I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Very disappointing...

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

...I do have a bone or two to pick with this film.No, I'm not talking about other thanksgivings that preceded the famous one held by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags. Like, the one at Jamestown, Virginia, for instance. Or one even earlier (and further south) than that, held by some grateful conquistadors, in Mexico!My nitpicks are centered around the elements of realism Hallmark tried to interject into the film.First, there are the documents Everett shows to Mary. To the best of my knowledge, the 17th-century spelling of Plymouth was "P-l-i-m-o-u-t-h." Yet, the modern spelling is clearly visible on at least a couple of those Xeroxes!Then, there's the climate. When Everett is swinging Mary on that reproduction of her childhood plank-seat swing, at the conclusion, the shrubs still have an abundant profusion of green leaves on them. There's not one multi-colored tree leaf on the lawn. And Mary, herself, is wearing a glorified sun dress!As a born-and-bred Connecticut Yankee, I can tell you for a fact that New England was cold and blustery on Thanksgiving Day, 2013. So, either this movie was filmed in the Mediterranean-like climate of Plymouth, California. Or (assuming they shot it on location, in Massachusetts, at all) it was filmed during the summer months.Yet, in spite of the aforementioned nitpicks, it proved a suitably poignant movie, as I said before. So, anybody with a greater power to suspend disbelief than me...will no doubt enjoy watching it.Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :-)

Hallmark does have a good history of airing original movies that are good. Which is why I like to watch them when I canThe Thanksgiving House is one of those films you can actually sit down and watch to appreciate for it's original plot and acting which is what Hallmark is known to do.With the cast being: Emily Rose,Justin Bruening,Julia Jones,Lindsay Wagner,Bruce Boxleitner,Cerina Vincent,Adam Kaufman,Jack Scalia each one help tell the story of the movie Emily's performance stands out the most because her character stuck out the most with Justin's performance coming in second. Cerina's character really shows out to be the bad apple in terms The music was wonderful it was everything you would want in a movie like this and then some I just enjoy the score all together it was peaceful and joyful it set the tone of the movie. The setting is good as well.Overall I enjoy the story, the acting and the music it just really good to have a Thanksgiving theme movie I give The Thanksgiving House an 8 out of 10

When the 2013 previews aired, I could hardly wait to see another new great Hallmark movie with a seasonal theme!HA!Much to my surprise and great dismay,"The Thanksgiving House" was lousy! In retrospect, it was actually the fore-runner...the predictor...the warning...of Hallmark's 2013 line of lousy new Christmas movies to come!...(which continued in to 2014).Considering readers have already read the plot above, I was disappointed that this movie ONLY had a minute relationship to T/g...that the house was questioningly built over the site of the first T/g feast......wow.It was if they had to throw something in about T/g for the reason of the title...the title that alluded to the movie primarily having a T/g plot.....BUT it was nothing more than a romance...and NOT a charming one at all.ALL of the players' parts and acting were of course consistent with the plot: pointless and boring.I always watch the new disappointing seasonal movies at least twice for a fair judgment...but this disappointing movie did not improve. It never became enjoyable as is.

Thanksgiving has a special interest for me, or I might not have watched "The Thanksgiving House," which is an exceptionally well made chick flick. In it, the romance at the center also serves as metaphor, because it has a weighty theme: about sitting down to dinner with someone who might, or might not, be your enemy. My regret is that more parallels weren't drawn between our modern Thanksgivings and the legendary first one, because more interesting similarities were there to be drawn, and the movie would have been richer for suggesting them-- and I do mean suggesting, very lightly suggesting, because this isn't a documentary.Briefly, the plot revolves around the land occupied by a house at 825 Mayflower Road in Plymouth, Mass. (fictional address, of course), which a local historian/archaeologist named Mather suspects was the site of the legendary first Thanksgiving. The house now belongs to a lawyer named Mary, and the movie opens with a scene in her law office, where she exposes a man in his attempt at insurance fraud. So she's in the business of finding the truth, which is good, but as a lawyer, her real motives are serving her client, keeping the firm profitable, and climbing the corporate ladder. Right there we have a parallel: are the hard truths about early American history something we want exposed, at the expense of our more immediate day-to-day motives and beliefs? After all, to many Native Americans in New England and around the country, Thanksgiving is considered a "Day of Mourning."After that scene, I expected a connection to a larger theme: exposing the myth that has been built up around that original Thanksgiving, a myth that buries the truth about colonists and pilgrims who, after that one-time feast in 1621, were less likely to dine together than to scalp each other. (Yes, Europeans scalped Indians. In fact, colonial leaders placed a bounty on scalps, which encouraged the practice so much that even Native children were scalped for the money. Indians used scalping as proof of a kill in battle.)Little true history is revealed, which is fair enough: little is known about the first Thanksgiving. (Indeed, there are competing "first" claims from Virginia and Florida, among others.) There is a classroom scene, in which a teacher talks about the Wampanoag sitting down with pilgrims to give thanks, and a student asks "How'd that work out for the Wampanoag?" The teacher somberly, evasively replies, "In the long run, not so well." Not so well... that's putting it mildly. But the truth is not chick- flick material, and I therefore appreciate that such a scene was included at all. I only wish there had been more such references, necessarily oblique, to America's "aboriginal sin," as it is called. The film could also, for example, have had a passing remark about the fact there was only ever that one Thanksgiving, in 1621. Indians and pilgrims became enemies. Another missed opportunity, an important one given the house which is at the center of the plot: Indians did not hold private land, so a point could have been made about how Mary comes from the European heritage of land-owning, so she does not even want an archaeological examination of her property. How she comes to share her property would have made a useful food-for-thought parallel.And speaking of food, here, for what it is worth, is my special interest in Thanksgiving. I am a part of an initiative called Thanksgiving Table, which encourages all North Americans to add a Native American element to their Thanksgiving feast.