A Biltmore Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

For those of you that don’t know, even though Hallmark has been screaming it all over the place, A Biltmore Christmas was actually filmed at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. The estate itself is a lovely addition to the movie.

Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) is writing a remake of a classic holiday movie, His Merry Wife! When she has trouble giving the movie the feel good ending the studio wants, her boss sends her to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, where the original movie was filmed. After an accident with an hourglass, Lucy finds herself transported back to 1946. Stuck in 1946, she watches the filming of His Merry Wife! and finds herself falling in love with the movie’s star, Jack Huston (Kristoffer Polaha). But she has to go back to her time, right?

This is another movie I wasn’t expecting to enjoy. Especially since these type of time travel movies often suck. Maybe it was the majesticness of the Biltmore or maybe the movie actually was good. I just know that I found myself liking it way more than I thought I would. It’s not a movie I’m adding to my Annual list but it’s not one I would turn off if it happened to be on the screen.

Rating: Stay at the Biltmore! It’s beautiful!

An Unexpected Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

An Unexpected Christmas could describe almost any of the Christmas movies released by Hallmark or Lifetime, right? Something unexpected happens and then, bam!, it’s Christmas. It’s a dumb title. Let’s move on.

Jamie (Tyler Hynes) broke up with Emily (Bethany Joy Lenz) six months ago but he never told his family. The plan was to tell them after they had a nice Christmas together. But the family accidentally runs into Emily at the train station. It turns out that she is in town for a work assignment. Now Emily has to pretend that she is still dating Jamie in order to keep the peace.

While I dislike the title of the movie, An Unexpected Christmas was actually a decent flick. Unlike a lot of lead actors, Lenz and Hynes seem to enjoy being in the same room with each other. It makes their love/hate relationship easier to enjoy. A different set of actors could have royally screwed this up. I’m glad they didn’t.

There isn’t a lot that I didn’t like about the movie. Her job was a little annoying but I don’t think any of the Christmas movie script writers put a lot of thought into the jobs of the lead characters. They just want careers that absolutely INSIST that work be done on Christmas Eve or have projects that are so important their bosses call them literally every single day so they KNOW how important the project is and it NEEDS to be finished right now. Yes, there are jobs that have deadlines around Christmas but I don’t think any of them are quite as harsh as they are in the Hallmark/Lifetime movies.

So An Unexpected Christmas isn’t a must-see movie. But, if you are looking for something to waste some time on, it won’t make you hate yourself for watching it. There are some cute parts and there are some cringey parts. That is the life of a Hallmark movie.

Five Star Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

Can a movie be a comedy of errors if it isn’t funny?

When Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) returns home for Christmas, she finds that her father has turned her childhood house into a bed & breakfast. Once the news is broken to the rest of the family, they find out that the inn isn’t doing very well. The gang decides that they need to attract travel blogger Bea Turner to their B&B in order to get a five star review and gain more customers.

I don’t want to give away the twist, in case anyone wants to watch this…but it will make it difficult to talk about. After all, the plot of the movie revolves around mistaken identities and characters lying about who they really are. Lucy makes her family lie about who they are, while making assumptions about the actual customers staying with them. It’s a bit of a mess.

To be honest, the best part of the whole movie is that Lucy’s younger sister, Amber (Grace Beedie), gets to use her alternate persona to discover what she would like to do with her life. Lucy’s older brother, Will (Blair Penner), and his wife, Suzanne (Barbara Patrick), have a major life change that is pretty much overlooked. I think they put in way too many characters. None of them get quite enough screen time to make them real.

Can I recommend Five Star Christmas? I don’t think so. The movie wants to be an ensemble piece but it just isn’t there. Hallmark should stick to focusing on the romantic couple rather than everyone around them.