12 Dates of Christmas

This takes the concept of Bill Murray's movie Groundhog Day and adds a dash of Christmas Spirit... but only a dash.

It is basically a love story... Not just of Kate, but the other people that transect her life, and her coming-to-terms and accepting other people's love interests.

It doesn't have a dark side as Groundhog Day did where Bill Murray went through a few suicide days; Kate has a bad day where she gets grumpy with people, though the director shoots it with humour.

The only thing that concerned and irked me a little was the way Miles would just walk away when things got a little tough or strange. Wouldn't you want the love interest to have a little interest in his supposed love, give her some benefit of the doubt? What would the future be like with this type of man?

That said, I really enjoyed the film, though I wouldn't really call it a "Christmas Movie" as it's only set on Christmas Eve. It is a movie where you can cuddle up close with your loved one and just enjoy the lighthearted script (which made me feel good throughout the movie and made me laugh a few times too) with good acting and decent direction.

This ABC family Christmas movie is better than some of the recent Hallmark holiday movies. The writing is sharper and the cast is likable - more A list for TV than usual. The Groundhog Day formula has been used in TV movies sometimes unsuccessfully, but here they got the right elements of Groundhog. Each repeated day is different enough and builds upon the last with sufficient humor and inventiveness. A young lady pining for her ex is set up on a blind date.

Amy Smart has enough vitality without being annoying and she pulls the role off quite well. Mark Paul Gosselaar is a likable enough romantic lead.

If you have to pick one Christmas movie to watch this one is okay.

I liked this move. It is sweet and good hearted. But it is, more or less, a remake of "Groundhog's Day." And that's not saying that is a bad thing,

Kate is stuck in a past she cannot shake. She had an ex-boyfriend that she feels she missed the bus on when he is moving on with his life. A death of a mother. Her father dating a very sweet woman she disapproves of for no other reason than it isn't her mom. So she wishes that she could fix things. Well, in movies like this, some magical force fulfills this.

Now she's an unwilling participant in re-living this one day.

Ordinarily, I would say, the repetitive nature of these incidences would be aggravating and painful to re-watch. I dismiss them since we're suppose to be going through the same process as Kate. She has a blind date with Myles (Mark Paul-Gosselar's character...who inexplicably doesn't have a listed name in IMDb). His character is really improbable conglomeration of everything sweet a girl would want in a guy. He doesn't exist but only to be tolerably normal. Then the onion begins to peel. Because most of us need a lifetime to discover the person in front of us. Kate is in purgatory to be sure. And so...which could easily derail us into not caring, OR worst turning against Kate. Director James Hayman skates so fine on that line, he finds the joy in being able to repeat her world. Well, entertaining to us anyway. I think the message is clear...which was clear for "Groundhog's Day"...we're resigned to a lot of things in our lives, until we break the pattern. And that pattern is to give into what sometimes the world wants for us. It's not giving up, it's embracing it.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for this movie. So, if you venture to watch it, keep this in mind...great performances. Mark-Paul Gosselar is surprisingly low-key. He's every man. A good center. Nothing spectacular in his life...just so simple. He has dreams, but they don't interfere with his good deeds.

You will feel good you took the time to watch.

No Spoilers:

Before I say these mean things allow me to first point out that the movie was pretty enjoyable and if you are looking for a light easy holiday movie and have already burnt through all the really good ones, then go ahead and watch this. It isn't bad, just not deserving of "really good" or "great". It is actually a little good. 5/10 would be "just okay", which is why I'm giving it a 6/10, because it wasn't boring and did make me smile some.

In the beginning of the film they showed her as being very shallow. They made the mistake of never showing her as having wised up. She continued to be shallow through to the end. Yes she wizened a little, but not enough.

The movie never really gets deep enough to allow Amy Smart to show off her acting skills (she is a proven good actor). Not much of anything very heartfelt happens. No tears shed. No real feeling of caring for the characters.

Some of the plot feels a bit carelessly thrown together as if with a mindset of "yeah this will fill in the basic romcom blueprint good enough".

Felt like another movie training people to think that everyone is mystically fated for "the one" and that marriage is everything. Ironically it actually tries, for a brief moment, to suggest that her obsession with marriage instead of enjoying the day was the cause of some of her past problems.

Anyways. I kind of enjoyed it, but it felt shallow like the main character.

I have pretty low expectations for movies of this genre, but this one really surprised me. The script wasn't cringeworthy, the acting wasn't cringeworthy, and the story, though it's pretty predicable, wasn't littered with clichés. Not only I was able to watch past the first 20 minutes, but I would actually watch this movie again.