Mon conte de fées de Noël

Wow, Scotland in the winter looks beautiful. So green. Like you could jump right in the ocean or walk around in a t-shirt without trouble. Wait, it was not summer? This was supposed to be a Christmas movie? Huh. OK then. On to the story, our siblings find out their mother was a secret duchess and they now are in control of a Scottish castle, cuz that's a thing. If you've seen Party of Five, you know Lacy Chabert and Scott Wolf have had parent issues before, but this didn't seem so much as a problem. They were just annoying about it. Lacy falls for the groundskeeper, dances with someone she should actually be dating (Will Kemp) and leaves the castle only to return and stay. The last 10 minutes of the movie happened so fast that you really need to look up from your phone to catch all the flip flopping. I'm giving this one seven stars for the acting (mostly the tour guide and bar keep) and the setting. I read that the castle they used was actually in Ireland - which is not cool Hallmark. Always dissing the Scots.

There were too many things that distracted in this one. First, why did they choose Duke/Duchess as the title? It would have been far more believable if it had been Earl or a lesser title. And while it was nice to see Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf together again, their age difference was glaring. I kept thinking, sure they played siblings in Party of Five, but it is just weird here. There are lines that reference "when we were teenagers," implying they're supposed to be, three or four years apart, maybe five? I looked up both of them, and there is a 14 year age difference in real life, Scott Wolf is in his mid-fifties. Along with that, the woman playing their mom didn't seem old enough. And there is always an expected amount of cheesiness in Hallmark movies, but it felt so forced how cheerful and friendly all the Scottish people were. It just seemed so over the top. On that note, I couldn't stand Hamish (I think that was the character's name), man was he annoying, so over-acted. On a positive note, the castle was beautiful, and shots of the scenery were lovely.

Just as well, for the 90's Party of Five addict in me, that Scott Wolf and Lacey Chabert played siblings - even if they are estranged at the start of the film. Couldn't have handled them playing a couple.

Speaking of PO5, the bar named Salinger's, owned by a guy called Charlie? Love that nod to the show that made Wolf and Chabert famous.

A Merry Scottish Christmas is much better than the last Hallmark movie where Chabert went to a castle (2021's forgettable 'Christmas at Castle Hart').

It is a Hallmark movie that doesn't feel like one. Aside from the unique setting, there is real family drama here, serious stuff that Hallmark movies usually don't touch with a ten-foot pole. (Well, the old version of Hallmark, anyway. The Crown network seems to be going to places it never did before with storylines, casts and romantic pairings. If that's them going woke, then I'm fine with it...)

Beautiful establishing shots, good acting all around, some very un Hallmark-like storylines (refreshingly so), plenty of Scottish flavour (music, language and Christmas traditions) and, for a change, a romance that wasn't the main focus of the film.

Oh, and a cool cameo from Chabert's romantic interest in the brilliant 2020 Hallmark classic 'The Christmas Waltz' on the same weekend as a sequel to that film airs on a rival network.

The reunion of the Party of Five stars Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf will attract the attention of many. They play estranged brother and sister Lindsay and Brad. They each went separate ways at adulthood and that left resentment. That resentment gets lip service for a while but the two quickly act far friendlier toward each other than the backstory would imply. But the big story in the plot is that their mom, also estranged from them, is heir of a duke.

Lindsay meets Mac, the estate manager, and they begin developing a romance, but that plot thread is secondary to the family reconciliation and their dealing with issues related to their inheritance.

The acting is mostly OK, but somehow I didn't feel it much from Scott Wolf. I think I was put off by his over enthusiasm which could have been overacting. The dialogue was also OK with some funny moments. We saw a bit of Scottish scenery and traditions.

There were no great highs or lows or surprises. The tension was all relational and didn't involve any threats to body or livelihood.

One mystery to me was Mac's brother-in-law. The actor looked familiar but I couldn't place him.

The last Lacy Chabert movie we really liked was Christmas in Rome, and this one didn't live up to that standard.

The main draw of this movie was the Scottish setting. Once the main group of characters arrive, the mother tells her son and daughter she was in line to be the Duchess, but didn't want the lifestyle control that went with the title and sticking with her family.

The "sort of" outrage shown by the son and daughter didn't ring true for us. It seems manufactured to put some tension in the story, but it was pretty much the only tension in the story.

From there on, we saw charming scenes of local life and traditions, but they didn't interest us enough to wish to watch this again, and the movie trundled on to its entirely predictable ending.