Christmas is my favourite time of year and has always been very special. Main reasons being that it means lots of family time and reliving the nostalgia of singing and listening to carols, watching Christmas films and animations, playing festive games and opening presents. Will never tire of it and nothing will ever change that for the world.
There were two main reasons for seeing 'The Holiday Calendar'. One was due to absolutely loving the concept, which was one not seen an awful lot in festive films and sounded really interesting and cute. The other was wanting to see more festive films, and ones different to the ones familiar with, adored and watched every year. Watching 'The Holiday Calendar' with no knowledge before of its critical reception, thought it was semi-watchable and not quite that bad but also couldn't help feeling underwhelmed. It could have done so much more with its concept, which would have made it feel fresh, but it ended up feeling like a typical cheesy sentimental drama-romance with some merits. Despite how that sounds, that is not meant to imply that there is a personal bias against drama-romances, there are some good to great ones out there. They do however have traps, and 'The Holiday Calendar' falls into pretty much all of them.
Certainly there are good things. There is a real festive charm to how 'The Holiday Calendar' looks, it's beautifully shot and the locations are even lovelier. This festive charm can be heard aurally too, with an infectiously catchy soundtrack that does get one into the Christmas spirit.
It is when it focuses on its concept of the calendars/gifts when 'The Holiday Calendar' is at its most watchable. Then the film is interesting as well as sweet, without being too sugary, and charming, when one is caring about what happens.
Unfortunately, much more could have been done with it and for me it was not focused on enough. Instead 'The Holiday Calendar' focuses too much on the romance and dramatic elements, and the film falls well short in this respect. The romance suffers from a complete lack of chemistry between the leads and from being completely bland, with especially cheesy dialogue that doesn't flow and a rather impossible to root for protagonist. The drama felt forced and over-sentimentality is far from kept at bay, the film is practically covered in it and at its worst it is hard to stomach. The severely wanting dialogue and lack of chemistry is apparent here too and although the main character is the worst case none of the cliched characters are interesting and are instead annoying.
Charm and heart comes too far and between, and the film is further hurt by its excessive predictability, where everything is easily foreseeable long before it happens due to being done so many times before, and going so over-the-top on the credibility straining that it becomes unrealistically far-fetched. And it is not just trying and failing to accept that most of the cast are too young for their archetypcal characters and that it is impossible to believe that the main character is struggling to make ends meet when it looks like she is the richest character in the whole story. The direction is routine at best and all the performances fall flat.
All in all, semi-watchable but lacking in too many areas to be good. 4/10 Bethany Cox
