Five Gold Rings

I must confess that over the years my wife and I have watched more Hallmark movies than we can count. Most of them are Christmas movies followed by mystery movies. The storyline of this one is a bit different and overall, pretty good. The cast isn't picked from the same pool of actors as they usually are. That said the male lead actor sounded like Spock - his voice was very monotone, and he had very little facial expression. The Santa had a few too many "Ho Ho Ho's". And of course it wouldn't be a Hallmark movie without the typical, ridiculous "deal breaker" which usually happens about 15 minutes before the ending.

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.

This is one of the occasional "hunt' movies they do for these Christmas movies. A recently deceased grandmother had a habit of finding and returning lost personal treasures before Christmas each year, and leaves five ring shaped keepsakes for her granddaughter to continue the tradition.

The stories of finding the owners and returning the rings are NOT compelling. None have any tension or real mystery involved, and are rather boring.

Holland Roden's voice is annoyingly scratchy for most of her lines, which I typically assign to nervous delivery. They should have been dubbed over in post, because she sounds terrible.

Nolan Funk is okay, but does nothing to liven up his role. His expression and delivery is continaully bland.

The romance seems to have been limited to one slip where he caught her on a sidewalk.

There is overacting for some of the secondary roles. The rival antiques dealer is supposed to be annoying, but her scenery chewing for her couple of scenes makes it moreso.

Then there was the grandmother, in two scenes at the beginning of the movie. She was so over the top sickly sweet annoying I told my wife I hoped this was one of the stories where they skip ahead and the little girl at the beginning has grown up.

Indeed that's where the story went, and I REALLY hoped the grandmother was dead. This is the first time in more than a decade of watching Hallmark Christmas films I found myself glad that a character died. Glad, relieved, and joyful.

Finally, the "relationship crisis" at the end was possibly the most stupid I've ever seen in one of these movies. Utterly unbelievable the woman would have acted that way.

Like I said, it's no tragedy if you completely skip this one.

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".

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.