Un Noël à sauver

As part of a Christmas movie marathon here in December, I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the 2023 movie "Christmas on Windmill Way". Sure, I had never heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it.

Did I harbor any grand expectations to the movie? No, not really, as it seemed to be a generic Christmas movie from the cover alone. But, of course, I opted to give the movie a fair chance.

Writer Billy Schofield put together a fair enough script. Sure, it held components of traditional generic sappy Christmas storytelling, but at the same time the storyline actually proved entertaining enough to be enjoyable. I actually did enjoy the narrative in the movie.

The only performer on the screen that I was familiar with was Chad Michael Murray, whom has been starring in other sappy Christmas movies as well. The chemistry between the two leading performers, that being Chad Michael Murray and Christa Taylor Brown, was good. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

Hardly a Christmas classic in the making, but I will say that "Christmas On Windmill Way" proved enjoyable and entertaining. And if you like Christmas movies, then you should check the movie out.

My rating of director Don McBrearty's 2023 movie lands on a six out of ten stars.

Chad Michael Murray is always good, but there must be chemistry between him and his leading lady and in this case there wasn't any. I believe that Christa Taylor Brown was a miscast for this movie. Her style and his style are too much alike. They are both blonde and she is very soft spoken and so is he, so together they were so boring to watch. It was like they were brother and sister instead of potential love interests. It was a very hard movie to finish.

The story itself has been done so many times before that within 10 minutes I knew exactly how the wind mill would be saved and the only reason I kept watching was because of Chad Michael Murray. I will always watch a movie with him even if it's not good because of a miscast.

I love Chad Michael Murray. I really do. But I gotta say, I watched this movie till the end only because of him. If there was some other actor, I would have turned it off within first 30 minutes. The story is so so, but the lead actress... Very bad acting, wooden, no emotions and there was no depth. CMM tried his best, but there was no mutual chemistry what so ever. It was like acting with a wall. I don't think the pairing of lead actors was good and I think, she needs some acting lessons as well. As a watcher I wasn't invested in the story at all, because the lead female failed to make an emotion connection with the audience. Just bad acting, unfortunately and not very interesting script.

The plot is not what would make you watch this until the end. We know from the first minute, where the story will go. So there must be something else. Humor, drama, action, well-written dialogue, cool cuts or camera work... take your pick.

This movie offers nothing but nice cinematography. It's plain boring. It's like it was made for people who recovee from heart surgery and must not experience stress, laughter or sadness.

So the movie idles from start to finish. Somehow, I watched all if it, but I kept wondering why.

I should re-watch Love Actually. Now, there is a kick-ass Christmas movie.

I don't have high expectations for a holiday movie, yet I had a hard time just getting through it. There's nothing original or interesting about the story, the main characters had zero chemistry, and the actors sounded like they were reading from cards.

I watched this one with a few other people, and we all decided this must have been produced during the SAG writers' strike and on a low budget. We kept waiting for something interesting to happen, and it was really strange (and distracting) that the actors delivered their lines in monotone at approximately half-speed of a normal conversation, always in muted, whispery tones and with flat affect.

I don't recommend this unless you literally have nothing else to watch.