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Reviews
Christmas Catch (2018)
Not worth the time
This is not a good movie. Now, made-for-tv/dvd Christmas movies are almost never GREAT, but good lord this was terrible. The premise is pretty intriguing, but the result is bad. The characters are flat and unlikable, the chemistry is absent all-around - no romantic chemistry, no PLATONIC chemistry, there's not even any familial chemistry - and the plot ultimately makes no sense.
SPOILER
So we find out that the main love interest is suspected of having a diamond-encrusted reindeer. For some reason, the FBI gets a warrant to fill his house with cameras to try to figure out where it is, but they don't just get a warrant to search his place??
We find out that the FBI actually isn't involved at all, and the reindeer is hidden in an ornament. There's no explanation as to how it got in the ornament - it's too big to fit in through the hole at the time, and the ex-wife didn't break the ornament before, so how did the reindeer get in there??
Most stupidly of all, the ex-wife devised the whole police sting operation to figure out if the guy still had the reindeer, even though 1) her partner is a safe cracker, 2) the guy's house was easy to break into, and 3) she knows when he goes to work. So there's literally no reason why she couldn't have just broken into his house and taken the reindeer while he was at work. The entire plot of this movie is 100% pointless.
The combination of flat, unlikable characters AND a nonsensical plot that makes zero sense makes for a big waste of 90 minutes. You'd probably be better off just browsing Netflix for 90 minutes instead, to be honest.
The Knight Before Christmas (2019)
Silly But Cute
The bottom line is, if you like romance novels, and you like Hallmark Christmas movies, you'll probably like this. If you're someone who notices every continuity error and also you're an English history buff, you'll probably be too distracted to enjoy this film (the titular knight is from the 14th century but speaks perfectly understandable English? The women in the 14th century have some crazy heavy makeup on - although the costumes are actually close to accurate, they aren't in generic Renaissance garb).
Being mostly familiar with Vanessa Hudgens from her work in the High School Musical franchise, I was pleasantly surprised. Nobody's performance is Oscar-worthy, but everyone including her was charming and believable.
I love Christmas movies, especially silly romantic ones, and I'm definitely adding this one to list of "cute movies that I don't have to pay a lot of attention to when I'm in the mood for something Christmas-y". Like I said, if you enjoy Hallmark channel Christmas movies, and romance novels (that aren't bodice-rippers), you'll most likely enjoy this film. I'd easily rate this as a 7 out of 10 in terms of Christmas romantic comedies.
So This Is Christmas (2013)
Plodding, confused, weirdly violent mess of a movie
First of all, it's absurd this movie is rated PG. The language and the bloody, violent scene towards the end should push this up to a PG-13 rating.
As for an actual review: This is one of those "family torn apart by tragedy and they come together thanks to the power of Christ" movies, except in this movie, the message doesn't work at all. One character, who's a drug user, gets his girlfriend pregnant, is in a gang, and uses the foul language that should keep this movie from a PG rating, just all of a sudden changes for the better after cursing out God after his girlfriend gets stabbed in the stomach. Really, his change comes pretty much out of nowhere.
The main character's change for the better is more gradual and makes a bit more sense - she's convinced to help with a church's nativity play, and that mostly combined with the friendly carpenter changes her from being a clubbing, drunken mess to a more put-together young lady.
But that's not enough to save this movie. The plot overall is slow, and there's somehow too many plot threads and yet not enough. The characters are almost entirely unlikable, and nobody ever calls out the step-mom for her obvious preference for her biological son and her blindness to his drug use and stealing her money and how absurdly critical she is of her step-daughter; at one point the step-daughter shows up in short shorts and a sparkly shirt, and the step-mother says "Did you get that at a thrift store?" with contempt. Which is absurd - she's more concerned that her step-daughter may have bought clothes secondhand than that her step-daughter is dressed like a hooker and keeps coming home drunk.
But then in the end we find out the step-mother is responsible for the death of her step-daughter's biological mother, but her new husband (the step-daughter biological father) is fine with that, and the drug-using son says "Hey God, please let my girlfriend live" and then there's a mediocre duet of "Mary Did You Know?" that then repeats during the credits immediately after the duet first ends.
There's plenty of other Christmas movies that have a "redeeming power of Christ" message that have much more solid plots and likable characters than this one.