Christmas on the Menu

This movie uses the common trope of a B&B hosting reviewers which will affect their business. Throw in a little of the evil editor who changes the original reviews and add that it's not just the B&B but the owner's daughter's desserts that are getting reviewed. The conflict was created in a slightly unusual way but the surprise was dampened a little bit because you could see it coming from several scenes earlier. There are a lot of technical details about cooking sprinkled through the movie. There aren't that many of the traditional Christmas activities that are so formulaic in other Christmas movies.

I thought most of the actors were consciously "delivering" their lines as opposed to dialogue happening naturally and the dialogue wasn't that great. Kim Shaw overdid Josie's early anger for Tanner. Just watching the story and not inferring from external clues, for a while it was a tossup which guy, Tanner or Nolan, would get the girl. Both were good choices with no apparent flaws. But Jesse Kove had no chemistry with Shaw. Clayton James had some chemistry with Shaw but it wasn't sparkling. So much screen time revolved around the cooking that it diluted James and Shaw's chances to sell the romance.

Shanica Knowles does a song performance with some sultry moves. I wasn't impressed with her voice, but that's just me.

This is a watchable movie despite slightly below average acting . The story has some common elements with a couple of things out of the ordinary for Christmas movies.

For the person who put their review title as SMH you might want to get your facts straight. You said Cynthia Gibb who plays Kim Shaws mother in this movie is only 11 years older than Kim Shaw, you are 100% wrong, they are 21 years apart in age. Did you even bother to google their ages before you made that incorrect comment? Cynthia Gibb was born in 1963 and Kim Shaw was born in 84. Cynthia just turned 57 on December 14th and Kim is 36. That is not an 11 year difference. Thats 21. You might want to relearn how to do math. So yes. Their age difference is perfectly normal for mother daughter as ALOT of people have children at 21. It just baffles me people that don't take time to actually fact check facts they think are accurate.

I agree with other reviewers here. The acting in this one was pretty good, especially the leads. However, my daughter had to keep throwing popcorn at me to keep me awake. So, acting aside, it was quite a snooze-worthy.

Maybe it's just me...or maybe I missed a scene, but it took me over a hour to figure out Josie and Nolan previously dated. I didn't know who this dude was for most of the movie.

Kim Shaw, Cynthia Gibb and Clayton James do a good job with what they were given. The rest of the cast did a good job as well, but do to the writing (or lack of), they just seemed to drift through the story. There are no interesting subplots, and the story is very surfaced and one dimensional, so some characters just seemed to have no reason for being there and it showed. The characters lack of purpose leads to a lot of empty, pretentious dialogue which leaves you searching for the fast forward button.