If anything, it's the equivalent of a ring that has patches of beauty but has too many patches of ugliness. That is not being said with no malice, despite not being taken by the premise part of me did want to like this. Most of 2020's Christmas output (whether Hallmark, Lifetime or other) was a very mixed one, with no film that was exceptional but very few were also terrible. Most ranged between mediocre and decent, but there were some that fell into the extremes of good and bad.
'A Ring for Christmas' is one of the 2020 Christmas films that fell into the bad extreme. It has a few good things, though they were more just above moderate good things rather than massive, but they are vastly outweighed by the bad things. And sadly the worst of the bad things are executed absolutely awfully. Other than the production values not being too bad all things considered and a couple of decent performances, 'A Ring for Christmas' was pretty difficult to sit through.
The good things shall be mentioned first. The best thing about it is the performance of Dean Geyer, who is very amiable as the one interesting and rootable character in the entire film. Despite being criminally underused, Michael Gross does make much of little and made me smile.
Production values show some degree of professionalism and don't look cheap. Parts of the music were pleasant.
When it comes to the praise, that is pretty much it. The rest of the acting is awful. On one extreme, we have Kate McGarrigle overacting to an embarrassing degree, this kind of scenery chewing wouldn't pass for guilty pleasure fun but merely annoying. On the other extreme, we have Liliana Tandon completely cold and bland lead performance that has so little emotion or committment. There is no chemistry between the actors, what there was felt made up on the spot, and Gabe is the only character that is worth caring for. Everybody else bored and irritated me and Gross is not in it enough to compensate, despite him being pretty good.
In regard to the central relationship, that was on the practically endangered species side. Tandon and Geyer are so disconnected from each other and the relationship itself in the writing goes nowhere for most of the time until rushing it through in the contrived and too pat final quarter. The script throughout is truly awkward and very stilted in a verbose way. Almost like a hastily written first draft not checked through. The story never grabbed me with a very dull first half, which felt slow, over-stretched and uneventful. When it picks up marginally too late, it's very contrived and the whole film has no warmth or charm, no nothing. The direction is routine at best and is often disorganised and hesitant.
Bottom line, not good at all. 3/10.
