Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas

Who ever had this idea, wrote, and directed this should have rethought it! Dolly usually has heartwarming shows during the holiday but this seemed like a neverending ad for dollywood. The acting was horrible and the songs strange. After 30 minutes I had to turn it off. Would have been much better if she was just giving an actual concert instead of a movie about trying to make a concert. Don't waste your time! It was hard to watch and I can't get those 30 minutes of my life back. Stick to your regular concerts and your heartwarming stories Dolly! This was so fake and disingenuous it's a complete waste!

Lots of hating reviews on here, and I'll agree - don't expect a lot going in with storyline, character development, production quality, etc. But it's worth watching at Christmas. Get a glass of egg nog, a few cookies, and soak in some Dolly for a couple hours, it will warm your heart. When I visited Dollywood, my review was "Not enough Dolly." This is lots of Dolly. The parts with Miley, Jimmy Fallon, Willy, Billy Ray were kind of disjointed, but it was nice to see them perform with Dolly. And the closing number is still in my head the next day. I loved it, I'm glad I watched it, and you should too.

I love Dollys movies and her music, but this one left me feeling depressed and flat. Not much in the way of really good Christmas music and the storyline left a lot to be desired.

I was looking forward to see and hear her and BRC sing a duet but please BRC, cut your hair. Half of your face was covered by your hair to the point that Dolly had to brush it a side.

I think the best thing in the special was Liam although I could not find out why he was there.

Please Dolly next year make it a real special and not a hodgepodge of whatever came to mind. This special was boring to the point that I felt I had a voice on one side telling me to change the channel and another telling me to wait maybe it will get better. I should have paid attention to first voice, it didn't get better.

Somewhere I got the idea this was going to be a movie rather than a variety special. I guess it was both, because it was the sort of fictional story about preparing for a TV special which, for the most part, never actually aired.

Instead, we see rehearsals, taping of musical numbers which will not air live, fantasy segments where Dolly is by herself (but not really), and preparations, with fictional characters played by actors who were supposedly in charge. So we have all the elements that would have gone into a real special, without ever seeing most of what actually would be broadcast.

And if you ignore all the details about preparations and pretend all the musical numbers and other content were in an actual special, most of it is pretty good.

Now I won't say Dolly Parton can do no wrong. I say this about Willie Nelson, who did well but really showed his age. Of course I like Dolly. Everyone likes Dolly, right?

But I didn't care for all the songs she performed. Of course she's talented and despite her age still has lots of energy. I just don't like some of the styles of music she performs, and she has done just about every style there is. I prefer the more traditional style country or Americana, and the 70s country sound that wasn't really country. But the various pop styles and Christian music that she also performed just don't happen to be my taste. Southern gospel is fine, and of course the European classical composers and other traditional styles of Christian music. But for a Christmas special, I mainly like the more traditional styles of music. I like rock and roll from when it was still called that, but at Christmas?

And I certainly don't care for something called "Go to Hell", regardless. Don't you think kids will be watching? There were kids in it.

It was probably longer than it had to be, but there was a lot of good stuff here.

The Miley Cyrus and Jimmy Fallon segments were great. My only complaint was half the songs were not very Christmasy. One was about Satan. 'He's Alive' sounded like an Easter song. It's a Christmas special, so in my opinion every song should have been a Christmas song. There are plenty of them!

The acting segments were also a bit much. I don't really want to watch Dolly Parton acting like a diva or "boss" in a Christmas special. I get she probably wanted to show another side of herself, the "business side." But in a Christmas special it was distracting and a bit jarring.

Overall I would recommend it.