With Love, Christmas
She’s warm. He’s frosty. It’s tough enough that they’re paired together on an important ad campaign, but they’ve also picked each other in the office’s Secret Santa. As they spend more and more time together, can they keep their growing affection a secret?
Christmas clichés:
PR/Event Planner/Decorator
Contest as Plot Device
Mistaken Identities
Tree Buy & Trim
Ice Skating Scene
Weather Underprepared
Deceased Parent
Sleigh Ride
Ends w/ Kiss or Ring
Our Thoughts
All new made-for-TV Christmas movies should be met with a level of skepticism. “With Love, Christmas” requires a heavy dose of it.
A play on “You’ve Got Mail,” the movie jumps rapidly into two characters revealing personal secrets via email, all under the ruse of Secret Santa gift tips. The secondary storyline includes those same characters working on a marketing pitch that will also be the key to a promotion to Creative Director…for one of them. We won’t mention that the male lead lacks an affinity for Christmas (Deceased Parent died around Christmas) or that the female lead is a pushover who only wants to please others (and who is Weather Unprepared a few times).
With a whopping 10 cliché boxes marked, this movie should feel more heart-warming than it is. The scenes take place in questionable, one-room sets or are overlaid with distracting CGI snowflakes. Jess even yelled at the green-screen Ice Skating scene because of its poor execution, but Rob found joy in the male lead’s reconnection with his father and the final reveal of a romantic Sleigh Ride.
Don’t expect a transcendent new addition to your collection, but watch if you enjoy a good Mistaken Identity reveal under some fake snow.
Rob's Final Take: Merry
It’s not going to win an Oscar, but Aaron O’Connell’s evolution from office oaf to seasonal softie is worth a couple hours of your December viewing.
Jess's Final Take: Not Very Merry
I get that we viewers want romance-meets-conflict-meets-Xmas, a low bar. But we deserve better production quality than this movie provides.
Details
Watch It On: Hallmark Channel
Starring: Emilie Ullerup and Aaron O’Connell
