Un Natale a colori

I've always liked Katrina Bowden. She is past her Miss Tasty/hottest girl in the world days, but she's still really pretty and makes a very nice Hallmark lead. I hope she does more.

Christopher Russell just keeps getting better. He was a bit stiff when he appeared on the scene a few years ago, but now he has a natural quality that is very appealing.

This movie is about a colorblind man seeing the beauty of the world for the first time, and his heart is opened in the process. There are some genuinely touching moments along the way.

The requisite conflict is brought on by a clingy ex in her case, and an admirer in his, leading to the usual Hallmark misunderstanding.

I liked this movie. Better than most.

The good: recognition for a hidden disability.

The bad: too many moments of awkward dialog, a cringy, stalker-like ex-boyfriend character, and too many unrealistic moments that detract from the overall message, especially with the aforementioned ex-boyfriend. Also, I wish Hallmark would really vet scripts to make sure they accurately portray professions. Schools never have a database of teachers' personal cell phone numbers for parent use, and teachers would never just up and leave in the middle of the school day on a whim. The formulaic conflict in the last half hour was unnecessary and unrealistic.

The type of color blindness in this film, where the person cannot see ANY colors, is called monochromacy. It's extremely rare, and no special glasses are going to allow the person to see color. They MAY allow for greater separation of shades. This type of medical misinformation could only give false hope to people who've suffered from that condition since birth.

So I docked stars for that.

My wife otherwise liked the movie more than I did, as she got into his resistance to admit the condition or seek help for it. Parts of the movie were quite emotional, those mostly having to do with his prospects for treatment and then the (false) results of getting the "special glasses".

The romance part, however, was pretty standard, with the misinterpretations of past or friendly relationships. It's not worth a rewatch for me since I didn't buy into the optometry, and not worth a rewatch for my wife because even though it moved her, most of the suspense involved when and why he'd admit his condition and agree to be examined, and that's no mystery on subsequent viewings.

Michelle is an optometrist who suspects her daughter's teacher might be color blind and makes it her mission to help him.

I appreciate Hallmark for giving us new plots, different than the usual, I also appreciate giving the characters any condition or disability since human beings are not perfect.

While the premise of this movie was interesting it could have been made better. The beginning was very boring for me and I thought of turning it off. The there is the scientific aspect of the movie: color blindness isn't seeing in black and white but according to this, it is. In fact, one type of this condition is mixing red and green and I thought that could have worked better given it is a Christmas movie.

I like that Ryan is discovering and enjoying Christmas like it's a brand new thing. But then there is the misunderstanding at the end of the movie. I thought we were passed that with these movies. And don't even get me started with Michelle's ex, red flags everywhere. I thought the leads were okay but they had little to no chemistry and the script didn't help either.

Anyway, not a bad plot, it was simply poorly executed. I would have changed a few details.

This is an unusual premise. The usual Christmas activities in this movie seem limited to a pageant and Christmas decorations, the latter for obvious reasons. The persistence of Michelle and her daughter, Bailey, lead to tension that isn't romantic for over half the movie. The ploy by Bailey is cute and changes the tone to be more Christmas like.

No matter how accurate is the representation of what Ryan sees, the movie works to capture the wonder he experiences. I do question how accurate the science of it is especially given that during the premiere on Hallmark, there is a commercial for corrective glasses. Is it irony that Ryan is a science teacher? I couldn't find anything conclusive in a simple internet search, but what I saw led me to believe that the actual experience is not as pure especially if Ryan's case was extreme as Michelle stated.

And Mark!? What is with his request that leads to the misunderstanding? Why in the world would Michelle agree?

The acting is OK. The dialogue is ok with a few good moments. Given the relatively small amount of screen time spent by Michelle and Ryan when things are good, it is hard to say there is much chemistry between Katrina Bowden and Christopher Russel or why the characters would feel so strongly.