Midnight at the Magnolia

Midnight at the Magnolia is a 2020 comedy romance film. Longtime friends and local radio hosts Maggie and Jack fake it as a couple. It's not your normal romance film but it was still good. A lovely light heated comedy romance to watch, little predictable in places but it's still very enjoyable to watch. The acting was good and Evan Williams and Natalie Hall played the characters well and made it believable. I quite enjoyed it I know it's a Christmas film and I'm watching it in January but I fancied watching something light heated and it certainly put a smile on my face. This movie is perfect for a Sunday afternoon in front of the fire with nice cup of hot chocolate. It's currently streaming on Netflix right now so give it a watch.

This one wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the best, either. It has a pet-peeve of mine: forced love story. I was shocked when Quinn admitted she has been in love with Jack for her whole life. (Not a spoiler, it's obvious.) She didn't seem in love with him at all. This movie thought it could use words and that would register in our minds as chemistry. It doesn't work like that. As for this whole radio show thing, what even..? Who on earth would be interested in a meet the parents segment... ON NYE? Not I, said the cat.

The acting coming from the side characters is horrendous. When they made an announcement that was supposedly really big, the wows coming from the family was not convincing at all.

As for the positives, I thought that Jack was a model love interest for these types of films. He wasn't a deplorable male character just there for staring at, I actually thought he was an okay guy. I have more to say on this film, but I believe I don't have much more description for it. I say just watch it for yourself and see If you like it.

I'll keep it very simple. If you are the kind of person who loves Christmas movies and watches a handful of those cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies each year, then this movie is definitely for you because it is absolutely, positively better than about 9 out of 10 of those. If you don't enjoy that genre, then this probably wouldn't be the one to win you over. Personally, I'm always looking for the next Xmas gem as they start to roll out a little after Halloween (sometimes sooner). Most of them are forgettable, but short and sweet. This one snuck up on me and I really enjoyed it. And the two leads (especially the male) were quite good. 87 minutes of a cute and fun, albeit cliched, romance set to a Xmas background....nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

I personally love the trope of best friends falling in love or childhood best friends being in love the whole time and I am always looking out for films and shows with this theme so I was waiting for this to come out eagerly. This film has everything that I want from it but it lacks the main ingredients of chemistry, direction and dialogue delivery which makes a film... A film! I felt like someone just read a book and transferred the great plot of the book onto the screen quiet literally page by page. The male lead did his best but he and his co-star just had no chemistry... I mean for a moment I thought maybe this film is going towards the direction where they both realize that they are better off as best friends. They both looked perfectly happy being best friends if the plot didn't tell me as an audience via every other character that they are meant to be and how much they have always loved each other, I probably would've never known.

Now it is very rare for me to watch such a movie. I have watched several rom coms over the years but always with hollywood a-listers staring. I watched it during an airplane trip, so not much choice there, still I am glad I did.

At first it seemed weird to watch a movie where all actors were completely unknown to me. Beyond that, the cliched story was served well by the script, the acting, the pace, but mostly the protagonists chemistry.

Well I began to watch it to kill time and ended up enjoying it. 7/10 might be a little generous but for a low budget tv movie very decent job. Better than several high end production movies, Marry me for instance.