Saving Christmas Spirit

Greetings, salutations, and a seasonal welcome to all you movie aficionados. Here are my considerations and recommendation for Saving Christmas Spirit.

Story: 1.25/2 - Direction and Pace: 2.50/4 - Performances: 1.50/2 - Enjoyment: 1.25/2

Total 6.50/10

There are few places on this planet where you would think that magic and faerie folk could exist. One such place is the extraordinarily beauteous mountains of the Scottish Highlands, which I was lucky enough to visit this year, so Saving Christmas Spirit was like a memory of good times. Luckily, the director captures the peaks and the Scottish countryside superbly, imbuing the movie with a subtle, heartwarming atmosphere. The writer gives the audience plenty of stuffing as there's not only one love story in this movie but three. One of which involves a meddlesome ghost. There's also the equality story of the girls' rugby team the local school is reluctant to fund, an ongoing feud between two local families and their land rights, and a race to get the funding to release the dram of the moment "Christmas Spirit" and save the local distillery. Add into this mix your typical stereotyped characters, with your more robust "real-life" individuals, and the motherly, yet slightly extravagant, hotel owner, and you have a delightful way to waste an hour and a half with your beloved. The cast is excellent. Though, Ashley Newbrough, who portrays Dr Lucy Stewart, is sometimes a little staid - not exactly wooden, but close.

I have to give you a little warning, though. The movie's beginning isn't great, and it may tempt you to hit the off button. Please stay with it. Once the good doctor leaves America and lands in Scotland, the story and performances get considerably better. Saving Christmas Spirit was a pleasure to watch, and I'd recommend it to Christmas Movie fans and newbies. Should C5 choose to repeat the picture in the future, I'll give it another viewing.

Please check out my HO! HO! HO! Christmas Belles list to see where I ranked the movie.

Take Care, Stay Well, And Best Wishes For A Merry Christmas.

This is a gorgeous, magical Christmas movie with delightful characters set in lovely Scotland. And bonus! It's not one of those factory produced, typical Christmas films with the same boring plot! It's got romance and humor, drama, reindeer and plenty of storyline to keep you interested and warm and fuzzy inside. Loved Ashely Newbrough and James Robinson as the leads, and loved the actors who played the kids in the subplot which really moves the story along and gave it extra layers. Layla Burns who is also in Outlander plays a darling and feisty red headed rugby player, and Jake Satow from The Dropout plays a charming and heartfelt kid who tries to help her start a girls rugby team. Louis Emerick from Brookside is fabulous as the grumpy coach and Joanne Randle is so funny as the cheeky Aunt Edina. This movie has Christmas magic from start to finish, and the traditional ceilidh dance and end song truly top it off! The scenery and locations are beautiful throughout and make you want to go there. The musical score is also really great. Beautifully filmed. This is one to watch every year by a cozy fire with a warm beverage in hand.

Nice story but some of the acting was straight out of a 9th grade school play. The actors playing Scots were obviously more seasoned actors and they saved it to a certain extent, but the lead actress needs to know that she doesn't have to smile through dialogue that is supposed to be serious, and the young man playing Finn needs a few more school plays in his resume before acting on screen. Timing was awful all the way through. It was a nice story line that was not well edited or directed. There was a very apparent lack of chemistry between the two leads that maybe good acting on both sides could have fixed but not in this case. Pedestrian at best.

Like everything else in our currently upside-down society, the best way to review an X-mas film these days is by observing what it is NOT. Saving Christmas Spirit is, first and foremost, not a product of the Great Canadian X-Mas Movie Machine, an sub-industry in Canada which each year strives to produce as many generic X-mas movie knockoffs as humanly possible. It also is not an X-Mas movie that believes in bowling over the viewer with bright colors, bright lights, and glitzy surroundings, all with the intent to substitute looks for quality. Rather, this is a nice, lazy, easygoing, and quite comfortable romp with appealing characters and a story that holds the attention. Ashley Newbrough is the "glue" that keeps the whole thing working. She has a very distinctive way of delivering dialog, almost as if she is talking directly to the audience. And all those Scottish accents ... who can resist? Brings to mind the iconic SNL skit with the punchline "IF IT's NOOO SKOTTISH.... IT'S KKRRRAPPP!" Recommended! ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

American movie makers are getting better at Brit flicks! Ironically the most stereotypical character is the over-the-top camp New Yorker, but fortunately he's not in it much, and even he gets some of the many amusing lines to make him slightly less run-of-the-mill. There's a good mix of characters, with three generations providing a range of plots. Many of the set-ups have the usually predictable endings, but plenty occurs to keep watching for as everything eventually resolves. I like a bit of sadness to add depth even in a Christmas movie, but there is a lot of bereavement and divorce here to deal with, which of course the characters do. This could be a series of films, exploring different elements of Scottish history.