Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses

You feel it different. Sure, it is pure Halmark but its predactibility is well used, the chemistry between main actors works, the kid is just perfect and Donna Mills gives good portrait of mother anf friend , D. Hinton is the dreamed wise father and Jill Wagner is there in admirable form. So , more than the expected nice.

A combination of home renovation and a Christmas movie is a good idea but there isn't much of a decor reveal here. Good to see Matt Davis out of the Vampire Diaries universe. He's convincing as the big CEO. Jill Wagner is a pleasant and an intelligent looking actress. A nice change from the over perkiness of some Hallmark Christmas movies. Donna Mills looks science fiction young. Didn't quite see them falling in love before the end.

Okay watch.

This movie wasn't cheesy, and had me engrossed throughout! I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't the typical HM .... The acting was very good, of course Jill Wagner was superb, as was the rest of the cast. The movie about a single mom, trying to balance family, work and a love triangle. I became so engrossed with the story and trying to guess how it would achieve a happy ending, as HM have. I loved the decorations and the storyline, as well as the acting.

So many similarities to Coming Home for Christmas except it lacked the great performance by Paula Shaw. Still this movie was OK.

To be honest, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this movie, so I apologize for what will be a jumble.

My first impression was how scattered Abbey seemed through the interview into her early days at the mansion. This is opposite of how I normally visualize Jill Wagner and it distracted me. And it was inherently self-contradictory because Abbey projected an air of complete confidence and yet that was not how she performed at first. After she and Nick went shopping, she seemed to settle down.

I wasn't impressed with the chemistry between Nick and Abbey, but there was obviously a growing attraction. The kid did a very nice job, especially for his age.

As always with Hallmark, you have a pretty good idea about broad strokes of where the story will go and in that regard it has been done before. There were a couple minor surprises. Abbey makes a promise early on that I expected to turn out differently than it did. The competition surprised also, although I'm sure some viewers guessed correctly on this. So while the end of the journey was to be expected, I was pleased that it wasn't all predictable.

This is one of the better Hallmark Christmas movies.