When I Think of Christmas

We've enjoyed Niall Matter since his days on Eureka, and he's been a solid presence in a number of Christmas films.

We found this film watchable, but it won't be on our repeat list. We have a couple the writers wanted us to believe both thought the other had left them. The reason they came up with seemed contrived and unbelievable, and they begin their reunion in their hometown each quite bitter at the other.

When Niall's character, who is putting together a Christmas show, runs out of piano players for rehearsals, she agrees to play the piano. Not just agrees, but volunteers with the slightest of suggestions from her mother. From there the supposed bitterness virtually melts away with very little effort. The relationship changes, in our opinion, lacked authenticity.

Our verdict is watchable, but we won't repeat the viewing.

This story has many of the common elements of Christmas movies. Sara returns home to help mom move but brings work. She encounters her ex from high school and theirs was an ugly breakup. Their animosity melts away magically and they work on a Christmas concert.

The deeper theme of the movie is life changing choices and the regrets that come years later. This is another pretty common theme, but for me, this movie captured those emotions and dealt with them. There are no great highs or lows. There is one surprise that I don't think was foreshadowed at all.

There are some nice Christmas songs by members of the cast. Shenae Grimes-Beech has the best voice of the group.

The acting is good. The dialogue is good. There is good chemistry between the leads.

I like both of the main actors, but they had no chemistry together and the story just fell flat. They just didn't work together. Also, I'm not sure what they were thinking with her hair. Hallmark is normally good with hair, makeup, and wardrobe, but her hair was atrocious (both the bangs and the dark color around her face). It was actually a distraction. Unlike her other movie that I watch every year, I was just glad to get this one over with. I won't be watching it again. The mother and her new friend had chemistry. It's too bad they didn't focus more of the movie on them. They paired well together.

I really like Niall Matter but the story line was so slow and it could not keep me focused on the storyline. I enjoyed Niall's singing but not a fan of Beth Broderick's singing. The live interest Shenae sang lovely but I didn't like the chemistry between her and Niall. The relationship between mother (Beth) and daughter (Shenae) was good but the story was just so monotone just like the rest of the movie that it got lost. The story was just lackluster. I really wanted to like this movie but it didn't catch my interest. I wouldn't mind seeing the two leads in a better written movie. Here is to hoping a better story for these 2.

You'd think if you were going to make a movie about professional singers, you'd cast actors that don't sound horrible when they "sing." Not so here, because you see these are actors, pretending to be someone else, and apparently they're pretending they're someone who can sing. The mother, played by Beth Broderick has an incredibly grating speaking voice, and when she sings it's like nails on a chalkboard, yet her character is supposed to be some kind of retired legendary singer. This film is stupid and horrible and insults the audience. I guess suspending disbelief includes imagining the noise coming from the actors' mouth is singing. I once had a terrible nightmare that I was back in Ireland at my dad's wake and some mad scientist mortician had connected a pipe into my deceased father's lungs so the mourners could pull levers and a machine would force air into my dad's lungs and up through his larynx to make him talk. But of course it was all very macabre and terrifying. That being said, the singing in this film was worse than my nightmare.

There are actually no redeeming features to this movie. I resent my mother for talking me into watching it and I resent having to take my valuable time writing this review, which means by extension I resent you all. I'm writing this for you after all in the hope I might spare you the discomfort of sitting through it.

I keep thinking about those monkeys at the zoo that throw excrement at people and wondering if perhaps I should do that to my television. If that sort of thing makes the monkeys feel better it might do me some good too.