The Holiday Exchange

The dialogue is not great and the acting is average to good, and the characters were all too well-off for my liking. But despite that I sensed gay actors were probably involved in its making and that is a bonus. I did not like their lives as represented here much, but who am I to judge ? Most popular heterosexual mainstream films have the same kind of supposed glamour, and that as they say is Hollywood. The plot is easy to follow. Four guys go away for Christmas, exchanging apartments and they find love. One apartment in Los Angeles and the other in an obscure place that looked like a cute Romanian town. It borders on the unbelievable, but then a lot of films do and we accept the fantasy. Samer Salem as a writer was in my opinion the best actor, and Taylor Frey was fun and at the same time irritating to watch. All four find love and how often does that happen either in life or on film? To sum up it is escapist fantasy and so are most of Vincente Minnelli films and Douglas Sirk. This film is arguably lacking their magic, but it does have a lot of wish fulfilment and to a large extent this is the Hollywood ethos, and most do not complain about that.

Admittedly I only started this movie because it's a gay Christmas movie. In the end I really enjoyed it. The beginning was rough and the cheesiest part, but I got into it after the first act. I liked all the main characters and their diversity (the actors and their storylines). The secondary characters were all somewhat forgettable. I'm surprised Kyle Richards is at the center of the poster as she's barely in it. Overall it was predictable, but pretty good acting and a little more depth than the average Hallmark-type movie. I'm not a big movie person and tend to only watch around the holidays (mostly classics like Home Alone, A Christmas Story, etc) but this was a worthy watch.

This is essentially a retelling of The Holiday (with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet), which is one of my favorite Christmas movies. I'm not going to lie, this is not the movie to win awards or whatever and if you go in with high expectations (like some of the other reviewers must have) you're just going to disappoint yourself. That being said it's cute, lighthearted, and fun! I had read some of the reviews here and immediately thought I was making a mistake but honestly I don't understand the atrocious reviews. Sure, it's cheesy and maybe it's not actually filmed in Europe - so what?

In my opinion, if you enjoy the occasional Hallmark Christmas movie, this is worth giving a watch.

I am a firm believer that Gay themed movies are either really good or really bad. There is never a middle ground when it comes to these types of movies. This one happens to be really bad and the lead actor Taylor Frey has to be the absolute worse. He happens to be very stiff and fake. There is also nothing original about this story. Let's travel across the world and meet your love. Maybe this story could have been good if they would have only hired a lead actor that could act. I have seen a few of his painful attempts at acting before and each one only gets worse. The rest of the cast was easier to watch. Save your time and skip this movie.

Holiday movies are not meant to change the world, just brighten it up for a couple hours. This movie knows exactly what it is, doesn't pretend to be anything else, and it delivers. Swapping cities for the holidays with a stranger, and both of them finding love is nothing new, but it's also always a warm feeling, which is great to have in a cold winter night. Some great supporting performances from Kyle Richards and Ashley Fink (who actually gets my favorite moment of the film and pulls the one Lone tear out of my cynical heart).

Maybe I'm a bit biased because it's Taylor Frey, and he and his husband are talented Handsome happy couple goals, but this was great Christmas Eve watching.