Every Time a Bell Rings

I loved the opening scene with the little girls on the last step of their scavenger hunt. Because of previews, I knew this was a setup to elicit nostalgia for the grown up sisters for their late father. I thought it worked.

I love Erin Cahil and Ali Liebert. Actually, with her hairstyle in the early scenes, it took me a while to be sure it was Liebert.

The primary story is the sisters and reconciliation after some years of friction. The two romances, one boy-girl and the other girl-girl, are definitely secondary. In fact, even the adopted daughter seeking her biological mother seemed more significant than any romance. Neither romance got a lot of screen time. One other thread which was down there on the list of priorities, was the plan for the married couple to try to have a child. There are a lot of threads so none of them totally dominate but it flows OK.

Any tension in the story is not overwhelming. It is spread among the different plot threads.

Adopted kids dealing with their past, interracial and a same sex couples, couples struggling with kids vs careers.... If that's too "woke" for you then you don't realize that this is real life.

They can only do so much in 80 minutes of screen time. Some of the topics were pretty heavy, but they dealt with them well considering the time constraints. They could have made this a miniseries, and I would have enjoyed it.

I think this is one of the better Hallmark movies out there this year.

The opening of the movie is quite lovely to watch, three girls on a Christmas scavenger hunt that their dad created for them, very cute. After this, I was hooked. Although 'Every Time a Bell Rings' has its flaws, it still is a lovely story with some quality acting. Sure, it is not one of Hallmark's best, but it is entertaining and engaging nonetheless. The movie is about three adopted sisters - Charlotte (played by Erin Cahill), Emily (played by Brittany Ishibashi), and Nora (played by Ali Liebert) - who return home to Mississippi for Christmas after some years apart. They soon discover that their late father has arranged one final Christmas scavenger hunt for them to complete. Will the search for the Christmas Bell bring the sisters back together after years of drifting apart? At the heart of the story is the bond between sisters, and even though they have drifted apart over the years, all they need is a bit of reminding of that bond (via another one of dad's scavenger hunts) for them to work things out. Taking the (time) constraints of an 84-minute movie into account, I thought the writers did a good job of weaving together the sisters' individual struggles and storylines (especially their own perceptions of success and failure) in a way that worked through their feelings and concerns together as sisters. However, because the writers try to do a lot in the movie, we lose some depth to the story, which other reviewers have pointed out. The acting, overall, was very strong, I felt. Cahill, Ishibashi, and Liebert all have very good performances. That is, all three engaged me, pulled me in from the start. Though the romance in the movie is secondary, there still is some great chemistry. Both Cahill and Brown and Liebert and Greenwood were very convincing and appealing to watch on-screen, I felt. Finally, there is the scavenger hunt and the Christmas Bell. In some ways, I wish the writers would have cut back on the sub-plots and focused their energy on the scavenger hunt as this was fun to watch. Plus, it had a bit of mystery, which I enjoyed. All in all, 'Every Time a Bell Rings' is a charming Christmas story about the love and bond of three sisters. It is a warm, sweet, and engaging story (even with its shortcomings), a nice new edition to Hallmark's Christmas movie line-up this season.

I liked that they filmed in Natchez, Mississippi. I wanted more Wes Brown because he's great. The sisters singing was not well done. So tired of what seems to be "token" gay couples.