A Belgian Chocolate Christmas

Unlike others, I really liked this movie. I have spent Christmas in Brussels for work and this movie definitely captured the mood and the feel of Belgium at Christmas. The story may be a little light, the acting was ok, but overall I enjoyed this movie quite a bit.

The mood of the movie gave you the feel of being awkward, but then again Kate, Jaclyn Hales, is an imposter, so awkward is in keeping with the story line.

I'm all for these types of movies: Good story, good actors, great location and Christmas in 3urope. I hope Great American Family continues to bring us more movies like this one.

Great American Family.... Love you guys! Honestly!

But what was this? The strange close-ups, the lighting, the sound quality.... This was very difficult and quite frankly impossible to get through.

We turned it off after 45 minutes. And the bacon/gravel voice was just so bad.

Sorry guys. This was a miss. Maybe we will give it another shot during the holiday season but this just came across as a low quality, almost high-school type production.

We hope this is not a sign of things to come. We are looking forward so much to Great American Christmas year 3 but they must be better than this.

This was just not an enjoyable movie.

Particularly GAKKY. No surprise coming from GAK. A woman goes to Brussels to learn about chocolate making impersonating her friend. She has minimal skills in the field. The actress portraying her is just awful. She is very fake. The man playing Matthias, the Belgium chocolatier is also awful. Can we please hire someone from Belgium with an actual accent???? Someone with a bit more emotion??? There is NO chemistry between the main actors. None at all. Don't waste 2 hours watching. Or rather, go watch the version from Hallmark with Lacey Chabert and Will Kemp which is a whole lot more interesting and romantic!!!

This story is based on several very common plot devices. One woman is pressed into impersonating her friend in a professional capacity which is the hanging secret. Family business is struggling which the grandson is trying to carry on. The two leads spend time together, in this case with Kate learning about chocolate in Brussels. Meanwhile she spurs Mathias to do some things to help the business. The story's conflict is very predictable and the ending is over the top.

I didn't see any chemistry between Jaclyn Hales and Zane Stephens. I often have trouble finding chemistry in hanging secret movies because at least one of the leads can't be totally honest. In this case, I think it is more than that. It just didn't feel like they were connecting. The Almost Kiss scene is clumsy and it felt like the actors were relieved to have it fail. I also wasn't impressed with the overall acting or the dialogue. The latter was frequently mundane. They too factors combined to make it seemed forced or unnatural.

There were some nice shots of Brussels which reminded me of being there. As expected with GAF, the story is very family friendly.

Okay..a movie about chocolate and Brussels...this combination should make for a great movie. But...the people making this movie managed to find multiple ways to mess it up. Poor pacing. Ridiculous cooking lesson scene near the beginning. Mediocre acting. And so it goes. Laughably bad. One silly example: the lead guy was reluctant to let lead actress into the cooking lesson because class was already starting but, well she was the only one in the class! And it just goes downhill from there. Oh I gave it two stars instead of one due solely to the unintended comedic relief. Another horrible GAC/GAG production.