Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

As Good As It Gets

The acting in this movie is really good.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Almost despite myself, I have become a fan of Lifetime/Hallmark/ABC Family romantic movies. The plots are formulaic and the endings are predictable but, with varying degrees of success, they all manage to be engaging and, at times, uplifting. Even with the generally low expectations that go along with movies in this genre, this one fails miserably. The dialogue is elementary and the plot is almost completely non-existent. After 10 minutes, I realized that absolutely nothing had happened. After an hour and the unsurprising "twist" revelation, still nothing had happened. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that no compelling reason to save the factory is presented to the audience. We cannot sympathize with a mission that the protagonist herself has said is impractical.

Some of the worst, least natural acting performances I've ever seen. Which is perhaps not surprising given the clunky, lame dialog given to the one note characters. Add to that the cheap production values and you've got a movie that doesn't look like it even belongs on television. One doesn't expect much from a Lifetime movie, especially one this old, but this is nearly unwatchably bad.Plot-wise, it's a dreadful, clichéd romance of a type even Harlequin would consider beneath them. It's possible to guess how the remainder of the movie will go by simply watching the opening couple of scenes. Surprise, the only female character who gets any focus and the mysterious stranger end up falling in love.

A note to all of you budding film writers: Study this film. If your dialog reads like the dialog in this film, please shred your script and try again.I didn't have high expectations, but was intrigued by the description indicating there was a mystery at the Christmas Ornament Factory. The Mystery is resolved very early and the film becomes a straight romance. I almost stopped watching it at 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and at the first break. My spouse , who is the Hallmark & Lifetime fan, gave up at the first break. Forest River is a company town - the main business is Aikens Ornaments, who make all manner of holiday decorations.The patriarch of the company has recently passed away, so the companies future might be in question. We soon meet Noelle, who would rather be on Wall Street than Main Street, and the mysterious Justin, who gets a date with Noelle after a large snowman she is inflating crashes into Justins car. Once we meet Alison Aikens, doing due diligence for the Board, we have our story setup.If you can't nail all the story arcs by the first commercial break, you haven't seen enough of this kind of Holiday film. Maybe that's a good thing.

A movie you can watch with the whole family...Loved it! And all the kids will like it, even the teenage girls, they will love the outfits...I know my niece is copying some of the fun outfits she saw after watching it..It is nice to see a fun cheery Christmas movie that is different from the usual..Plus it made us all laugh, great Director for adding some funny stuff..Loved how it had such a happy ending too. We all hope to see this movie again next year, I think it will be a Christmas bubblegum classic...Only wish there was some fun eighties music thrown in there too!... Thanks for something different!...And hopefully we can buy it on DVD to put in our collection.