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The Christmas Ring – Hallmark Movie & Mysteries – Starring Nazneen Contractor (Ransom) and David Alpay (The Borgias) – Written by Anna White – Directed by Troy Scott
Well, the nicest thing I can say about The Christmas Ring is that the ring itself was stunning. As for the rest of the movie, not good. The acting was bad, the story was poorly constructed, the chemistry was lacking, and the editing was bad. I’m not usually one to critique the editing department but there were so many times in the movie where a scene felt like it ended abruptly or in a spot that didn’t make sense, it made the movie feel very choppy.
The Christmas Ring is about a journalist, Kendra (Contractor), who goes looking for her mother’s engagement ring to be side tracked by a different engagement and due to the inscription “My Christmas Love, 1948) feels the unbelievable need to find out the story behind this ring. She heads to Pine Grove, MA where she meets Michael (Alpay) in a not so meet cute. Turns out the ring belonged to his grandmother, Pearl, and he and Kendra go on this “adventure” to unlock the story of the ring and the love story behind it. In addition, they also save the family General Store from the big bad corporate chain buyer. They fall in love, she decides to leave her online magazine to start her own online magazine in Boston, and he moves to Boston to start his new career in architecture but not before giving the ring to Kendra on a necklace promising his forever love to her.
Oh boy. So many issues with this one. As you can tell by my writing, I am no journalist. So maybe it’s normal to read an inscription on a ring and drop everything to follow a story. It seems very far fetched to me, but whatever. No story, no movie, so I get it. Contractor must have an accent because her trying so hard to do an American accent was painful. I couldn’t stand listening to her speak because it was so awkward and was so distracting to the abysmal story they were trying to tell. I feel horrible saying that but I can’t help it. When it’s that challenging for your lead to do the American accent, find someone who can. Or, just have her use her natural voice and dialect. It’s probably lovely. I also felt zero chemistry between her and Alpay. I actually really liked him. I would be very interested in seeing him in another movie with a different leading lady and better story for him to work with. But Contractor and Alpay’s interactions were very stiff and not natural at all. I also felt that his acting was just fine but her’s was awful. When they walked outside and she shouts in amazement, “Oh my God what is that?”, she’s referring to the sled Michael built with his father that was under a tarp and she wasn’t even looking in that direction. How can you tell how amazing that is when you aren’t looking at it and it’s under a tarp you can’t see through. Maybe that was also a big directing faux pas but it was so bad. It also didn’t help their chemistry that it appeared when they interacted that it was extremely robotic. “Move to my mark. Turn and smile. Say my lines. Move to my next mark. Do it again.” Even the supporting cast was bad. The brother and sister in law were nice enough but neither had any personality and feel like they were pulled out of a bad regional theater group to be in this movie. Although the sister in law did a have Portia de Rossi vibe going on. Too bad she couldn’t channel Portia’s acting skills.
The storyline didn’t flow well at all either. Kendra and Michael meet and they aren’t the nicest to each other to start. Then he finds out she’s a reporter so his back is up because he had a very public breakup with an Ivanka Trump type of celebrity. He doesn’t even want her around. But one conversation about the ring and Michael’s all, “hey let’s go to my grandparents house and yeah I’ll help you out.” Doesn’t make any sense at all. It would take so much longer for that guard to be brought down. And I get it, it’s a two hour movie so you have to bust through that wall quickly. Then don’t have that be the start of their story! To make matters worse, she never tells him that her boss wants her to make the story about him and we all know where this will go….Kendra will submit the story, the boss will change it to focus on Michael, Michael will get pissed and so on. Why not tell him (when you ask him if you can use his name in the story) what might happen so he’s ready for it. I know Hallmark likes to create these conflict moments for the sake of conflict, but this one was so stupid. Maybe it’s more heightened because the movie isn’t good so this seems to just pile onto my annoyance, but I felt this conflict could have been avoided and another trope put in that made more sense.
As you can tell, I did not like this movie. I always encourage people to watch for themselves because as they say, what’s one woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure. Some of you may love this. I’d love to hear from you if you do because I’d be genuinely curious what you liked about it. But I will re-iterate how much I did like David Alpay and I would certainly give him another shot.
Rating: 1 out 10
Re-Watch Chances: No way in hell
Never Kiss A Man In A Christmas Sweater – Hallmark Channel – Starring Ashley Williams and Niall Matter – Adapted by Nina Weinman based on the original book by Debbie Johnson – Directed by Allan Harmon.
Ashley Williams movie time!!! I’m not ashamed to admit it. I have a woman crush on Ashley Williams. I do. And you know, this is a safe space. If you ladies out there want to come on and admit it as well, you can do that right here. No judgement zone.
NKAMIACS (I’m not typing that out every time) tells the story of Maggie (Williams) who is on her own for her first Christmas in a long time when her daughter Ellen (Kayden Magnuson) goes to visit her dad and step mother for the Christmas holiday. When buying her tree, she literally bumps into Lucas (Matter) and injures him to the point he can’t go on his holiday vacation. I’m not sure why since he only has a broken arm/wrist but I’ll go with it. Of course all the hotels are booked so he has to stay with Maggie in her guest house until the doctor says it’s ok for him to leave. Again, I know this is a Hallmark movie, but who the hell let’s a stranger stay in their guest house because of an honest accident? What single woman, in today’s world, would do that? Oh and by the way, what teacher makes enough money to own that gorgeous house that happens to come with a guest house? Either I’m in the wrong profession or I need to move to Colorado where you can buy houses like that.
Anyhoo, Maggie is a Christmas nut (it’s Ashley Williams so of course she is) and Lucas is a scrooge. But Maggie takes Lucas to the military base where she volunteers and will hopefully get him in the Christmas spirit! Since we learn Lucas in an architect Maggie decides it would be a great idea to help the kids build a giant gingerbread house at the base. Most of these kids have parents who are serving overseas. So building this gingerbread house is just the Christmas cheer they need. As it turns out, so does Lucas. Lucas is in a rough place right now. He hates his job, he’s not too fond of his family, a Christmas tree broke his arm missing his ski trip. Lucas is lost right now. You can understand why he’s a bit crabby. This can be tough because we all know this is leading to romance. So the writers and Matter have the challenging job of taking this character, who’s not the nicest or most jolly, and have Maggie fall in love with him in four days. I’ve only seen Matter in one other thing. Country at Heart earlier in the fall. For me, he was ok. So I wasn’t too sure about him going into a Christmas movie with my best gal pal. I have to say, he did a great job. This was a tough role to be balanced between scrooge and likable leading man for us to believe Maggie would fall for him. He did it. They fall in love and live happily ever after in their ugly sweaters.
I know it seems like I’m really ripping on this movie. I’m more poking fun at it a little because I really liked this movie. It was fun, sweet, and heart warming. One of my favorite parts of the film was when the kids got to Zoom with their parents overseas as a surprise for the kids. Not going to lie, the tears were falling. But to be an asshole for one minute, there is NO WAY those parents have time to build a gingerbread house. They are fighting for their lives and ours and they are going to stop everything to build a cookie house? Where do you even get those ingredients in the forests of the Middle East? It would have worked better if the kids were sharing their houses with each other and the volunteers, when the parents just surprised them and the kids showed them their houses. But again, Hallmark.
I would recommend checking out NKAMIACS because it is just a lovely watch and I plan on watching again over the holiday season.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Re-Watch Chances: It’s Ashley Williams, how is this even a question?
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