Planes, Trains, and Christmas Trees

Predictable scripts, awful acting, irritating music throughout.

Both storyline and it's very title have been lazily copied and modified from the amazing, Planes Trains and Automobiles movie starring Steve Martin & the unforgettable John Candy.

Unfortunately, many writers of today's era are so badly talented with zero creativity. Directors appear satisfied just to meet targeted budgets & deliver on time without ensuring the casts can act.

In 2023, what is it with the Hallmark concepts of having endless stupid music & audio effects during the entirety of today's movies??

Rather than Paramount, Prime, Netflix etc. Producing endless nonsense, it's about time they learned from the success of talented box office hits from the past and understand how movie making in recent years have become boring, predictable and somewhat pathetic.

To conclude.... Planes, Trains and Christmas Trees is perhaps one of the worst Christmas movies of all times.

The actress playing Kayleigh over-acted so much it was cringe worthy. I often wonder if the stable of new actors used by the Hallmark studios are straight out of drama school - a) to give them experience and b) because they're cheap . As another has said Reel One Entertainment over does the musical background, and this is no exception.

The storyline is a staple for christmas output - leaving to get home / attend a meeting.... flights cancelled ...... meet a stranger ...... snowstorms ..... have to stay put... deadlines to meet and always by Christmas Eve. See, even I could put a suitable script together !!!

Often wondered why the Americans refer to "the holidays" (something we don't do in the UK) instead of Christmas.

Reel One Entertainment TV movies are notorious for the various technical issues, most notable are music and audio. This one takes the cake.

Remember notorious "Christmas Belle" TV movie? Remember how vast majority of us hated it for the constantly loud background music? Somebody at ROE TV tought it would be great idea to do it again, but this time would be different, right?

Act I is unwatchable because there is constantly obnoxious loud background music. Non-stop. I decided to watch till the end to see how deep rabbit hole. In Act II it was toned down a bit. "Just" ~75% of all time. Then again music was cranked up in Act III. It simply destroyed whole movie!

Olivier Renaud is fine TV actor. It is always a pleasure to watch Richard Waugh but he seemed a bit of exhausted. Writing was average but good enough for this type of movies. But you can't concentrate on anything because of loud music and it's especially annoying if you use good quality headphones.

Like so many other ROE TV movies in the last few years, it is almost always Hamilton or Kelowna pretending to be some US city or town, and this time it was Hamilton pretending to be real life Sulphur Springs, Ohio.

As with any other ROE TV movie, you can watch a trailer and see the whole movie compressed which I recommend to do to save yourself from the audio torture.

Event planner Kayley Cooper (Kathryn Davis) is desperate to get to New York for work. Her plane gets grounded. Fellow traveler Brett Matthews (Olivier Renaud) offers to help. The snowstorm catches up to them and they are stranded in his hometown where he is still a celebrated hero. He offers to help a local event with Kayley's help.

The title is an obvious reference to the classic comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The main issue with that is this movie is far away from that classic comedy. First, this is not a road movie. Second, this is nowhere near the comedy. At best, it is a passable romance and that's highly debatable. I don't like their meet-cute. It's better for her to be a workaholic single. That would be a cleaner connection. Their coming together is awkward and slow. This Hallmark wannabe doesn't have the whole formula.

Planes, Trains And Christmas Trees (2022) -

I would let Olivier Renaud, who in this film played Brett, take me anywhere. He looked gorgeous as an Elf and as an adorable Bunny Rabbit too. Once again the leading lady was getting the better end of the romance when she got "Stuck" with Brett on her journey.

And while Kathryn David was okay in her role of Kayley, I do get tired of the characters always having secrets and not just being honest from the beginning.

The format was as you would expect from the title. It replicated the other 'Planes, Trains And Automobiles' (1987) film, except with that romantic element thrown in and it was set at Christmas instead of Thanksgiving. And as I wrote that I realised that I have said the same thing about another seasonal film that I had watched already this year, so not only was the story a tad unoriginal, it wasn't even fresh this year.

After their plane was cancelled they shared everything they could to get back to where they needed to be and along the way they helped some people and ultimately helped themselves. It really wasn't anything unexpected, but it was cute enough.

I am still waiting for a story that shows an everyday person from a shop falling for an everyday office clerk instead of a football player and an event planner, as shown here. I'd like to see people who aren't well off and in great jobs for a change. People that really need a Christmas miracle and to find someone to support them. It would be lovely to imagine that someone like Olivier might fall for my broke ass and we could struggle to pay the bills together, but it wouldn't matter, because we would be in love.

Back to reality, what I did like about this film particularly was that they used ACTUAL REAL SNOW for the snowmen!!! It's a miracle and almost unheard of! It was a shame about the obviously fake stuff in the air, floating under the clear blue skies however.

Okay so it wasn't the most demonstrative of narratives and it probably wasn't the biggest budget 'Made For TV' Christmas film I've seen this year, but it was sweet and Olivier was so charming it was hard not to fall for him and to want his heart to be fulfilled.

6.19/10.