My Dad's Christmas Date

There's huge potential in Jeremy Piven, anyone can see that after watching Entourage. The story and the directing was OK, the acting was excellent, but the atmosphere was totally ruined by the poor selection of soundtrack. The songs should have supported the acting but they simply didn't match the scenes and the feelings, at all.

It started off ok. Accurate father-daughter bickering etc. Decent character development. But then it slowly crumbled into a snooze fest that then turned into harsh daddy-daughter clashes and finally, sort of quickly, to a jerk fest with the dad being a jerk to his daughter and a particular jerk to a woman he knew from his past, for no good reason. He lost his wife two years before which does allow for some poor behavior but this movie seemed to be a weird place to flesh it out. Not a Christmas movie at all. It's a movie that takes place around Christmas.

I must say, I really enjoyed this film. It had a lot of things going for it. The story and script were strong. I had a bit of an emotional roller-coaster with this one. The first 30 minutes or so were quite funny. I found myself laughing out loud several times (e.g., when the daughter was setting on the online dating profiles for her dad; the Aunt's Christmas party; the dates the unknowing father went on). The dialogue between the father (played by Jeremy Piven) and the daughter (played by Olivia-Mai Barrett) was witty and insightful into the father-daughter relationship, I thought. The character development of David and Jules was also pretty good for a Christmas film. The acting was great. Piven had a good performance, quite believable in his role as a father. Barrett was very good too. I have never seen her on-screen before; she impressed me with her performance here. The dialogue and relationship between the two worked on screen, well, it did for me, at least. The supporting cast performed well. The music was very good; some great music selection in this film. The scenery, props and sets were well done. You got to love York at Christmas. It is such a cozy and pretty city, a nice filming location. Overall, this Christmas film is a great. I highly recommend it.

Going into this viewing I sort of expected a Hallmark type of story, light and breezy where single man and single woman meet. But it is far from that, it is an examination of the difficulty overcoming a sudden loss.

Jeremy Piven is dad, David, an American working in York, England as an attorney. His daughter is high school student Olivia-Mai Barrett as Jules. They have a good father-daughter relationship but since losing mom two years earlier in an auto accident each of them has difficulty adjusting to life without her.

Jules is not doing so well in school, there is some tension in the household, but she still has a soft spot for dad's loneliness and in a misguided attempt to fix him up for Christmas establishes several "dating" accounts for him. Then she picks a boyfriend who she later finds cheats on everyone.

Some of the scenes are difficult because of the friction between dad and daughter but overall it is a good story of how they work to come to grips with life after mom. A worthwhile 90-minute movie.

My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library. We visited York, the walled city, some years back and it brought back good memories to see scenes there.

This movie has some really funny parts, Jeremy Piven is funny and has good chemistry with his daughter played by Olivia-Mai Barrett, it's both strained and loving at the same time (which couldn't be more real). If however, due to the title, you begin watching it expecting a Christmas movie or Rom-Com (as I did), you're very likely to be disappointed. This is a Drama/Comedy, so if you're in the Christmas movie mood this isn't the one, perhaps that's why it's rating has dropped lower than what is deserves, for what it is. It's worth watching when you''re in the mood for a funny Drama.