Natale a Washington

I do agree with much of the Dull Washington review, but I did really enjoy Natalie Lisinska in this.

Unfortunately, most of the shortcoming here falls on the writers for under developed characters, outside of the core few, and some unfortunate script decisions that detracted from what could have been developed into a nice, if not somewhat formulaic, production.

All-in-all, decent characters and performances from Natalie Lisinska and Damon Runyon, as well as Tessa Kozma and Kathleen Laskey, but characters and performance drop off sharply from there, making the overall product, while not terrible, difficult to recommend.

For those who like some tension in their Christmas movies, there is a villain. Unfortunately, he was a little too crude for the circumstances. Big Dan looked a little too much like a stereotypical mob boss and acted like one too.

It was also hard to buy into the Ambassador's rigidity at the beginning and it melted away pretty fast. The assistant, Arvid, was likewise a little too much.

The daughter brought the usual bump in the story. I found her relationship with Emily more appealing than with Magnus.

Great adult - mature dialogue! Underlying theme is integrity, something most of Washington Lacks! The two main leads have excellent chemistry. One of my top 10 favorites for Christmas season 2021.

This is one of the most ridiculous films I've seen. It is even less realistic than Christmas films with actual ghosts and angels in them. I understand we're meant to suspend a lot of disbelief in schmaltzy Christmas films but seriously, the lead female character would never be hired by anyone ever, and particularly not in any sort of political/diplomatic job. People are not able to just wander around everywhere in an ambassadorial residence, and in no way would a hired contractor who's doing maybe two weeks' work would be given the run of even a single room without supervision. And the ambassador apparently doesn't do any actual diplomatic work? I get that might be too boring to be in any scene, but there's not even any reference to having meetings with officials even though he's a newly arrived ambassador.

I did like that there's pro environmental and sustainability messages and interests in both the Magnus and Emily, which feels downright revolutionary for these films. Still, everything else about it is just ridiculous. The bad guy developer is cartoonish yet hardly in the story, the horny mother is creepy as hell, and Arvind is, well, I don't really know what Arvind is.

And then it just...ends. It feels like the writers or actors - or both - just gave up and said screw it, let's go home. Honestly, I wish they'd done that at the start.

I'm giving this a 4 to give it the benefit of the doubt because I could only sit through about 10 minutes of this. Maybe I'm burnt out on Christmas movies this year, but the acting of the woman who played the ambassador's assistant was cringeworthy. The whole first scene at the embassy seemed more like a bad dress rehearsal. Damon Runyon is normally one of my favorites, but even his acting seemed awkward and stilted. Since he's normally pretty good, I have to blame the director. I know these Lifetime movies are lower budget and they probably don't have time for a lot of takes, but your first scenes are what draw the viewer in. This one's early scenes had me flipping the channel.