Serving Up the Holidays

I mean, for a simple holiday movie, it's great!

The scenery is beautiful with all the city scapes. And the storyline was perfect for this type of movie. The camera work and editing was clean. The acting was acceptable. I liked the main character. The chemistry between the main characters was pretty believable. I liked the focus on living in the moment and not all this heavy weight pulling down the easy breezy feeling of the show.

What do you expect in this genre? If you are feeling like like a simple, fun, RomCom with food, then this is your flick. If you want a complex drama, go somewhere else.

Why do Lifetime and Hallmark think we want to see characters like Scarlett? Arrogant, snobby, with a failing business, but we're supposed to root for the person who can't grasp that others are affected by her stubbornness and refusal to change? Enough. Not only is she a bland, off-putting character, but the story is weak. Even with Christmas movies being predictable 99% of the time, if a lead wasn't so ugh, we could let the plot slide. She's utterly awful.

Next, is the romance in the room with us? For some reason, Lifetime cannot do romance and they may have one believable Christmas romance a year. Usually those movies will involve actresses you've heard of like Tia Mowry-Hardrict, Tatyana Ali, and Jana Kramer. The budding romance between Scarlett and James (?) is not there at all. Her attitude is so poor, why would he be interested in her? Why are these personalities never a turn off? I also don't like how she treats her business parter and presumed best friend. As if her opinion on the restaurant doesn't matter. Honestly, this might have been better as A Christmas Carol story or something similar where she actually has to experience and reflect on the consequences of her actions.

I know it's a 3 yr old movie but I hadn't seen it before today. It'll be the first and last time.

Did the use a chef as a consultant on this movie, it's hard to believe, the good is ludicrous. The sugary food and sickly plot may give you diabetes. It's all standard stuff, from the cute meet to the blossoming romance and irrelevant sub plots but it will put you in a Christmassy mood if you aren't overly worried about realism.

Mediocre main actors, awfully fake/bad supporting actors. The movie has painfully long and shallow conversations continuously, from one conversation we are jumping into another one in the 90% of the movie. The only positive side is that sometimes there are short clips of a nice winter scenery between them. Anyway these conversations are so boring that you would want to hit your head to the wall instead of watching the movie. Or write an honest review to imdb during the movie like what I'm doing right now and eagerly wait for the end credits. I've seen some bad Christmas themed movies but this is by far the most boring and annoying one that I've ever seen.

I wish I had read these reviews before I watched this movie. I wasted 2 hours of my life that I can't get back. (And now I have to waste more of my time to come up with 600 characters to post)!!!

The female lead is SO bad and thinks she's right about everything. She is not a pleasant character, has an arrogance about her and thinks she's better than everyone else. And her friend/business partner is just as bad, in other ways - like being bossy and pushy.

The male lead wasn't much better. He too was a know-it-all, but he was also boring. No charm there.

The other characters were just there in the background - not much talking or acting.