Christmas at the Amish Bakery

I may not agree with the romance in the movie but I did enjoy watching. While it had its upside, I noticed a few drawbacks too.

I loved the establishing shots and shots of the plains and sea; astonishing I must say. Wished the pedestal shot of Sarah at the beginning was prolonged abit more to increase the suspense of guessing who the character was and what her goal is.

Had concerns though about the in-shot and P. O. V shots of Darla and Sarah in the office. It was mentally draining moving from one character to the other in so little time. I'd wish Darla eventually sat to meet Sarah's eye level or even bent a little with hands on the table, due to the prolonged timing of the scene.

I was initially confused though about Racheal; was there a Racheal in the movie? Was Hannah also called Racheal and the same person who sent Sarah a Christmas card?

Wished the snow used in the scene of Dean and Sarah at dusk was more realistic; it was quite snowy but one didn't get to see any snow on their outfits nor their hair.

The romance too between Dean and Sarah was not believable in my opinion. More connection and time spent alone would have done justice to it in my opinion.

Favorite Line: Perfection challenges God (Hannah to Sarah) Also loved the closeup shots of Dean and Sarah while he was narrating the accident to her. The shots greatly captured their emotions at a close range, drawing the audience to feel what they were feeling at that point in time.

Overall, it was a pleasant watch for me.

The movie starts out with bad acting and an unlikely conversation. It came off as awful for one of those reasons or both. There was a point soon after where I was seriously considering turning the movie off and it came down to one encounter. Fortunately the father was not the stereotypical harsh Amish father or elder. He actually welcomed his daughter turned English. That doesn't mean he's a pussycat. The way he growls is more like a tiger or a bear. I really like the fact that these Amish are not judgmental about every little thing.

It is a very typical point premise that one of the romantic leads is about to lose her job if she doesn't solve a problem. This movie goes one further and we find out her sister's bakery is in trouble also.

The acting varies from bad to stiff, When Mischa Hutchings as Darla is maybe one of the worst. The dialogue surprised me since most of it is not bad and uses a lot of lighthearted sarcastic humor. However, later in the movie it gets clumsy along with the story.

Other than the financial issues and Sarah's underhanded plan, the movie is lighthearted through the middle with great relationships between family members as well as Zoe. But when the conflict happens, what happens afterwards is clumsy. Some of it makes no sense, like Sarah's and Dean's choices.

There is a good speech by Sarah's dad at the end. Perhaps a bit preachy, but the message was good.

7.1 stars.

This is the story of a city girl in Chicago, who grew up in an Amish family. She is now a writer and assistant, editor of sorts at a magazine, or whatever. She is assigned a task to make an original cookbook something much different. She decides to use her Amish family recipes, at least her boss tells her she should, so she goes home Amish country to see her family and create the cookbook.

There isn't a whole lot more to the story, she realizes that maybe she doesn't want to do the cookbook, her family isn't enthusiastic about it, they aren't privy to her intentions. The rest of the story is about her getting reacquainted with her family and falling in love with a man who has been helping the family. This gentleman also has a daughter named Zoe and she's a nice addition to the film.

There were many ways this could've been better, but they kept it very low-key and relaxed, not much tension, not much drama just a standard holiday spent in a quiet community.

Wow, what can I say? This was a complete waste of my time. I can't believe I sat through this, I only did because I was home sick and bored. The acting was so dull and lifeless and there's absolutely no chemistry between Sarah and Dean. The Dad with his "ahh" and "wells" grunting noises was laughable. These "actors" really shouldn't quit their day job. I've seen better acting at my local school musicals and plays.

They really needed to do better research when doing an Amish movie. Their clothes, they way they spoke was way off. Just terrible.

Do yourself a favor and skip this one, or it might be good one if you suffer from insomnia.

Needless to say that I had, indeed, never heard about the 2023 Christmas movie "Christmas at the Amish Bakery". Well, I don't have a habit of traversing in all things Amish, so there was that to take into account. Regardless, I had the opportunity to watch the movie here in 2024, as part of my December Christmas movie marathon, and opted to do so, without knowing what I was in for. Though, the movie's cover does ooze with the archetypical sappy Christmas presentation, but the 'Amish' part of the movie's title was a little bit off-putting.

Regardless, I watched the movie, and found it to be a watchable, though somewhat generic and stale Christmas movie. Writers Scott Kirkpatrick and Jennifer Snow opted to play it relatively safe and bet on the archetypical sappy Christmas tropes, for better or worse. Sure, if you enjoy the generic sappy Christmas movies, then you're in for a treat here. But I sat down to watch it as a casual viewer, so I wasn't particularly impressed with the storyline.

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, and that is actually something I do enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. I will say that the acting performances in the movie were fair, despite the fact of the actors and actresses having a generic and bland script to work with.

Watchable, sure, but hardly a memorable or outstanding foray into the Christmas movie genre. I found it to be a rather forgettable movie, and I bet that come tomorrow I will have forgotten about the movie. The movie definitely didn't have the contents to become a Christmas classic.

My rating of director Jeff Hare's 2023 movie "Christmas at the Amish Bakery" lands on a four out of ten stars.