Christmas in Toyland

Loved the premise. Loved me some Jesse.

But: Many of the actors spoke too quickly, inaudible to more "senior" ears--and even the close captioning could not keep up (with typos to boot!).

7.5 stars.

Within the first 15 minutes we get a taste of two very charming and lovable leads. They do take a bit more time to warm up to each other. He is skeptical of her, because she is a corporate lackey, and a nerdy number cruncher. He soon learns she is a total sweetheart with an honest heart.

As time progresses, we really like Charlie and Grant. She is a data analyst whom he so nimbly disarms and molds into a person who can take risks and follow her dreams. She takes a small step into his world, and it's a strangely cynical place. He's almost lost in an age that no longer exists, where the spirit of Christmas, joy, peace, and goodness flourish. He wrestles with a dichotomy, balancing between reality and some place where he is able to take his ideals with him, because that's the world he has crafted for himself. And yet, he is simply a toy store manager. You will see what I mean, if you will just take the time to watch this.

No, this is not a fairy tale, but when he is helping kids, and selling toys to their families, he transports them to a magical place where his optimism is larger than life.

I was enraptured by this film, not totally sure why. It has an ambience of good tidings, and possibilities. The acting was wonderful, shared equally amongst all of the cast. Each of them brought a unique and fresh perspective. And I will say again, the acting was on a higher level than most Hallmark films. I don't know, maybe I was drinking the cool-aid today. You tell me. Watch it, rate it, disagree, whatever.

Please don't miss this movie based on the current average of 6.4. I truly hope the rating increases, and so next time I read my review, I expect to see at least a 6.8. Farewell my fellow Hallmarkians.

If you've watched as many of this kind of movie as I have, so many things are familiar. This story has a lot of those plot lines, but there are tiny surprises here and there in how they are delivered.

You also get to know the most prolific actors. Jesse Hutch I know and he's not my favorite, but I can't knock him too much either. Vanessa Lengies - I didn't realize how well I knew her. She hasn't impressed me in the past.

So it was a surprise to me how much I got into this movie. Vanessa Lengies played a Charlie that I was really rooting for. Her chemistry with Hutch was quite good. I wanted to watch them together endlessly. There were a lot of good lines that helped and the actors' timing was good. Usually a kid like Emma adds a great touch, but in this case they didn't take advantage of that angle as much as they could have.

Another review commented on how fast lines were delivered too quickly and I noticed that once or twice.

Something happens at the end of the party at 1 hour 36 minutes (commercial runtime) which makes absolutely no sense, but then it was necessary for the story to progress the way it did.

I liked the pairing of. Grant (Jesse Hutch) and Charlie (Vanessa Lengies) They had good chemistry. But the little girl Emma and her mom (Grant's sister) talked way to fast, couldn't understand a thing they said. That was very irritating.

Christmas In Toyland (2022) -

Where can I get some muscles like Jesse Hutch's? What a beautiful man. And those thighs!

However, as much as I love him in general, as Grant in this film he was a bit of a knob and quite a way up his own arse. I didn't think that it was his best character at all.

Initially I struggled to see how Vanessa Lengies in the role of Charlie could fall for his grumpy behaviour at all.

Apart from the fact that I would have been instantly attracted to him physically, I would probably have kept him at arms length from then on, because he had been so brusque and quite rude. I'd have left as soon as possible, thought about him just before going to sleep and then let the bosses close his ass down.

Fortunately, as the film progressed, he showed a nicer side and she gave him enough of a chance to make the romance more believable and I liked them together in the end.

However, I have always found it difficult to watch these shop based films, because having done my time in retail and hospitality for far too many years, I know how things actually work and it's never how they're shown in these films.

If a store did well, there would be a head office person there regularly in the same way that they would visit the worst shops too, but all of them would be expected to follow a rigid policy and a set of standard procedures, free thinking and outside of the box working practices were a big no no and frowned upon. The manager would also be expected to know their statistical position versus the other branches, how much they've taken daily, weekly and monthly (which would automatically be calculated by the tills) and no matter how much they thought that the kid's experience was the most important thing, following that policy, Etc would be how they would be judged and may have meant them losing their jobs if it wasn't followed. I don't care how well Jesse's branch was doing, they would never have let him run his shop that way.

Also, it didn't even look like a proper shop, it looked like an abandoned store that they had tried to make in to something resembling a toy shop with some quickly thrown together shelving and they failed.

Of course there were elements of his approach that I agreed with and personally I could never get the bosses to listen to me, as a bit of a maverick myself, but it's hard to make a difference in the world today. My toy shop would be more like 'Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium' (2007) and I wouldn't have any bosses to answer to.

I think that the errors in the running of the shop skewed my view of things quite a lot, because I would usually let Mr. Hutch get away with anything and actually I've really appreciated the growth that Vanessa has shown since her stint on 'Glee' (2009-15), but it was clear that the writers had never even worked in retail at all, let alone at Christmas, which took the shine from what they were trying to achieve.

Perhaps if she had been asked to review an independent shop that had managed to stay afloat despite their big generic toy shop opening in the same town, it would have worked as a better storyline, to see the difference that a personal and more thoughtful service can make.

It only scored so high, because red is Jesse's colour and those trousers fit very nicely.

6.25/10.