My wife wanted to watch a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie, and we decided to give this one a shot. We weren't expecting much, but twenty minutes in, we found ourselves riffing on the film in the vain of MST3K, and we wouldn't stop until the end credits.
The premise of this film is that Carrie Tate, a successful career woman who hasn't had time for a personal life (because every Hallmark movie needs one of those), has discovered her late maternal grandmother, who inherited the family business from her husband despite strong views on marriage roles, wrote a will which said that whichever one of her granddaughters marries first, the business will be inherited by their new husband. As it so happens, Carrie's sister, Katie, is engaged to be married before Christmas, hence threatening Carrie's dream of taking over the business.
I have to note that at this point, my wife and I had to actually pause the movie to discuss this plot, because it was just so incredibly convoluted. If the grandmother wanted a man to inherit so badly, and was fine with settling with an in-law, why didn't she just let her daughter's husband inherit? Why one of the granddaughters? Why bypass the daughter? Also, how was this able to be kept a secret from the daughters so easily? Wills involve lawyers, some notification of the people involved, and if a company is part of the will, someone high up at the company would have to be made aware of this, or would have to prepare for this as part of the long-term business planning - so again, why was this part of the will such a tightly kept secret? There's something in script writing called "suspension of disbelief" where you take an implausible situation and make it plausible through the story's events (eg., Number Five becoming a sentient being after being hit by lightning in "Short Circuit") - and at the very start of this film, its very premise is simply unbelievable. It sounds like a convoluted plot to a Hallmark movie because... oh wait... that's precisely what it is. It's basically just there to get the ball rolling on Carrie finding a husband before Christmas and hoping nobody stops to think about it too long.
Getting back to the story, Carrie begins looking for a husband. She decides to hook up with an old high school friend, Paul, and basically try to woo him into marrying her. A love triangle develops (because what's a Hallmark romance without a love triangle?) when Carrie gets to know Ethan, the friend of Katie's fiance, who also happens to work at another company, one which Carrie's business had tried to obtain.
Here I need to discuss one of the biggest things that fails about this movie: Carrie, as our main character, is COMPLETELY UNLIKABLE. She's a jerk to everyone she knows: her sister, her secretary, Ethan, even Paul. She's petty, insulting, and manipulative. It got to the point where I would keep pausing the film to see the running time, so that I could say something like, "Okay, she's got thirty minutes left to be likeable." I wasn't even sympathetic to her desire to own the company, because the film portrays her as completely inept there. I happen to work for a distributor, like the company in the movie, and if I showed my boss the scene where she first met Ethan to talk about the business deal, where she talks to him in a snarky tone and then refuses to shake hands, he would laugh his head off at how bad a "business deal" scene it was. On top of this, the film keeps acting as if her attitude is no big deal. Ethan keeps acting like he's in love with her, and keeps warming up to her, even though she treats him like crap in every scene, and any sane guy would have cut off all contact with her days ago. By the end of the movie, everybody still loves her, if not more... and why? Because she said she was sorry to her sister? There's no major character turn like in "A Christmas Carol" or other holiday movies. She doesn't even apologize to other characters she wronged. For example, there's a gay character she makes an anti-gay crack at, but at the end of the film he's being friendly to her as if that jab at his orientation never happened. And Ethan, of course, is all heads over heels for her even right at the end, though it's for no other reason than the script says he has to be. (Keep in mind that when they first meet, it was hinted at that Carrie wanted to lay off people at Ethan's company, which he was obviously opposed to.) Even my wife, who is usually forgiving towards romantic films, and can get into the stories and characters, found absolutely ZERO connection with Carrie, and had no idea why any male character would be into her.
I was tempted to give this film 1/10 stars, but there were one or two scenes where I legitimately laughed, and some of the other actors do a decent job in their roles, so I want to give it some leeway. Either way, I would really avoid this movie. It's just bad. Or, if you want to see a bad Hallmark to riff on, have at it with this. With both guns blazing.
