USS Christmas

In the archive room Billy sees a photo of what I believe was the A1 Skyraider but he identifies it as a B-29. Other than that, I enjoyed this one more than most. But I'm a sucker for anything that flies. Some cool footage of the cats at work.

There is a cute little Walt Disney book titled "Button Soup" It is a 1975 Disney's Wonderful World of Reading storybook featuring Daisy Duck and Scrooge McDuck. In this book, Daisy tricks her stingy Uncle Scrooge into making enough soup for the whole town -- using just one button.

Using a similar approach to the Disney book "Button Soup" a pretty writer named Maddie Contino (Jen Lilley) begrudgingly agrees to go on what's called a Tiger Cruise with her mother Elizabeth (Barbara Niven). A Tiger Cruise allows a naval officer to take their family to work and in this case Maddie's sister is stationed as a fighter pilot named Lt. Amelia Breslin (Stefanie Butler) on a ship. Lt. Amelia Breslin, her sister Maddie, and their mom Elizabeth receive a dinner invitation from the ship's captain who invites his own son, Lt. Billy Jenkins (Trevor Donovan) to join them for dinner and reminisce about Christmas's past when the ships Captain Chet Jenkins (Brett Rice) used to work alongside Maddie and Amelia's father who is now deceased. As Captain Jenkins discusses the very first Tiger Cruise he lights a spark in Maddie's desire to write about a long forgotten romance of a couple who first met on that very first Tiger cruise.

Captain Jenkins assigns his good looking fighter pilot son Billy to assist Maddie in researching her story by accessing the ships archives, and Billy initially wants nothing to do with Maddie's research or with the Christmas spirit. But as luck would have it, with every stone Maddie over turns (just like in the 1975 Disney book Button Soup) she draws the unwilling Billy closer and closer into the research and into falling in love with one another.

Maddie and Billy's research leads to good things happening which I don't want to divulge and ruin it for any interested viewers but suffice to say the story took a lot of hard work, push and pull, and convincing but all works out in the end for all parties.

I give USS Christmas a decent 7 out of 10 IMDB rating.

Pleasant viewing.

'USS Christmas' isn't anything extraordinary, but it produces what it intended to - a cutesy Xmas story. It's well set up, with the naval surroundings adding a touch of freshness to the usual festive film formula. Jen Lilley and Trevor Donovan have satisfactory chemistry, with the likes of Brett Rice and Keith Flippen support adequately.

I was in the Navy, so I noticed quite a few things that weren't exactly accurate, not the least of which was the sister Navy flyer proudly showing off her plane which clearly said "Marines" on it. Well, he did teach her to go down a ladder correctly. The story itself was ok, if typical Hallmark. You know how it ends before it even starts, so the rest is a ride you choose to take. Always like Jen Lilley, she's very pretty, but somehow two hours of her is enough. The chemistry was a little iffy, I thought. This is not the best Hallmark movie this year, but it's not the worst either, and anything beats the news in 2020...!

6/10 - following the new trend of mixing a new and old romance, this Hallmark flick is pleasing if forgettable