3/5* Shivs Show | Siobhan Divers
Dir: Peter Sullivan
Christmas Movies: Sharing Christmas (2017) Review
82 mins
Starring: Ellen Hollman, Bobby Campo, Cynthia Gibb, Dave Koz, David Starzyk, Jon Prescott, Pamela Roylance, Jade Harlow, Melanie Nelson.
Dir: Peter Sullivan
82 mins
Starring: Ellen Hollman, Bobby Campo, Cynthia Gibb, Dave Koz, David Starzyk, Jon Prescott, Pamela Roylance, Jade Harlow, Melanie Nelson.
Predictable but cute with a heartwarming story, Sharing Christmas is a lovely festive (Hallmark) romance film. And while the storyline is a bit been-there-seen-it-done-it, the one thing that is quite different from the usual mean real estate company vs cute, passionate individual storyline is that both real estate characters are nice??? and extremely apologetic??? They don’t actually want to ruin anyone’s life at Christmas…
Stephanie Nicol’s (Ellen Hollman) family run The Christmas Shop – a festive pop-up store in a mall in New York. At retiring age, her mum Iris (Pamela Roylance) and dad Dan (David Starzyk) hand Stephanie the keys and set off for Long Island.
Shortly after taking over the shop, Stephanie receives an eviction notice notifying her that a property developer has bought the building so each retailer’s lease is terminated.
Stephanie then meets handsome real estate agent, Michael (Bobby Campo) who offers to give her some advice. But unbeknownst to them both, he actually works for the company who are redeveloping the building (gasp!).
Also in the mix, there’s the issue that the store doesn’t make as much as it used to, making it hard for Stephanie to find a new premise.
From the beginning there’s a lot of talk about the store shutting down and how many people would miss it as it’s been open for 40 years (blah blah blah) and the store is also called ‘The Christmas Shop’ so I was wondering for at least the first half an hour how it even survives (who buys Christmas decorations in June?).
And then this question was asked and answered in the film – Stephanie makes other holiday ornaments (Valentines Day, St Patrick’s Day etc…) so you can see why they don’t make a lot of money…
Like the majority of festive Hallmark films (and I can say that, because I have watched A LOT of them recently..), the cast of Sharing Christmas are all mostly unknown and at some points the acting of the supporting characters seems forced and unnatural and the writing is also rather robotic – real people wouldn’t overemphasise things like the characters in this film do..
But this is just a minor issue in what is an enjoyable film!
The lead characters seem to have chemistry (there’s nothing worse than watching a film and the characters look like they’re having as much of a terrible time as you are) and they do make a cute couple.
Leading male character Michael purchases a decoration from The Christmas Shop at one point – a snowman bauble playing a guitar – and while at Stephanie’s house, realises she has the same one so he says to the decoration: “Oh, hey I think I know your cousin.” A weird thing to point out, I know, but it made me laugh and seems quite realistic (and something I would probably say because I’m also weird).
He actually talks to the snowman multiple times in the film, so he was probably quite lonely – he deserves a happy ending as much as Stephanie does…!
A cute story with a happy ending, I’d probably watch this one again!
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Siobhan
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