Natal no Vinhedo

See above his hair was so distracting the hair dresser for the movie should be fired

I enjoyed this Christmas movie. It has been one of the better ones thus far. The Christmas on a vineyard worked well, at least, it did for me. The story was fun and delightful, and the script was decent as well. I thought Julianna Guill had a really good performance. Her performance has this sort of Christmas, happy vibe about it. It was hard not to like her character. The chemistry between her and Jon Cor as Tyler was just about right, I think. The supporting cast was strong. I especially enjoyed Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez's cute performance as Michael. The scenery, props and sets were well polished. It was well done. The movie too instils a bit of Christmas spirit with some fun and cute scenes (e.g., the shooting of the commercial - sonata and the elf) and warm scenes (e.g., the play at the school). Overall, it is a nice little addition to Lifetime's original Christmas movie lineup this year. It is worth a watch.

The marketing exec is delightful and fun throughout, really trying her best to save a small business in her home town. Male lead has hair that looks like the only styling was dunking him in water. Writing was bad. Why hire a marketing firm to bring in business if you're uninterested in change? He kind of hated all her ideas until she convinced him that they were worth a shot. The love aspect was very forced and honestly I didn't like it. The movie itself is super formulaic and follows exactly the template you'd expect it to, which is for better or for worse depending on what you're looking for.

This holiday movie was fun to watch from the winery point of view. There is always some enchantment in films about that exotic life that is so unknown to most viewers. However, aside from the fairly predictable plot and the charm of seeing how wine country life is not all that easy and glamorous, this film left a great deal to be desired. Julianna Guill is a really talented actress, with a welcome range of emotions, with great energy for her character, and with a sadly empty script to work with. She does her best in this film. Meredith Baxter is always a welcome joy in any movie. But oh, my goodness, the leading man was so hard to like! He was portrayed as an angry, reluctant headstrong fellow. One wonders how the leading lady could find him appealing and lovable. The quickly resolved ending seemed to come out of nowhere and made very little sense. But most distracting throughout was Jon Cor's hair. Was there no hairdresser on the set to comb his hair back out of his forehead? He is a handsome man and a competent actor. But one wonders why he was presented in such an unattractive manner, one that kept interfering with the viewer's wish to find him likable and appealing. His appearance took a great deal of attention away from the enjoyment of this film.

This movie rigidly checks all the Christmas Movie (must have) boxes one after the other but on the strength of Julianna Guill's performance alone, it's still enjoyable. Jon Cor's performance here was good, and the two leads do have believable chemistry, but due to the writing, you just feel like smackin the male lead most of the time. Perhaps Cor's hair styling was done intentionally to distract from how badly his part was written (moley, moley, moley). The ending had a couple of WTH? moments in it leading to an inexplicable happy ending and achieves the (feel-good) conclusion, even if you don't actually understand it.