A Match Made at Christmas

I would refrain from showing this film to teenagers or impressionable young people! While protagonist Holly is a loving, positive, forgiving individual, deuteragonist Chris is a volatile, uncaring, verbally abusive young man who treats her too harshly. His level of anger and disrespect for women is a little over-the-top in this film, considering he frequently throws even basic decency out the window during his verbal skirmishes with Holly.

Over the course of the film Chris intimidates Holly, insults her, and verbally abuses her to a point at which a woman should cease contact. Yet Holly continues to be too forgiving, allowing an open door to a possibly toxic future relationship.

Later in the film Chris yells at a kind elderly woman, sticking his face out just a couple feet from hers.

We shouldn't allow our young men to think that this kind of disrespect for women is okay. Likewise, young women shouldn't be trained to give volatile men like this repeated chances at romance.

I generally like these kind of movies, but this one was just terrible. With the exception of the protagonist, the acting was third-rate and the sequence if events would never happen in real life.

First, they throw way too many of the generic movie plot points in. It's like a mash up/rip off of several different movies jammed into one.

Second, the male lead is a complete ahole. The look in his eyes when he's telling the old woman off was genuinely chilling. I actually turned it off at that point. I understand he hasn't grown up with love in his life. I understand he has issues. But the real message the movie should have sent is that he needs to deal with those on his own before entering into a serious relationship. Very disturbing that many people see this as ok and think she should be expected to fix him. She deserved better.

My Christmas film viewings over-time have been a very mixed bag. With some surprisingly good hits, where regardless of how predictable they are succeed in being full of charm, warmth and heart so succeeding in being light-hearted and undemanding fun. But also some quite big misses, where the characters are not likeable, everything is forced and shallow with implausibility too in some of the worst cases, the acting and writing being weak and basically with just nothing to them.

Personally have seen worse Christmas films overall than 'A Match Made at Christmas'. When it comes to Christmas films made in 2021, which was a very mixed bag (some surprisingly good, some average to decent and some average or less), 'A Match Made at Christmas' is one of the worst. The premise was a quite nice one, despite not being exceptional, but one major thing brought it down significantly and made it impossible to enjoy as it affected many other aspects as well.

'A Match Made at Christmas' has good things. Micah Lynn Hanson is charming in the female lead role, she looks comfortable and never overacts or undersells.

The production values are also quite nice, especially the scenery.

Sadly, they are not quite enough to salvage the film from being a complete mess everywhere else. What dooms 'A Match Made at Christmas' is as others have said the excessive unlikability of the male lead character. Overdone character flaws are a major pet peeve, especially if the character in question is meant to be likeable or/and rootable later on, and have not seen arrogance and disrespect this blatant in a long time. Tim Llewellyn is very wooden in the role. It is true that there are plenty of flawed people out there and that they do change and grow, but the flaws here are so overdone and any change or growth felt rushed and underdeveloped. Didn't detect any real chemistry between Hanson and Llewellyn, where it looked under-rehearsed or like they didn't like each other much, and their relationship is underdeveloped.

Character development is pretty limited in quantity and quality and the supporting cast look lost and at best forgettable in underwritten stock roles. The story is rather flimsy and it drags a lot, due to finding Llewellyn's character so mean spirited any charm or heart was very difficult to detect. What there is of the story is very little different to what has been seen before many times and better, while the final quarter is too pat and contrived. The script is stilted and can be very corny and too often mundane, also found it over serious.

Overall, pretty weak. 3/10.

The only explanation I could come up with for these two characters getting together in the end of this disaster is Stockholm Syndrome.

The male lead is so angry and verbally abusive to women in this movie. From start to finish, that it's sad they end up together in the end.

I enjoyed the music.

Otherwise I found it difficult to watch because the leads were so unlikable. I mean, the young lady was pleasant but I just could not believe that somebody as intelligent and capable as she was supposed to be would be so completely fixated on falling in love. The male lead was intolerable.

I would not be spoken to the way that young man spoke to women; I hope to raise my daughter so that she would not be spoken to that way. I'm not qualified to say whether it was abusive or simply extremely disrespectful but the red flags are all over the place.