Oh, Lifetime, why do you do this to me? Christmas At Plumhill Manor is their first Christmas movie of the year. And it stars Maria Menounos. I think I have to give in and admit that she’s not a good actress. She’s fine as a gossip show host or in minor roles but she should not be a leading lady.
Margot Stone (Menounos) is a New York City architect who, unexpectedly, receives Plumhill Manor as an inheritance from a recently deceased great-aunt. However, the will states that Margot must live in the manor for seven days before she can decide whether to keep or sell the property.
I don’t even want to talk about the movie. It’s boring. Nothing interesting happens. There’s a scavenger hunt and even that is boring.
With that out of the way, what I do want to talk about is the way this movie handles color. See, a lot of Christmas movies are filmed in the summer. That is how we get Christmas goodness in October. Of course, this means that the movie people have to think of creative ways to make the summer look like winter. Hallmark usually coats everything in fake snow. Lifetime, however, really likes to play with color…or lack of color. Whenever Margot is outside, everything is filmed in black and white with people and buildings re-colored in post-production. This leads to three amazing things: One - we get grey trees complete with leaves. These trees should not have leaves in December yet here they are, grey as can be. Two - the re-colored portions have such fake color that it makes me laugh. A red brick building doesn’t have deep red richness. No, it is red-ish with a sort of pink undertone making it look wrong. Three - they don’t un-color the trees we see in windows. So when Margot is walking around the manor and she walks past a window, we see a fully leaved green tree in the window. This is my favorite part of the color problem.
I don’t know why they chose to go with the color fix. I would think that it would be a lot cheaper to cover everything in fake snow. And I’m sure there could have been some creative shots to get around fully leaved trees. Thankfully, the colors did distract me from the terribleness that is Christmas At Plumhill Manor. It’s probably the only thing it has going for it.
Rating: Not even the pink brick manor can save it from a monotone world