Corporate fixer goes back to her home town to make peace with town folks opposed to the evil empire. Besides being derivative, the premise is forced as are many of the other plot points. It's especially forced when Erin's brainstorm idea magically changes everyone's attitude instantly. The story just doesn't make sense. Like many of the other Christmas movies, the protagonists quest their way to reaching their stated goal, but I really didn't care. I didn't care about the hotel, and I didn't care about the obvious building romance. It's all just more of the same thing within nothing new or special.
The acting is poor, especially those playing Erin's parents and other supporting characters. Sets seemed cheap and uninspired especially when you consider that the Windsor hotel chain is supposed to be ultra high end.
Moreover, so many details during the movie belied the idea that this was an upscale hotel trying to impress investors with high end tastes and values. It goes beyond the fact that the hometown atmosphere Erin was promoting isn't really compatible with those high end values. Christmas movies so often rely on DIY mentality and this movie does the same while creating the hotel infrastructure and getting it ready to open. That isn't high end.
Logistical details in the climax are clumsy and forced. So much in the movie was as if the writers never bothered to learn anything at all about their subjects. Also, I couldn't get over how consistently Erin exhibited childish and unprofessional behavior in the face of her boss.
In a Christmas romance, there is always the question of chemistry between the leads. Good chemistry often goes a long way toward compensating for faults in the story.I don't think these leads had enough screen time developing chemistry, at least I didn't see it.
As the movie builds toward climax, the plot followed the exact same patterns as so many other Christmas movies. There was nothing new. Nothing special. The viewer could almost predict each and every plot progression as it happened. I make much of the derivative, unoriginal, and clumsy plot. I realize that with only a few refreshing exceptions, most of the Christmas movies are going to be that way. But in this case it is a matter of degree. This movie seemed to me that it was extreme in that regard.
