Trading Christmas

LOVED this film....ESPECIALLY loved characters played by Faith Ford and Gabrielle Miller....perfect film for the holiday season! Myself, my mom and sister really enjoyed it. A real feel good film, it made you want to bake cookies and decorate your Christmas tree! And the cast excelled with solid performances...hoping this is going to become a holiday tradition, like watching A Christmas Story or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer! In this day and age, it's refreshing to watch a film of this quality. Nudity, drugs, sex, and violence do not always have to be included in a film for it to be successful. OR, touch a heart....and Trading Christmas DELIVERS! Kudos, cast, crew, and Hallmark! :)

This movie was pretty good. I love Hallmark Christmas movies, and I love Debbie Macomber's books. It is a good holiday movie, and I loved it. However I believe that the portrayal of Faith and Charles was much better than that of Ray and Emily's. It was a very good family movie with a cute and entertaining plot. My sister and mother and I watched it. We all enjoyed it, but we all agreed about the problem with Ray and Emily. Sometimes Hallmark movies seem the same, but this one is different and has a nice plot. This makes you want to settle down with a batch of cookies under a blanket and a mug of hot cocoa while you watch it.

BEWARE OF FALSE REVIEWS & REVIEWERS. SOME REVIEWERS HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW TO THEIR NAME. NOW WHEN ITS A POSITIVE REVIEW THAT TELLS ME THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE MOVIE. IF ITS A NEGATIVE REVIEW THEN THEY MIGHT HAVE A GRUDGE AGAINST THE FILM . NOW I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 200 HOLIDAY FILMS. I HAVE NO AGENDA. I AM HONEST

In this film Emily is disappointed her daughter Heather won't make the cross-country trip from Harvard to visit at Christmas. Emily decides to surprise Heather and trades houses with Charles Brewster, a college professor who lives in Boston. Emily is the one who is surprised when she finds out her daughter left for Florida with her boyfriend and has only Charles' brother for company. In this holiday tale about twists of fate, Emily and Charles find love at the most unexpected time and have the best Christmas season ever.

This is a very enjoyable film. I love the fact that in reality there wasn't a nasty person in the cast. It was nice to see a "CHRISTMAS THEME" film that wasn't a variation of "A Christmas Carol". The casting for the most part is great and the various story-lines are 60% plausible. I thought it was interesting to have various locations and climates to show how "Christmas" is celebrated in different parts of the country. (More should have been done with that angle)

It is nice to see a film where you do like everyone in it and you are rooting for love for everyone.

It is nice to see a FAMILY SAFE FILM that isn't a cartoon.

I really liked this film. Yes, it was almost a complete copy of "The Holiday" but without the budget or the A-list stars, but it was a good re-telling of that story. The characters were easy to associate with and they were all nice people in their own way. Nobody was irredeemable.

I personally adore Tom Cavanagh, his delivery was just so fun and I could empathise with his characters need to be alone and peaceful to write. Gil Bellows came off a bit creepy, but still a nice guy and all of the leading ladies were very good too.

There wasn't a huge seasonal vibe with regards to the content to fill it, but the story brought a joy and romance that was festive. There was a tree decorating or two, but it wasn't over the top.

They have got to stop using Dead Christmas Trees though. The one in this should have been on the kerb at least a month before they made this film. It's a big peeve of mine when props and the other little details are not thought about properly, especially when everything else was quite well done.

In theory it wasn't the standard formula that most of these TV films use, which in itself as a good thing, but it was also just well put together and is definitely one that I could watch yearly.

Though I do recall seeing this many years ago, I found this more engaging second time around, perhaps not noting its merits on first viewing.

Here we have a clever plot with three strands, which sees two disparate couples finding romance unexpectedly after last-minute change of Christmas plans in the USA - where the characters are all based in different states.

The main plot has the romance, the subplot has the comedy and the third plot involves Emily's daughter, who's a bit annoying but whose own romance proves to be a useful distraction from the romance and the comedy of the two main romantic stories.

The two romantic leads have superb chemistry - I wondered if anything developed off-set? A nice factor here is that these two characters contrast strongly and live completely different lives which may explain the added frisson to their unexpected romance.

Apparently this is based on the same story that was used for the A-list screenplay 'The Holiday' with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. I've seen that and I can assure you this TV film is vastly superior, in that it is far more engaging than that big budget Hollywood movie.

The romance is right, the comedy is right - it works, and rookie romcom writers would do well to keep this one as a standard to aim for.

Though made in 2011 (TV films seem to have a shorter shelf life than theater movies) this will play on some channel a few times each yuletide.