(no subject)

Jingle Bell Bride is... well. It's not bad but it's not great, either. Both leads were likable, actor wise, but Jessica is one of those SUPER driven career characters who only slows down because she's literally stranded in a podunk Alaska small town for about a week. She's a wedding planner and flies to said Alaskan town to con Matt (who helps grow this out of season flower) out of enough blooms to support a celebrity wedding so she can get a promotion and then move to London.

Despite never seeing her sister and niece even though they live nearby and feeling like shit about it before she even leaves town. Sigh.

Matt's nice and just snarky enough to make you root for him, but he's also Hallmark nice, which means they've sanded away any rough edges and left just the tiny bit of a backstory involving him coming back to Alaska to help his aunt after her husband dies... and then they dole out the fact that he was also running away from New York because his marriage imploded.

They lean too hard on Jessica's career and her blowing everyone and everything off for her job, which she actually seems to enjoy (the job, not the blowing everyone off) and so things always feel a little lopsided. I think part of that is they don't introduce the idea of Matt having an actual life, not just a job, back in New York until a little too late, so it feels very off balance, like someone forgot that the end goal wasn't to have Jessica move to Alaska and make the town sign now say 113.

tl;dr version: Like the actress, didn't like the character all that much and this was definitely HER movie sooooooooooo... meh. The kids were cute and kept in limited quantities.