Jingle Belle

Plastic smiles and dito accidental tear, hollow characters, overloud background music, predictable plot (even the 'twist'), life in a super sweet smalltown versus bad, bad big town. A boring lovestory, all wrapped around the creation of a horrible, horrible song. Yes, it has it all and yes, it is a toe curling movie. The only reason I finished watching it was that I was sort of trapped on a sofa during a family moment.

Tatyana ali cornelius smith jr weak leads in this movie no musical ability comes through.she has a horrible attitude.

For once I could watch a movie just for fun. It actually reminded me some of "Sweet Home Alabama". Another movie I could relax and enjoy. I could enjoy "Jingle Belle" with my grandkids and not have to worry what they're seeing or hearing for one moment. The movie might be called "quaint", but when I was growing up it would have been the norm for a family movie. Quaint is just fine in my book, especially for a Christmas movie.

The premise of this movie is almost exactly like at least one other Christmas movie and very similar to several others. It had the potential to sink into obscurity. But after 2/3rds or so there is an interesting twist that puts a different take on the story. Unfortunately, after that other overused tropes sneak back into the story so it ends up in the same place, but what else can you expect when there are only so many possible outcomes.

Most of the acting is solid. The leads have a chemistry as they revisit their past. There is some good solid soul searching by those same characters.

Sometimes it's hard to judge the quality of acting when humor is involved especially if the humor is exaggerated. In this case though, I think it's definitely true that Loretta Devine, as the unethical boss, has some horrible acting moments.

The movie includes performance of some traditional Christmas songs by a youth choir and one of an original song by the leads.

Jingle Belle (2018) -

This was one of those films of this genre that I put on expecting to hate and turn off straight away, purely based on the fact that I've seen the story before and I was worried that it would just be an excuse for a 'Cosby Show/Fresh Prince Of Bel Air' reunion, but it made the cut after all and I found that I did enjoy it.

Belle returned to her hometown to find inspiration for a biscuit jingle and assist with writing a song to celebrate the towns 50th Christmas celebration. When she got there she found that she would be paired up with her ex boyfriend and as the story progressed, each had to thaw out to let the other one back in. It was incredibly clear what would happen to upset things once they had started to become friends again, but it was done in a way that flowed sensibly at least. And there were no "What? Why would they do that?" moments where I would have to scream at the TV "Don't be an idiot" which I have repeatedly done this year for other films.

My criticisms would be that it was a bit short on extras for the tree lighting and it was a shame that at times it was incredibly obvious that the film was recorded in the height of summer.

Also some of the chronology was a bit off with them going out for the night, whilst others were still working, etc or the sun was out when it was supposed to be an early winter evening.

As a positive though it was nice that at least all of the singers could actually sing for a change. There's nothing worse than a film about an amazing singer and how great they are that turns out to be someone nice to look at, but with only a basic knowledge of what makes a tune or even worse they're ugly too.

Not my favourite of the films I've seen this year, but at least I didn't feel the need to turn it off at any point. Although it probably won't make it to my immediate rewatch list, I might come back to it again in my autumn days at the old folks home.

6.45/10.