other Christmas films have been terrible and over the top.

Time did move quite fast with this one though. From a hotel that needed lots of work to being up and running seemed to take just a matter of days.

There were also some of the bad film decisions made again, with their "Teacher", who could not have been old enough to have taught them, even at college, unless he was 12.

And while the tree looked better than they normally do, it wasn't the same "Real" one that they were supposedly buying in a previous scene.

So while there were issues and it was hard to believe, there were also some elements that made it nice. I don't think that it's one that I would bother with again though, but I wouldn't say it was so bad that I would warn people to avoid it like some of the others I've seen.

4/10.

There never has been any bias against Lifetime's output, much of it is formulaic sure and some of it has just as much corn and schmaltz of that of Hallmark's but with the right leads and the right amount of charm and heart they can have some likeability. Provided that not too much is expected from it and enough of their output has been surprisingly good. Their 2019 output was a very mixed bag, some were surprising hits and others were mediocre at best or outright failures.

'Christmas Hotel' regrettably is one of the outright failures and very close to being among their worst. Really did want to like it and Christmas films set in hotels have worked (a primary example being 'Home Alone 2'), but 'Christmas Hotel' is a case of the setting not working and not being used well. Sadly that's not even the worst aspect of the film, nearly everything fails and this is not being said with pleasure and also when taking the film for what it's meant to be.

Its least bad aspect is some of the scenery which is quite nice, but that is pretty much it with the praise.

Despite some nice scenery, 'Christmas Hotel' doesn't really look too good. Some of the decor looks gaudy, and the photography is usually a lot better than how it is here. Which in this case is very drab and static. Worst of all is the disorganised editinng. There is nothing memorable about the music, there could have been less of it, some of it is too treacly and it doesn't always sound very festive. It doesn't feel like there is much direction going on, indicative of inexperience or indifference.

Which really does affect the acting, which is near-uniformly poor, apart from some (underused) vim from Sheryl Lee Ralph. Neither Tatyana Ali or Sean Patrick Thomas are convincing, she trying too hard and he not enough. They are very stiff and disconnected together and it was like the film was shot with not much rehearsal time. None of the characters are worth investing in, with uninteresting personalities or/and exaggerated flaws, the female lead character's unprofessionalism is to be seen to be believed.

Calling 'Christmas Hotel' cliched sums it up well, both story and characters, and that is being generous. Some familiar (well actually well worn out) story tropes here, all predictably executed. The first portions are slow and quite thinly plotted, uneventful at times, and some decision making seemed contrived. The script lays it on too thick with the corn and slushy schmaltz, not unexpected but it was overkill in places. The film doesn't get off to a particularly good start, very cheesy and quite dull, while the ending is rushed and too tidy and the lack of tension and conflict severely hurts what little there is of the drama.

On the whole, not good. 3/10.