The Santa Squad

Rebecca Dalton shines as Allie, a good-natured teacher laid off due to budget cuts and ended up employed by a wealthy family to decorate their home for Christmas. While there was the obvious potential for the story to go full-on Hallmark after they introduced Allie to Gordon, the overworked single dad (played by the awesome Aaron Ashmore) who neglected his two daughters, there wasn't enough screen time between the two to flesh out their employer-employee relationship, much less anything beyond. Gordon's two daughters, Allie's best friend Tony, Gordon's butler Daniel plus the old couple at the community centre left very little time for any kind of budding Christmas romance.

While the movie adds nothing new to the genre, it was at least warm from start to finish.

The one thing that really bugged me though about this movie was how bad the soundtrack was. While I get that most of these movies don't get enough budget for proper soundtracks, this one sounded cheap and hollow and clashed more than a few times with the pacing and editing, and ruined many pivotal scenes.

I hate to say this but had this movie been a Hallmark production, it would've easily gotten at least 7 stars from me.

It is a sweet story with a rather weak script. I was a bit worried at the start, as the first 20 minutes or so were not so good; there were some awkward acting and dialogue, I thought. For example, the 'clean the bathroom' line at the Santa Squad shop (when they were at the bubblegum dispenser) seemed odd (as opposed to funny, which I think is what the writer was going for there). That said, the movie did improve. Rebecca Dalton (playing Allie) had a decent performance. The scenes with her and the children were the strongest scenes of the film. She did a good job here, giving off a warm and fun vibe to her performance. Aaron Ashmore (playing Gordon) was not bad. I prefer him in Killjoys (he is great in that series) to this. He had some awkward acting at times, especially early on and towards the end of the movie, I thought. The chemistry between the two was not great. However, his scenes (towards the middle) with Allie and the children were warm and fun. He had a good performance in those scenes. The supporting cast was pretty good. Chris Sandiford (playing Tony) had a kind and gentle vibe to his performance, which I liked. The two children, Molly Lewis as Iris and Hattie Kragten as Rose, both had cute performances. Again, for me, it was the scenes with them and Allie or them with Allie and Gordon that were the strongest. The scenery, props, and sets were fine, though I was not a fan of that house. Did anyone notice that the two large snowmen were made of cotton balls? You could see the fibers sticking out. It was strange as the two smaller ones were clearly made of snow. Overall, it is a good enough Lifetime Christmas movie with some fun and cute family scenes.

The actors were all wonderful in their own lane but together their chemistry didn't work well which made their acting terrible. It's a christmas movie that does make you feel a little bit warm, but the warmth doesn't succeed as it contains the same story for a lot of movies.

It's a Lifetime movie, so my score is relative (we aren't using The Godfather scale here). The first 3/4 of the movie was pretty decent, the writing wasn't horrible, all actors were actually quite good. It's a cheesy Christmas video with zero budget, but the show was making the most of what they had. That is until the turn. All these movies follow the same general formula; two people, one of who is usually in a bad relationship, find each other, but before the soulmates can be together, some contrived plot device causes one to mistakenly reject the other. In the end, the truth is revealed, and true love wins the day. Usually, it's a conniving ex that causes all the trouble, but here, it's quite possibly the dumbest reason in all of Christmas romance TV history. I won't "spoil" it, but either the original writer, who was fairly competent to this point, went completely off the rails, or the script was hacked and butchered by a person who has never set foot in a kitchen, let alone baked a cookie. And who then decided that the main characters suffered temporary brain damage and completely lost their short term memory. I was half expecting the lead to pull some Polaroids out of her pocket so she could remember what happened two minutes prior.... Anyway, had it not been for that horrendous bit of script, this show might have ranked as one of the better low budget Lifetime efforts. As it is, I'm going with a very painful, 6 out of 10.

How could you not love a simple love story -lonely children, hard working dad, beautiful help. Forget about picking the storyline to pieces and sit back and enjoy it - it's a Xmas movie! Bring it on.....