A Royal Christmas on Ice

It was nice to hear about, and finally watch, what Fred Olen Ray was filming in our village (East Aurora, NY). Sticking to a tried-and-true formula of "Prince Comes to America and Falls In Love", including bits of area footage of his earlier film "A Price For Christmas", Ray and his team put together a good cast and a comfortable story, with characters worth caring about, on a fledgling network that appears to be accumulating Hallmark talent and movies, which is just fine with me - it's nice to find movies that are worth watching more than once. As far as Hallmark is concerned, they seem to be going into more contemporary stories, whereas the Great American Family channel seems to be more interested in traditional programming; both have their place.

This movie was the worst Christmas movie that I've seen in awhile. Abigail, the lead female, was immature and downright unlikeable. I saw her smile twice I think. She's mad at the world, miserable with her life and blaming everyone else for her own mistakes and choices. It isn't believable that any man with self worth would pursue her.

The baker character is cute, and the friend that tried to call her out for being rude but wasn't near harsh enough. By the end, I was hoping it turned into a murder mystery.

The town was cute. Baldwin was a nice surprise. The story had potential. It just couldn't overcome that character.

After last week bragging on GAF for stepping up their game this year, we come to this.

Weak dialogue, weak acting, and a contrived and unconvincing story line had us deciding to abandon this film sometime during the Christmas party scene.

Seriously, how long can you milk the angst from a dropped bakery cake? According to these writers, for a VERY long time. There was a bit of self-awareness when the female lead's friend asked her why she was so hostile to the guy (who by the way, SHE bumped into in the action, not the other way around as they continually stated in dialogue) when what happened was an accident and he went well out of his way to make it right.

Exactly.

Dialogue with the ubiquitous 'old boyfriend' was weak and unconvincing. Dialogue back with the male lead's royal family was awkward and glacial in pace.

We could finally take no more, despite the fact we're ice skating fans and were drawn by the premise.

Does "family entertainment" mean it was written by a 10 year old. Perhaps it was written for a younger audience because it lacks the sophistication I would expect for a movie aimed at the usual Christmas romance crowd.

The script is bad. The dialogue is filled with inanities and lacks any sparkle. The acting is mediocre, although Anna Marie Dobbins' Abigail does have some screen appeal. The story is simplistic. I was glad to see that Prince John was not an imminent heir to the throne so a romance with Abigail was not as impossible as is often the case in Royal movies. I understand time compression in movies, but it does make me cringe a little when characters "fall in love" so quickly.

There is some figure skating but the camera work is clumsy with frequent changing angles and closeups that are too close up.

This is not one to watch again.

The acting was terrible, overall the whole movie was terrible. Hours on my life wasted.

Abby smiled one in the whole movie even when she was supposed to be "happy" she was completely miserable and always found something to complain about, hate and even hold grudges on. Chad was a meaning less character that holds no importance in this movie.

Abby was supposed to be an Olympic figure skater, all she could do was stand on the ice an jester her hand to the people, wait that's not true she also don a slow little curve on the ice and John claimed she was the best skater ever. Even at the end John was supposed to skate with Abby and he never did. They just stood there.

This was one on the worst movies I have ever watched.