Destined at Christmas

This was a wonderful start to Great American Family Christmas. Two people looking for presents on Black Friday find more than they "bargained" for. This movie is a magical and suspenseful Christmas ride that has you holding hope until the very end that love would find a way. You will enjoy the acting, storyline, twists and turns, and most of all the happy ending.

The two leads, although not in much of the movie together, have you rooting for them from the start. The daughter does a great job as a kid actor as well, and may be from the credits the actual daughter of the main actor in the movie.

Have fun with this movie!

I like the movie, but it does have an issue in the plotting design.

The couple meets at the beginning of the movie, develop an affinity for each other, then are separated, each only knowing the other's first name.

They spend the rest of the movie trying to "detective out" the other's identity, plus of course a few near misses. That makes the plot dodge most of the Christmas romance cliches (except he of course is a single dad with an adorable daughter and no mention of what happened to his wife ... but they can't dodge them ALL LOL).

The issue is that after the very early minutes of the movie, the leads can't appear together again until, or course, the very end. I don't think that's a spoiler. ;-)

I like the story and the characters, but a lot of the scenes don't build the story and just fill time. It's worth a watch but I don't see it being on our repeat list despite the fact the ending was well done.

I wasn't familiar with either of the two leads but they both did a fine job. They had good chemistry right off the bat and that ends up being VERY important because they spend a big chunk of the movie apart. They keep trying to locate each other and there's mishaps where they keep missing each other. It would be extremely frustrating except for the fact that we did see cute scenes of them at the beginning and saw their chemistry that makes us root for the couple.

Even though I watch a lot of these made-for-tv movies, this plot was new to me so it kept me engaged and I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. When the movie ended I immediately wanted to rewatch it- it's that good. It's cute and fun and I definitely recommend it.

I wasn't too sure about this movie in the beginning, the plot was bumpy and I wasn't sure where it was going. The story line of both characters searching for each other over most of the movie, was very tiresome. And it's odd that two people didn't discuss what they did for a living when they had breakfast in the beginning, they're young and obviously they work. The dialog was better than average, I didn't cringe when listening to it.

This movie didn't have a dominate female lead with a male in a secondary role, this was a story about Kim and Theo. It wasn't another formulaic story about developing an app or something in sales, Kim and Theo were both settled in their careers.

Shae Robins and Casey Elliott had chemistry onscreen, the supporting cast wasn't as good.

This movie starts out a little different than most in this genre, but part of that comes from the premise which is similar in some ways to the kiss in an elevator premise - two strangers meet but get separated. There is not a kiss right off, but otherwise the two leads who hit it off lose track of each other due to a power outage in the store where they are shopping. What is a little unusual here is how much time the lead couple spends with each other and they do some bonding but only at the beginning. Most of the story is about near misses on the two reconnecting. This is keeps going right up to the last minute.

Something feels just a bit off with the acting and the lines. Maybe a little flat. But there are also a few funny ones.

Usually, the thing that draws me to this kind of movie where romance is more important than any other theme is time spent developing the romance. Again the premise is responsible for taking a lot of that out of the equation. It is interesting however that Kim does interact with Ashley, without realizing she is Theo's daughter.