The Christmas Promise

It has the gift to remind few classic romance films. And a reasonable job of Patrick Duffy. And not bad acting. And friendship fair portrait. And a kind baker and few good drops of seductive humor.

But, maybe, the accent on grief and its cure remains the basic virtue of film.

Sure, unrealistic in some scenes, regreting the meteoric presence of Henry - and the impression to be a sort of too easy pretext - , it is a nice story about the help from the other after a profound difficult event. And this makes it some different by the Hallmark Christmas universe.

But, working more than well, it is a decent pledge for trust and joy the second chance.

6/10 - love that Hallmark included an honest look at grief in their slate of movies this year, but something about how it ended (no spoilers) really didn't sit well with me.

Why does hallmark films have to rush the good plots but then drag the Raman de plots for 2 hours. I enjoyed the you've got mail storyline and I wish that was more a focus and it's funny how she gets a response a second after she texts and the response is lengthy like come on hallmark. The whole time I thought this could actually be a good movie if it wasn't for hallmark ruining it with the whole let's drag the romance parts. I also could not stand her main girlfriend rip the microphone out of her hand. It had a good idea but it falls flat. Also again hallmark just ends the movie after they get together like why not them get together and then the last 5 min show them the next Xmas or something.

Good basic story even if it borrows themes rather blatantly from other movies, but at least not all the same movie. Good acting. Good dialogue. Some good scenes that pop like the one with the three women with facial crème masks. And awesome chemistry between Torrey DeVito and Dylan Bruce.

DeVito's, Nicole is very appealing. Her grief makes her sympathetic and scenes before and later show her to be generous, loving and amiable.

This could have been an excellent movie, but more than once, I went "huh"? I missed where the Christmas tree in the field came from. Maybe it was mentioned, but it hit me out of nowhere. Nicole goes from so deep in grief that she barely leaves her house except for work then to being flirty with Joe way too quickly. There's another change of mood that is way too quick near the end. There are others.

Some of the movie's attempts to pull heartstrings over Nicole's grief were too obvious. They still managed to work, but they should have been less blatant.

It's still a good movie, but it could have been very good. It felt like scenes were left out for time. You don't waste a name like Patrick Duffy, but I think the story would have flowed better by removing his dating life completely (even it felt truncated) and filling in some gaps with Nicole and Joe.

How refreshing to see a Hallmark movie that does not have a writer, chef, event planner, or lawyer. Perhaps the screenwriters should consider several other professions such as in this movie instead of recycling the same scripts over and over in most of their movies. I enjoyed this one, because it was different.