A Christmas Recipe for Romance

The plot moves quickly from one conundrum to the next as the characters develop and as they come to grips with life lessons, but the movie keeps a light, humorous touch in between the more serious moments. Overall a pleasure to watch, with a clever plot resolution, and a good feeling at the end.

No spark between the leads, a reasonable tale to be told but let down by virtually every character. Afer about 10 minutes, I was ready to turn it off.

Abby's parents are deceased, she runs her grandmother's inn, she is always cheery and smiling, but she soon learns the truth. The inn is on the verge of failure, they are out of money, the grandmother hasn't paid the property taxes for several years, it would take almost $50,000 (Canadian, I presume) to get back in the clear.

As luck would have it a famous producer is planning a cooking contest with a prize of $50,000 and they want a local included. Of course Abby is the natural selection, but her nickname locally is "Five Alarm Abby" because she more often burns food she tries to cook.

As more luck would have it a young chef has just arrived, he is taking some time off, he agrees to teach her how to be a professional quality chef in a week. Of course all of us who are avid cooks know this cannot be done, but we go with it because the movie is light entertainment.

My wife and I frequently watch Hallmark movies and this one seems to want to follow that formula, but in all areas, script, cinematography, acting, this movie falls short. While the two lead actors are pretty good most of the others are amateurish.

Was it an appropriate expenditure of 90 minutes? Yes, I suppose so, as it was a free DVD rental from our public library. But in total it isn't really a very good movie.

While loving Christmas (a lifelong love too) and having liked/loved many Christmas films, there are plenty of Christmas films that are too sappy and cheese ridden as well as predictable. Have seen quite a few films in the past few years with this type of story, which has been familiar territory for most holidays (all holidays not just Christmas) for a while now, and they have varied in success, some are very charming, sweet and engaging while others are too simplistic, dull and silly.

This is a very familiar scenario, to the extent that one knows how everything is going to map out a while before it occurs, and there is nothing fresh in how it is executed in 'A Christmas Recipe for Romance'. It is not a complete disaster by all means, it takes a lot for me to deem anything that, but it is like a competent looking but very safe recipe with no flavour. 'A Christmas Recipe for Romance' has its good things, but has a lot of debits that overshadow them.

Shall start off with the good. It is nicely shot and the locations easy on the eye.

Also thought that Sebastian Sacco was quite charming as the film progressed.

Unfortunately that cannot be said for the rest of the acting. All the supporting cast are amateurish with no exception, with everybody either over-compensating or looking under-rehearsed. Madeline Leon comes over as rather bland and the excessive naivety of her character was very hard to take and actually drove me up the wall. That was one of the most annoying things about the film, and 'A Christmas Recipe for Romance' is full of annoying things from the get go and listing them would take all day without trying to be too mean. The main things being exaggerated character flaws (the main one being the female main character's naivety) and abrupt and senseless motivations in particularly the final third.

Regarding the script, it is very cheesy and awkward and tonally it's a mess. Its attempts at humour, the quirky kind, ended up being very forced and borderline stupid. And the more dramatic parts are so overdone on the sentiment that it is enough to make one be put off from having any kind of confectionary for at least a week. The story is dull and predictable as well as contrived, complete with a too tidy ending. Nothing fresh done with over-familiar ground, a common trend with recently seen Christmas films.

Concluding, very weak. 3/10.

I love Christmas romance movies. I love cooking movies. This one had the premise to have it all but was just okay-ish. Of course, no-one expects an excellent and original plot, but a bit more work would make it much better. Everything seemed "too soon": all the problems got solved the next minute, the tention didn't last long and the leads didn't even have time to get the chemistry going. Nevertheles it's not a bad movie, it's quite nice and the main actors were really cute. I would recommend watching this movie after a few glasses of wine, so all the details would become insignificant.