Christmas on the Vine

One more reason why no one knows what eastern Washington is like... North of Bellingham is not in the Columbia River valley

Brooke (Julianna Guill) goes back to her hometown on a job. She's rebranding a small struggling family-run winery. Tyler (Jon Cor) is the son of the owner and two school years ahead of her. She remembers him but he's not sure. Carla Kilgore (Meredith Baxter) is their powerful competitor who is looking to buy up all the businesses.

It's Lifetime Television doing Christmas. This genre is dominated by Hallmark. This is no better or worst. It's all pretty much the same level of background TV. You put it on in the background while you do other stuff. The one outstanding aspect is the snowy outdoor locations. It looks wintery and Christmasy. It's mostly fine.

Yeh... This was just too by the book for me. Too many cliche set pieces: flirty sledding, flirty snowball fight, save the small family business from the big meanies, cookie baking, wreath making, and the Christmas festival (which also had to be saved). The only good things were Juliana Guill and the quality of the production values. I didn't like the male lead and didn't think he had good chemistry with Juliana. Plus he was stupid. The end came out of no where and was too abrupt.

This is another save-the-family-______(winery) plot and a consultant is sent to help. An evil big corporation is swallowing up all the land in the area. There are no real highs or lows or big surprises. The climatic conflict was created in a little bit of a surprising way. I thought it was out of character, but maybe understandable. The very end is abrupt with a change of heart coming on what seemed like a whim.

For me the enjoyment was the cheerful Julianna Guill. She and Jon Cor had good chemistry, but I think that was thanks mostly to Guill. The movie gives the leads plenty of screen time together. Guill seems to be in practically every scene and a lot of them with Cor. I wasn't as impressed with Cor's acting. All the supporting actors turned in decent performances.

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.