Once Upon a Main Street

What happens when two tenacious entrepreneurs contend for the purchase of a building to start their own separate business? Well the spirit of Christmas gets hopelessly entangled and you know what that means - love wins out.

This is such a wonderfully pleasant movie by virtue of both main characters charm and sense of light hearted fun. And special praiseworthy mention of how Vanessa Lachey has a captivating glow about her which was impossible to ignore.

A delightfully entertaining flick which will leave you with a smile on your face.

This movie is the equivalent of being forced to watch your neighbors, constantly squabbling children on your day off.

The acting is good, but then again, anyone can act like a spoiled 8yr old. By the time the leads inevitably get together, you really couldn't care less.

Vanessa Lachey is feisty and charming as always and was a good match for Ryan McPartin. They both played pretty irritating characters at the beginning, but once they started to work together this was an amusing and romantic story which was actually quite touching at the end. They had one bad misunderstanding near the end which threatened to blow up all their hard-won progress. But lo and behold, they resolved it immediately with frank communication and a humble confession. Incredible. It was good to see Polly Draper again. She played a scary-crazy potter which added some tension and suspense. I wish she would be in more things. So far the beautiful Vanessa Lachey has proven adept at comedy and I have enjoyed her vehicles. Except one, but that wasn't her fault. I hope to see her star in more TV movies.

This movie is okay, I suppose. Ryan McPartlin is partly why I gave it 4 stars and not less. I cannot stand Vanessa Lachey's character, it makes the movie difficult to watch. She plays such a condescending little turd in this. Anyway, I usually like most of the cheesy Lifetime Christmas movies, and this one is the typical "bitter to sweet" holiday movie. It would be better with a different female lead or maybe she didn't act like a total jackass the entire movie, it would be easier to watch. I feel bad for people that have to deal with other people that act like this in real life. I know I'd never be able to be around someone like that.

The arrogance of both Amelia and Vic was so strong that I could barely stand the first part of the movie. If I encountered either of these people acting like this, I would do anything to avoid them. One quarter of the movie led up to clumsily contrived premise - the two rivals being thrown together to organize the decoration of Main Street for the purpose of impressing Elder. And the ugly arguing continued well after that goal was established.

Was it funny? I actually laughed a few times when I wasn't cringing over all the meanness.

Then we meet the towns people. More arguing, arrogance and judgmentalism. We're about half way through the movie, and except for a few laughs inspired mostly by physical comedy, everything about it is a downer.

In most of these movies, all the animosity between the leads disappears suddenly and this movie is no exception. It's too bad they extended the negative so long. Finally, Vanessa Lachey and Ryan McPartlin can start to develop chemistry and they quickly do.

The story follows the usual lines and is predictable. The viewer can see the things that are coming as soon as they are set up. Even so I still needed some kleenex for at least one development. The conflict was predictable too, but a bit unusual as a plot device.

This was like two different movies envisioned by different people. I could easily FF through most of the first half, but the second half is worth the wait.