A Golden Christmas 3

First of all, this is not about a Naval Officer. The man is a PO2, or Petty Officer Second Class. and he is also not as he claimed, a Navagation Specialist. He is a Operations Specialist. 2nd Class. OS2. Just had to get that part correct.

Goldens here, Goldens there, Goldens everywhere.

This is a family friendly film with obvious appeal to young ages.

The story was all over the place. There is very little tension beyond the pending move to NYC by the leading lady. There are no real surprises. There's very little in the movie to do with Christmas.

There are too many musical montages. The very end of the movie is a nearly 8 minute roll interrupted by only two brief segments of conversation. Is that perhaps because the director didn't trust the actors? I wasn't impressed with any of the acting, but that could easily have been the dialogue which was bland and often didn't make sense. I was especially disappointed with Nikki Deloach who has since had many leading roles in movies like this, some of which included some great scenes having deep emotional content. In this movie, I thought she tried to hard.

The stalker ex-boyfriend is too annoying. It's troubling to see movies like this insert characters who do not understand that no is no and get away with it for far too long. After the last such scene, the ex goes off and trashes the leading lady with a superior attitude that something is wrong with her because she didn't worship him.

The movie description say (Naval Officer). This is incorrect. The young man rank is 2nd Class Petty Officer. I know they went after the younger age group, but this would have been a much better movie if it were about a retired Chief Petty Officer or actual naval officer.

They could have gone with the theme of a Officer and Gentleman from 30 years ago. That might have worked. I still think it would have worked much better if they had gone with a more mature age group since they made it about the US military.

Shalom

Not a bad story - but predictable-, decent performances and the right spices. a Hallmark Christmas story with well known steps and ingredients and end. special - the presence of Orson Bean and the reference to Christmas Carol by Dickens. and a fresh air about relationships. short, one of films remembering basic things who, in Christmas season, become real significant.

The high points in this one are solid, starting with the cast. With one exception, convincing performances all around. It's the best supporting cast I've seen in a Lifetime/Hallmark Christmas romance, from the female BFF to the older brother and the precocious tween niece.

There's plentiful good chemistry among them, with several laugh-aloud funny scenes.

The music was also above average, with extra points for skipping the most overused/annoying.

So far as shortcomings go, imo there are two biggies.

First, female lead Shantel VanSanten as Heather wasn't entirely awful, but pretty unconvincing at times. The writing is partly to blame-the character is so insubstantial I couldn't buy her as a director of any sort. She suffers by comparison to co-star Rob Mayes, who is head of the class among male actors in this genre.

Second, the plot was almost non-existent, even for a holiday romance. There were 4-count 'em 4!-montages, which is just lazy storytelling.

One side note: I accidentally DVRed the film twice due to the different titles; as 'Love for Christmas' on Lifetime and 'A Golden Christmas 3' on Ion. Ion sometimes listed it @ as LFC instead.

Under either title, the Ion version had an extra scene that was missing from the Lifetime version, and the 1st montage was roughly twice as long.