A Christmas Break

It was nice to see what Cindy Sampson could do with a competent director. She struggled in the only other vehicle I've seen her in, A Christmas Crush. Her male lead was very appealing though miscast as a Hollywood Lothario.

I enjoyed the script which had misunderstandings cleared up with adult conversation in a timely manner and wise decisions made regarding career moves.

A Christmas Break was okay but way too predictable, an element that ruined the few good qualities of the movie. Sure, this is a TV movie and one should not really set the bar too high, but this one chose to deal with too many plotlines and left them a bit halfbaked in the end. Good performances though.

I've been on a mission this lockdown holiday season to watch a lot of holiday movies. I did not look forward to this one because I had seen the lead bomb in an earlier movie. Also, I'm reaching the burned-out point of the holiday movie season. Despite all that, I kind of like it.

The plot is pretty typical. Hollywood star, Dylan, slums in his home town. This time he's there to save his old school. The school is going to be closed and the principal is trying to save it. A real witch of a starlet is doing everything she can to hurt Dylan and even shows up in town. There's a potential film far away hanging on Dylan's radar. There's even a snowball fight which is actually done in a clever way.

Despite too much of the familiar, there is a bit of a different feel to it. There's some funny moments and some romantic ones. Cindy Sampson and Steve Byers have decent chemistry. It is a little odd how quickly Addison goes from wanting to totally avoid Dylan to spending every free moment just hanging with him, but that's how these movies work.

The movie was average but shockingly good performance from Stefan Brogren. That guy should be in more movies! I know he is from Degrassi fame but I had to IMDB the movie to figure that out.

The subplots are the pillars for this very fragile project . Sure, Christmas, love , the years passing , the teacher and the actor and a noble cause. But it works in decent manner, against predictibility and acting.