Five Gold Rings

6.3 stars.

I think the leads are good actors, however they don't gel. She is standoffish and he's like a lovesick puppy throughout the narrative. But she doesn't seem to notice that he's really in love with her, and we see that he has been his whole life. This lack of empathy and wherewithal on her part exposes flaws that are unbecoming of a lead character.

So as the story goes, she comes home for the holidays and is sent on a treasure hunt by her grandmother, who recently passed away. Her mother owns a retail antique store of sorts. She wants her daughter to take over the store, but she is too career oriented as an aspiring painter to take over the family business.

The male lead is an old friend of hers, seems they dated a while way back in their youth. He is now running his family's private investigator firm.

The two of them are sent on this treasure hunt. He uses his connections and she her knowledge of antiques to find the owners of five gold rings.

It would have been really good, but something was missing. I think the treasure hunt was almost pointless and there are too many coincidences. These two factors cause an imbalance that is difficult to maintain. It sort of fell flat for me. I needed a more quality romance to make up the difference, but it was absent.

I tried to like this movie. I really did. I'm a fan of Holland Roden, but the guy they got for her love interest was awful. His tone was monotonous, he had basically NO facial expressions and his eyes looked dead. It was like he was reading his lines behind his eyes. It was hard to like him and because I couldn't like him, I wasn't interested in the story. He made it boring. Every other actor had personality, but his was like rice cake. Some parts of the directing was kinda dumb, for instance, the desk scene. The close-ups there were totally unnecessary. Sorry Hallmark, but you dropped the ball on this one. You might want to send Nolan Funk for some acting lessons. I don't think he would've survived "Finding Mr. Christmas".

Cute movie topic, but it was like sitting through two hours of fingers screaching down a chalk board. Actor playing Audrey ruined the movie with her annoying vocal fry through the film. The low pitch screeching voice was so distracting. There is no reason to deliver their dialogue with vocal fry. Sometimes, couldn't even understand what she was saying, because her voice was so strained. Why do they do this?! It's not entertaining, it's annoying, and just makes you not want to watch anything they are in. The director should notice this during filming and announce, "o.k., enough of the vocal fry, just talk in a normal voice!"

I have enjoyed Holland Roden since her time on the Teen Wolf series. She plays the painter Audrey Moss, who after the loss of her grandmother returns home to help her mom potentially sell her grandmother's antique shop. While at the shop, Audrey discovers a quest her grandmother left for her to find the owners of five gold rings before Christmas...which is just nine days away. To help her locate the owners of the lost rings, Audrey enlists the private detective Finn O'Sullivan (Nolan Gerard Funk).

Finn and Audrey have a past, but their future seems to be one of potential as the two get along well together.

Christmas lasagne?

I enjoyed the artwork and the quests to find the owners of the rings, I did think that they could have added a little bit more romance to the romantic storyline. Overall a great holiday addition to Hallmark's Christmas vault without being too Christmas-y.

I watched this for Holland Roden, who was so good in Time to Come Home a couple years back. She has an endearing quality about her.

Here she plays Audrey, an artist of some note who returns home after her grandmother passes, only to be sent on a quest to return 5 rings her grandmother found beachcombing.

To assist her in her task she enlists the aid of Finn, a private investigator, played by Nolan Gerard Funk.

I was about 30 minutes in when it occurred to me Funk reminded me of a smart-ass, murderous kid in one of the first episodes of Castle. Checked his bio and sure enough, it was him.

He has a lot of credits for a guy who acts like Spock.

One thing that stood out to me in this movie was the almost complete lack of familiar faces among the supporting cast. I guess there's been an exodus to another channel.

Along the way snowmen are built, office supplies are turned into Christmas decorations and art is created. People are appropriately thankful when their baubles are returned.

Nothing out of the ordinary for a Hallmark movie, but still pretty forgettable.

Five.