A review by Nalini Haynes
A review by Nalini HaynesHolly (Claire Coffee) wants a perfect life with the perfect man and a perfect Christmas. She slips and falls on the pavement on her way to work one pre-Christmas morning. Shortly afterwards, a new (perfect) man appears in her life, someone who looks suspiciously like a mannequin in a shopfront window.
What follows is a predictable cheesy clique that feels like a remake of a 1950s movie. The Christmas bit is incidental — romance and Christmas having a connection is tenuous at best — but it is a Christmas movie.
Milo (Gabrielle Dennis) is the under-sold star of this movie: he has more personality than the rest of the cast combined and he critiques the marketing industry in spite of working in marketing himself.
Holly’s so-called ‘perfect’ man is not what she expected. The movie goes somewhat darker than I expected: it felt like the beginning of a horror-movie twist! However, the values of the movie are unequivocally healthy.
The final scene was rushed: it felt a lot like Patience (aka Bunthorne’s Bride), one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas where everyone is paired up suddenly at the very end. The operetta gets away with this as a 19th century comedic theatre production but a 21st century romantic Christmas movie flops.
As a romance and as a Christmas movie, Holly’s Holiday (aka A Perfect Christmas) is, at best, slow and a bit disappointing.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Director: Jim Fall
Writers: Justine Cogan Gunn (as Justine Cogan), Andrea Janakas
Starring: Claire Coffee, Ryan McPartlin, Gabrielle Dennis
Running time: 90 mins
