Noël à La Carte

Kim Shaw, Cynthia Gibb and Clayton James do a good job with what they were given. The rest of the cast did a good job as well, but do to the writing (or lack of), they just seemed to drift through the story. There are no interesting subplots, and the story is very surfaced and one dimensional, so some characters just seemed to have no reason for being there and it showed. The characters lack of purpose leads to a lot of empty, pretentious dialogue which leaves you searching for the fast forward button.

This movie uses the common trope of a B&B hosting reviewers which will affect their business. Throw in a little of the evil editor who changes the original reviews and add that it's not just the B&B but the owner's daughter's desserts that are getting reviewed. The conflict was created in a slightly unusual way but the surprise was dampened a little bit because you could see it coming from several scenes earlier. There are a lot of technical details about cooking sprinkled through the movie. There aren't that many of the traditional Christmas activities that are so formulaic in other Christmas movies.

I thought most of the actors were consciously "delivering" their lines as opposed to dialogue happening naturally and the dialogue wasn't that great. Kim Shaw overdid Josie's early anger for Tanner. Just watching the story and not inferring from external clues, for a while it was a tossup which guy, Tanner or Nolan, would get the girl. Both were good choices with no apparent flaws. But Jesse Kove had no chemistry with Shaw. Clayton James had some chemistry with Shaw but it wasn't sparkling. So much screen time revolved around the cooking that it diluted James and Shaw's chances to sell the romance.

Shanica Knowles does a song performance with some sultry moves. I wasn't impressed with her voice, but that's just me.

This is a watchable movie despite slightly below average acting . The story has some common elements with a couple of things out of the ordinary for Christmas movies.

Maybe it's just me...or maybe I missed a scene, but it took me over a hour to figure out Josie and Nolan previously dated. I didn't know who this dude was for most of the movie.

I agree with other reviewers here. The acting in this one was pretty good, especially the leads. However, my daughter had to keep throwing popcorn at me to keep me awake. So, acting aside, it was quite a snooze-worthy.

I liked Kim Shaw's performance in this, but a lot of the movie didn't make sense. First, the ages. Cynthia Gibb, who played Kim's mother, looks way to young to be the mother of a 35 year-old. (Good for Her!) Also, the actor that played Kim's ex- boyfriend is 7 years younger than her. At first, I was confused by his role in this, and why he was working in such close proximity to Kim's mother.

The love-interest/restaurant critic was handsome but kind of a non-entity. And since when does a food-critic agree to only give a good review or no review? His editor, Pepper, was the antagonist who doctored honest reviews to make them more mean and better click-bait. And the food critic just let her do that without a peep. What a wimp. Where is the integrity? Also present at the grand opening were two nationally known reviewers who loved everything. If the little newspaper gave a bad review, it would reflect on them, not the chef (who was also famous and lauded in her own right anyway.) Also she ate a whole big bowl of Kim's special whip cream to sabatage her. And she didn't even deny it! LOLWUT?