Christmas at the Holly Hotel

I watched with friends, and we howled with laughter at the acting and stilted script. I treasure finding movies that sincerely try so hard to hit the mark but just never can get any scene right - they have me in stitches. I realize that it was written, directed and produced by one guy, and probably on a shoestring budget, but it does make you appreciate the effort that goes into an actual Hallmark movie as opposed to a knockoff; the way they layer in music to help with scene transitions, the sound quality, the line readings, etc. The good thing is that there are so many bad things about this movie, no one person has to carry the blame for it not working. The actors can blame the script, the director can blame the producer, the writer can blame the director. Um, maybe you can blame one guy after all.

Tragically, the actual Holly Hotel it was filmed at was burned down six months after the movie was filmed there (but they are rebuilding).

On Thanksgiving Day I tuned to this movie by accident (one channel off from the football game), and soon realized it was terrible. Before I could change to the game, though, my brother-in-law and some friends dropped by and they started watching the movie and joking at how bad it was. Its awfulness became sort of a cause celebre. We started to feel bad for the actors and writers and anyone involved because the whole thing was insipid. None of the characters had anything interesting to say except maybe alfalfa (not a spoiler). There were two dead characters but we didn't know why (not a spoiler). None of us had the heart to turn off this mess. We watched it all, laughed most of the time, then turned to the football game. Rated 5 for the unintentional humor.

The rating according to Amazon Prime was 3 out of 5 stars. Not exactly sure why though. This movie had a cute story line, and the cast was picked well enough I guess. The acting was a bit plain as they seemed to be just memorizing their lines immediately before the scene was done. The producers definitely didn't seem to put much effort into making sure you could hear the actors clearly as there were several instances where the wind or other background noise would drown out the talking. You can tell they probably didn't have a very high budget for the movie to be made. I feel like there could have been more effort put into everything overall. Maybe someone else could do a remake of this movie and improve it immensely to a 7 out of 10 stars on IMDb?

This needs to be watched at 1.5 speed for any chance to be tolerable. I haven't actually finished watching it yet and I'm only one third in but it feels like hours.

Not sure exactly what they are doing to be so slow. It kind of highlights how hard it is to make a movie. Anytime I'm watching another movie that has some small flaw I'll remember this one and realise it's not that bad.

I hope it has a very exciting finale. Maybe a car chase, plot twist or its revealed that one of the characters has been dead all along. Oh wait, that just happened.

Still very tedious and as boring as this review. Sorry.

These Christmas romances are normally a go-to for me. They are formulaic, yes, but feature a charming and pretty woman who goes home for Christmas and in the midst of helping her parents, finds her dream job and dream man. Good so far. Until you realise that the female lead simply cannot act, that her 'charming' attempts to get out of a well-deserved speeding ticket make her look like a spoilt, petulant teenager, and nor can her 'parents'. The direction had them all sitting at a table featuring (for some reason) two bananas, a scene so dreadfully unconvincing that one found the fruit very interesting to look at! The male lead can, at least, act, but it's a small mercy given the rest of the film. Right, on that note, there's some paint I need to watch drying to wipe away the memory of this experience.