Embarquement pour Noël

There is a cute little Walt Disney book titled "Button Soup" It is a 1975 Disney's Wonderful World of Reading storybook featuring Daisy Duck and Scrooge McDuck. In this book, Daisy tricks her stingy Uncle Scrooge into making enough soup for the whole town -- using just one button.

Using a similar approach to the Disney book "Button Soup" a pretty writer named Maddie Contino (Jen Lilley) begrudgingly agrees to go on what's called a Tiger Cruise with her mother Elizabeth (Barbara Niven). A Tiger Cruise allows a naval officer to take their family to work and in this case Maddie's sister is stationed as a fighter pilot named Lt. Amelia Breslin (Stefanie Butler) on a ship. Lt. Amelia Breslin, her sister Maddie, and their mom Elizabeth receive a dinner invitation from the ship's captain who invites his own son, Lt. Billy Jenkins (Trevor Donovan) to join them for dinner and reminisce about Christmas's past when the ships Captain Chet Jenkins (Brett Rice) used to work alongside Maddie and Amelia's father who is now deceased. As Captain Jenkins discusses the very first Tiger Cruise he lights a spark in Maddie's desire to write about a long forgotten romance of a couple who first met on that very first Tiger cruise.

Captain Jenkins assigns his good looking fighter pilot son Billy to assist Maddie in researching her story by accessing the ships archives, and Billy initially wants nothing to do with Maddie's research or with the Christmas spirit. But as luck would have it, with every stone Maddie over turns (just like in the 1975 Disney book Button Soup) she draws the unwilling Billy closer and closer into the research and into falling in love with one another.

Maddie and Billy's research leads to good things happening which I don't want to divulge and ruin it for any interested viewers but suffice to say the story took a lot of hard work, push and pull, and convincing but all works out in the end for all parties.

I give USS Christmas a decent 7 out of 10 IMDB rating.

This is a warm and gentle Christmas movie. It is a bit slow at times, but, overall, a decent film. It is a romance, mystery movie, which makes sense as it is a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel original. The plot has been done often before: i.e., the lead or leads find love letters, photos, a ring, or some other object from a past great love, which they then try to solve. That said, there is a unique element to this story: the movie is set on an aircraft carrier (which I enjoyed). There are some very nice shots of the crafts and ship; I especially like the ship lit up in Christmas lights. I did not know what a Tiger cruise was; it is a very nice concept. Hallmark always has at least one military-focused Christmas movie each year; I read in the news that they have a good standing relationship with the military, meaning, I think, they got to use their ship in this one. As another reviewer on here discussed, this one has some similarities to those past military-focused Christmas films. The acting was good. Jen Lilley, a Hallmark regular, performs well in this genre of film. She had a very convincing performance here as Maddie. Trevor Donovan's portrayal of Lt. Billy Jenkins (aka the Grinch) was decent. To be honest, I sometimes find his performances to a bit stiff. That said, he has had some very good performances in, e.g., Love on a Limb and Love, Fall & Order. Here he was a bit stiff as well, but his character was a military man with the call-sign the Grinch. So, it worked for me. The chemistry between the two was underdeveloped, I thought. The writer could have done more in this regard; I think, Donovan too could have given a bit more, romance wise, in his performance. The scenery, props, and sets were well-polished and festive; the latter is toned down a bit in this one. Overall, it is a fairly good movie. It might not be for everyone, but fans of Hallmark's mystery movies and movie series will no doubt enjoy this new edition to the 2020 Christmas movie lineup.

In the archive room Billy sees a photo of what I believe was the A1 Skyraider but he identifies it as a B-29. Other than that, I enjoyed this one more than most. But I'm a sucker for anything that flies. Some cool footage of the cats at work.

Although he starts out quite gruff at the beginning, it's easy to see how he mellows throughout the film, thus proving that Trevor Donovan is not only gorgeous, but a good actor too. I've seen a lot of these films lately and quite often the actors haven't been able or directed to get this change from "Grinch" to "Santa" to flow naturally and as a result they have seemed highly unlikely to have that crucial change of heart that the formula of every Made For TV Christmas Film demands and some of them are just downright horrible. She annoyed me a bit though, I'd have dragged him off to a room alone somewhere after the first meeting.

It's a cute story, although it is just a variation on the theme, but it is nice to see a different setting this time, even if they do still end up in New York. The idea of a Navy ship was clever and they didn't go over the top with the "We must honour our troops" thing.

I may be biased because Trevor looked so good in uniform and in Black Tie, but I did like this one and I look forward to watching it again next Christmas preferably before February, but there are so many to watch aren't there.

6/10 - following the new trend of mixing a new and old romance, this Hallmark flick is pleasing if forgettable