Flipping for Christmas

So after watching this movie twice I have to say I still don't get it. There's no reason for the leads to like each other. There's no reason for the lead to even be there. The premise of the movie is missing. The sound track didn't always go with the dialog. Why does the female lead fall in love or even like her romantic interest? He is never nice to her. The story needed more. Why does a complete outsider have so much invested in a place she has nothing in the game? This review is all over the place because the movie is all over the place. I can't say it was time well spent to watch it twice so maybe this is a movie you can miss.

I like both Ashley Newbrough (from Privileged fame) and Marcus Rosner. They look really great together and for the romantics is some flirty banter in this flipping Hallmark holiday romance...but I think the overall story might suffer from bad editing? Either that or there were issues with the writing.

I am going to attempt to summarize the story... Abagail's sister Claire and her husband inherit a house and talk her in to fixing it and flipping it (which is her profession). What they don't tell her is that they are only part owners and the other owner doesn't want to sell...he wants to fix it up into a bed and breakfast AND they want Abagail to convince Bo to sell?!?! (I still don't understand why that would be her job or even something they would ask her to do.) Bo is a pillar of the community, which is part of why he wants to turn the house into a B&B...to honor the previous owner. Meanwhile, Abagail has some big time developer that she is working with who gets wind of an available parcel of land that he purchases for development from the mayor...which will change the whole town? Then Abagail realizes that she messed up and figures out a way to prevent it...and keep the house as a B&B...which will bring in some money for her sister's family and help get her sister's house expanded by Bo doing some of the work so her mom doesn't have to live in the garage.

This story was choppy and a bit convoluted...with some things that didn't make sense. As previously mentioned, there was some fun flirty banter...they did look cute together and I can see them eventually having a great small town relationship (I don't know what Abagail will do for a living in their town? Maybe run the B&B with Bo?), but there are definitely better romances and better stories out there.

Did I mention that I love the house? I am so glad it is not being modernized. They do not make houses like that anymore and it would have been a shame to destroy it.

The characters were holding hot dogs at one point, then all of a sudden they had their hot dog-holding hands down by their sides and they stopped eating the hot dogs. In the next scene the couple are at the tree farm and the male lead is carrying an open wood tool box, but it looks like nothing is inside. When they reach the tree that is holding the ornaments, suddenly there are small discs of wood in the box and the character is pouring them out of the box into another receptacle. You really notice how little W cares about the plot, cast and continuity when you pay closer attention. My husband and I had a lot of fun looking for all the inaccuracies. It made up for the film having no plot. Which is what we expected: no plot. Merry Flipping Christmas!

Don't let the title mislead you on this one. If you like Hallmark movies to witness a developing romance, you may enjoy this. It's really a traditional "opposites-attract", and, fortunately, they cast (and focused on) two Hallmark veterans, Ashley Newbrough (Abigail) and Marcus Rosner (Bo), both very attractive, onscreen. Marcus Rosner has earned a good reputation as an antagonist, and plays it well against Ashley's character, Abigail. She is a career-driven, big-city woman, and Bo, is a small-town craftsman, still reeling from a divorce from a young romance, making him a little disdained with the assertive Abigail. They clash over a house, that Bo partially owns and has an emotional attachment to, because his recently deceased guardian, Frank, had lived there for years. Abigail wants to rennovate it, only to "flip" for profit. They compromise, and decide to improve the home to decide the outcome, later. There may have needed to be some "filler" time, here, as a few script-free scenes were playful banter between Bo and Abigail, a paint and snowball fight. But, considering that Bo hadn't restarted mingling, and married too young, it isn't shocking he would "break the ice" (no pun intended) this way. Their relationship starts to warm as Abigail begins to admire Bo's heart - she sees his creativity (and taste) in finishing the home decor, without her opinion (hand-crafted), and his unselfish soul - he donates his time and talents to the community. Her heart begins to open and she empathizes for the town, when she realizes she inadvertently enabled her entrepreneur connections to develop the town. By movie's end, there relationship has believably evolved into a blooming romance. This is why I'd rate this a 6-star. In many of this season's releases, "Never Been Chris'd and "The Santa Summit", ie., there's no screentime devoted to evolve the characters beyond attraction. Your left being apathetic about the characters. I could easily have bumped my rating to a seven-star, but the screenplay, (ie. Background musical score), and most of the supporting-cast, was overly enthusiastic, which made the early scenes somewhat corny...

I want to say worst premise ever, but I'm sure there are worse. But why is the professional designer assigned the task of convincing the co-owner to sell? And Abby, whose job depends on pleasing customers does practically everything possible to annoy Bo. Bo isn't much better, maybe worse. At first he is totally rude for no reason to Abby, the stranger. Later he basically assaults her with paint based on no previous relationship to justify it as a fun prank. As the movie goes on, it is incredible how poorly she treats clients and potential clients. Does anyone listen to what others are saying ... to them?

The dialogue is either sparkling and funny, or terrible. Actually there are a lot of good moments with it. I lean towards the latter, but I'm sure it will appeal to many.

Apparently this is grade school because Abby and Bo first have a spontaneous paint fight and then a couple scenes later a spontaneous snowball fight. This seems to be how they build the romantic relationship. Abby giggles as her clothes get spattered. These two are complete opposites and their natural reactions to each other's opinions doesn't bode well for a long term future, but maybe when they have the next conflict they will have a food fight and giggle. Their animosity disappears quickly, but their differences do not go away that easily even though the story will make you think both of them changed personalities.

This is Hallmark, so we have to have an evil developer who wants to "gentrify" a small town and make a lot of money. So the plot theme becomes largely about "saving" the small town.

Clearly the architects of this movie intended it to be light, upbeat and funny. It's too bad they led with rudeness. That is the vibe I picked up in the beginning, so I missed a lot of what was meant to be fun.