A Christmas Blessing

This is one of the better movies on the new Great American Family network and it is because of reliable stars. You may hate Lori Loughlin because of her scandal, but she carries off a certain vibe that works in this movie.

Mandy is selling the building which housed a kind of soup kitchen. Adam wants to wrap up his purchase quickly but agrees to give Mandy one last Christmas. (I never really understood his motive. I guess it was attraction to Mandy, but after 10 minutes?) Otto is a mysterious stranger.

Loughlin and Tupper have good chemistry but the relationship between Mandy and Adam never sizzles. Otto provides the mystery that gets revealed as the movie progresses, although never overtly.

A nice thing about the story is that Mandy is a hero, but far from perfect. She struggles a little to pull everything off. Perhaps it is appealing because she is a kind of hero that anyone could be. Or everyone.

This is a family friendly movie. I'm not sure how much it will appeal to children.

I had to FORCE myself to watch this movie.

Why? Because I'm still really angry at Lori Loughlin and her family. Rich people taking advantage of things designed to help poorer people, getting caught, not really paying for their crime, AND BARELY apologizing. Unfortunately, that seems to be the current "American Way".

But since I do try to watch ALL the Christmas movies, here we go:

As another reviewer mentioned, the script was pretty good, but the "mystery" was easily figured out within 5 minutes. Okay, standard Christmas fare, pardon the reference.

As for the acting, LL sleepwalked through the whole movie. Was she always this bad? I used to watch her occasionally in "Garage Sale Mysteries", but quit watching a while back, thinking the show itself was too boring? Maybe it WAS her (lack of) acting? Hard to say now, post-scandal.

The rest of the cast were great, featuring James Tupper and the always-great Jesse Hutch, having to carry LL like the sack of coal she appears to be.

6 stars for the movie and supporting cast, minus 100 stars for LL's lack of performance.

I enjoyed the movie. Did anyone else catch in the very beginning when her assistant wants her to take her on the trip Lucy's reply" I have a husband and kids" to which assistant replies "we can send post cards" yet in Milwaukee she is alone and can fall in love with someone else?

In any case it is a cute movie speaking to the spirit of Christmas. It is low key but effective. Easy to figure out the plot but definitely warms the heart.

I don't think it utilized the acting skills of the cast, but they worked well together. Some things like fixing the black ice patch would have been a good catch instead of it hanging around throughout the movie. I think Otto explained the reason the decorations were up year round is because Christmas was Susie's favorite holiday. I keep my Santa Clauses out all year as well as my nativity scene so I can imagine a foodbank keeping the decorations up all year as a reminder of why they are there in the first place.

The movie revolves around helping the poor and or those who are down on their luck during christmas.

One thing that is done differently in this movie is that quite a bit of time is spent showing how this is done. You can see personally where donations are coming from. How exactly the process occurs with volunteer work, picking up stuff, food and present preparation and distribution.

Movies hardly ever actually show stuff, for instance whenever one of these movies revolve around a farm , they never show how exactly the farm runs or how they do what they do. Its always maybe a 60 second cameo on farm workings, Maybe two 60 sec cameos max As far as the whole lori thing goes, she did her time and her husband is still in, my grandmother, who bred like a rabbit to my grandfather (7 kids), told me she did not fall in love with her husband until she was in her 50s, so Lori has missed out on her true bonding love years with her husband, who is still in. On a scale of 1-10 for felonies, Lori is a 1. So lets move on. I was glad she came back with GAF instead of Hallmark. My wife and I just let our Hall mark membership run out after seeing a couple Hallmark movies with guys exchanging tongue saliva.

This movie was well acted. The message was nice. The script was tight.

People need to get over themselves. Of all the things to be upset about people are choosing to be still upset about Lori Loughlin. Border wide open, Americans are funding 2 wars but what are people being upset about?: Lori Loughlin. 🤣🤣🤣Are you kidding me? Anyway, this movie was wonderful. Wonderful plot, wonderful script, & wonderful acting. I don't remember seeing James Tupper in anything but he is a good actor and had great chemistry with Lori. Jesse Hutch is one of my favorite "Hallmark" actors. I have not seen a bad movie of his yet. I think this one is his best yet. The reporter, Karen Holness, is so underrated and I think it is past time for her to be a lead in a movie. Well done GAC.