I get that Christmas in Tahoe is, for some reason, based on the 2015 album by Train. But did we really need to cast the lead singer of the band as a secondary character? Executive producer powers in play!
Claire (Laura Osnes) is an event planner at her family’s hotel. However, live acts prefer to go to Reno or Las Vegas over Tahoe. As a result, Claire is trying to get a job at a hotel in Las Vegas booking acts. The big Christmas show at her family’s hotel is her big chance to impress the Las Vegas bigwigs. When her main act is forced to cancel and the rest of the acts cancel with her, Claire and her rock star ex-boyfriend, Ryan (Kyle Selig), have to figure out a new roster of acts to save the show.
Honestly, the movie would have been perfectly fine without Pat Monahan, lead singer of Train. He overemotes everything. When I heard he was going to be in it, I thought that it couldn’t be that bad. After all, there are plenty of singers that also have an acting career. Boy, was I wrong. He ruins every scene that he is in. I wish he could have put his ego aside long enough to cast someone else in the role. If he wanted to be in it that badly, he could have just been one of the “saving” acts. I mean, they did put him in the show (because, duh) but as the character, not as himself.
But speaking of the “saving” acts, one of the acts that Claire wants to book but runs into some trouble is an acapella group similar to Pentatonix. Except that the movie group (I don’t even remember their name) only had three people instead of four and they sounded terrible. Their harmonies were not together and the poor guy in the group was relegated to beat boxer, which he was not good at.
The sad thing is that I actually liked the parts of Christmas in Tahoe that didn’t have cringey acting or awful singing. While Osnes and Selig didn’t have a ton of romantic chemistry, I kinda liked them as the long-time friends that poked fun at each other. I think they would have been better as best friends instead of a romantic couple.
So. Should you watch this? I want to say no but also maybe? If you are a big fan of Train, you might be able to look past Monahan’s terrible acting. But, to be honest, there is too much of him to really save the movie. Go watch One December Night instead.