A Christmas Wish in Hudson

I absolutely loved this movie!! Largely, because I live in the St. Croix River Valley and it was fun to see a movie that was filmed in Hudson. It was, I suppose, a cute movie... I've been oddly attracted to dopey Christmas movies this year, which this most certainty is. I enjoyed it because the acting and script were so bad that it provided a lower end by which to judge other TV shows and movies. For example, I watched "Dead to Me" the following night (with Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini) and was blown away at how good the acting and writing were in comparison. "A Christmas Wish in Hudson" reminded me of a porno flick (bad acting, bad plot and male/female attraction)... only the sex never came. So unusual that it was good.

Great story line -You have a habit of using terrible leading men. In this movie Rib Hillis is not working with the female star Alex Rinehart AT ALL! The young boy, I think that's Carlos Merchay does not fit the movie either. The young girl playing the daughter needs a better actor to fit the script. This is not the only movie that We as a family have recorded and started to watch but when we see the pairings of male stars with the Female actress and they just are terrible lookers we end up deleting the movie. Most of the time they are also a sad actor, no acting abitlity at all. We love this channel, it gives the Hallmark channel competion .

I'm sure GAC is falling victim to quantity over quality & is rushing production. I felt like the actors weren't given enough time to prepare. As a result, there was some overacring. Some of the scenes & script were awkward & clunky - almost too painful to watch. Make movies people will want to watch again & again. Give the actors a chance to show what they can do. Also, please change the formula... they're all so predictable. Beautiful scenery, I'm glad it was a real town in Wisconsin. I'm running out of things to say. This didn't start out to be overly critical, but I had to meet the character count requirement.

This is pretty much all the usual Christmas romance movie stuff. The idea of Patrick attracting hordes of single women based on a random cooking show appearance is a bit unusual, but after that it is all the usual stuff. Lori is hiding that she came to town because of the show which Patrick has already said is stupid. They meet almost by accident and then do a lot of Christmas activities together. But there are no highs or lows or surprises. The only tension is Lori's secret. The conflict is totally expected but it seems overblown.

The acting is barely fair. The dialogue is totally flat. There isn't really any good humor. Everything is so flat that it's hard to see any chemistry between Alex Rinehart and Rib Hillis. The most appealing character is Patrick's daughter Nicole and she is part of a secondary romance.

A Christmas Wish in Hudson/ A Small Town Christmas Wish (2021) -

This film was like some sort of lame, poorly made and cheap ass version of 'Sleepless In Seattle' (1993), but without the joy or decent humour.

Although I'd probably check him out in the gym showers, I wouldn't call Rib Hillis much of a looker in the same way that others in these films have been usually. Luke Macfarlane, Jesse Hutch and Brendan Penny would all get more than just checked out, but Rib would probably be what I call a bit of a neck down, because his muscles did look nice, but otherwise he looked a bit like a cousin of Steve Buscemi or something.

However, just for balance I'd like to say that none of them would look at me at all, I'm not a Hollywood star though.

The leading lady, Alex Rinehart looked like she would be a miserable so and so or some sort of weird hybrid cat person. I wasn't bothered in the slightest by either of their characters or performances and didn't really care if they got together, because I just felt no connection between them.

And the daughter was like an even sicklier sweet version of Kirsten Dunst from 'Spider-Man' (2002) and with all the emotional range of a spoon. Please, don't get me started on her love interest Chase.

And although it was a relatively small role, I have to mention the character of Jason, who was just ridiculous, like something from a kids programme. And he wasn't the only supporting actor to really ham it up, but the leads weren't much of a step up either.

The props and costumes were really quite questionable too and the other production values all seemed very cheap as well, with bad lighting and camera filters among other things.

The delivery of the concept was done in such a daft and thoughtless way, as if they were just rushing out another film, so that they could move on to the next one without any care at all and it all felt very forced, even more so by the way the daughter kept pushing them together, which made it hard to believe.

There were too many things to do and for them to attend as a couple, so that nothing flowed, because they were too busy to actually form any sort of connection. The setups in to it were all so contrived too.

And the amount of times she tried to tell him why she was there and something happened to get in the way was really annoying.

I thought about turning it off a few times, because it just bored me and the acting was so twee. If it hadn't been such a short film, I probably would have ended it and saved myself the pain. Not one to watch again.

3.07/10.