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.
