Ed's Review Dot Com

The Hallmark Channel,

Brooke Nevin, Steve Byers, Patrick Duffy, Kathleen Laskey, Dale Whibley, Jocelyn Hudon, Pip Dwyer, Charlie Boyle, Pam Hyatt, Vanessa Burns, Conrad Coates

Vanessa Turner (Brooke Nevin) is a doctor in the city. She grew up with her Dad, Bruce Turner (Patrick Duffy) who is a beloved family doctor in a small town, and it was always her dream to be a doctor like her father and is living her dream. For years she has tried to go back home for Christmas, but her rotation at the hospital would never allow her to get away, but this year is her turn, so she anxiously heads home. When she gets home, her Father and Mother tell her why they were so anxious to have her home. He is about to retire and close the clinic just after the holidays. So Vanessa determines she wants to spend her vacation helping her Father and working beside him for the last days of the clinic. But as she becomes reacquainted with her High School Sweetheart, Mitch (Steve Myers), she finds her place in the small town and has to decide whether to throw away all her dreams and stay home and take over her father’s practice, or to live the life in the city she always wanted.

This was a really sweet little film. Not so much about the romance, but a look at a loving family and how they manage to love and support each other to work thorugh the issues that arrive in every day life. There’s not great conflict here, but simply a really festive and beautiful location, and a number of wonderful characters really playing their parts to he hilt. I really found myself enjoying this film, and found it really enjoyable from start to finish, mostly because I really liked the characters. This is a festive film portraying a really wonderful small town Christmas, and I was really impressed with this one and recommend it for your holiday viewing.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Chesler/Perlmutter Productions,

Sarah Carter, Kathleen Laskey, Neil Crone, Daniel Karasik, Damon Runyan

Holly Jensen (Sarah Carter) is an astronomy professor and a Christmas enthusiast, but she’s disappointed that her long time boyfriend is off to New York City to spend the holidays working leaving Holly alone. She decides to take a bus since she’s afraid of flying, to surprise her boyfriend, but when the bus breaks down stranding her and a co-traveller, cowboy rodeo rider Luke (Damon Runyan) they travel together to drop Holly at her parents home nearby. But making a connection with Luke, since he, being a cowboy is obsessed with the stars as she is, in the holiday spirit she invites Luke and his brother Bull to stay with them for Christmas at her parents house. When Adam arrives intending to propose to her, Holly is caught in a bind between someone she has learned to really like, and the man who seems now to be so cold and different than what he seemed before.

Typical Holiday fare, this is another Romantic-Comedy for the holidays, new in 2014. This typical Hallmark Christmas story is a nice Christmassy love story, but is like so many others of the same genre. The characters are enjoyable, and the story is very full of holiday cheer. This is one of the movies they make every year to keep us entertained on a cold evening, perfect to wrap presents by. It’s not badly done at all, and it has the right of amount of smug desperation in the jerky all business boyfriend and the cloudy-eyed dreamer Cowboy that it’s easy to see where Holly is headed. But though I can rate this movie extremely highly, I also can’t knock it down, because it is exactly what it set out to be, so there’s no surprises here. But instead of watching Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye dancing for the hundredth time, if you want to see something fresh and new, and very 2014, this is a good choice. There are a few movies that I like to watch over and over, and this won’t be one, but I’m glad to see this as one of the new twelve premiers on Hallmark this season.

[Here’s the web page for this Hallmark Premier movie]

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog