Holidaze

I watch a boatload of holiday movies every year. I very rarely watch this type more than once. This one I have watched a few years in a row now. It is very well done, solid acting, ( that is missing from many of these Harlequin type romance holiday movies). The two leads have charm and acting skills as well and were very believable. You can tell the better written movies after you watch so many bad one. The details were good in this one, the story was solid with no holes, the supporting actors were all good. No one overplayed a type, like "villain, selfish co-worker, small town people". It was not a total cliche. They made the people all more real with a bit of edge. Like the sister says, yeah be like me and move home and be a single mom. Things like that are not in Hallmark movies. Watch this one, it is fun and enjoyable.

I have been avoiding this movie each year due to the rather low 5.9 rating. I liked Secret Santa-2003 which also starred Jennie Garth and decided to give this one a try. Very glad I did. Jennie Garth plays a great role as a business woman. It is a fun movie with lots of fun dialogue. The movie is not technically a Christmas movie but it has the feel of a Christmas movie since it centers around Thanksgiving.

In the usual tradition of Christmas TV movies, the heroine of Holidaze is too consumed with surface attractions and needs to learn her lesson. Jennie Garth, beautiful and with an adorable spunk that helps make her likable, is a corporate big-wig who hasn't been home in ages. She comes back for a business deal, but when she bumps her head and passes out, her world changes. All of a sudden, she finds herself married to her high school sweetheart and running a coffee shop in her hometown!

Jennie and her love interest Cameron Mathison have a natural chemistry together; it's easy to believe they have a history and belong together. In these types of movies, the romantic leads often bicker and have nothing in common, and while that is still the case in Holidaze, the audience can still feel a pull between them. The rest of the story—a potential corporate takeover—isn't particularly compelling, so the fact that the romance is makes this a delightful holiday flick. Plus, it takes place in the days after Thanksgiving, so you can watch this one early on in the season before your Christmas cookies are even baked!

This is a film that can't make up its mind if it wants to be a revamped remake of "Groundhog Day" or an attack on corporate America. A high flying corporate executive is sent to her hometown to tear down its Olde Worlde Charme and replace it with a modern hypermarket or some such. Naturally the natives don't like the idea, especially the small shopkeepers.

Lured to the home of the man she left behind, she falls down the stairs in a freak accident, and when she wakes up not only are the two of them married but she has never left.

No sooner has she come round to her new reality, albeit with great difficulty, than she suffers another accident and the process is reversed.

As comedies go, this isn't bad, neither is the soundtrack, and the finale proves that not all capitalists are bad, or maybe that big business needs a woman's touch.

All in all, this was a better than average rom/com. Other than a short scene with the 3 ladies at the bar, there wasn't the usual sophomoric nonsense in this film like so many Hallmark movies. The acting and writing was good as well as sound and filming. The end clip during the credits was a little silly, but again, this was a good watch.