Having lost her mother fairly recently, a young woman named "Hazel Stanley" (Tiya Sircar) has relocated to New York with the hope of landing a good-paying job as an architect at an established firm. Unfortunately, those hopes are dashed when the job is offered to an Ivy League graduate instead of her. So, rather than staying in New York all by herself, Hazel decides to head back to Chicago to spend some time with her father "Ted" (Sugith Varughese) over the Christmas holiday season. When she gets there, however, she is shocked to find that her father hasn't done a good job in taking care of the bakery that her mother devoted her whole life to as the bills are piling up and, unless they can come up with some money very quickly, the bakery is likely to go out of business. Of equal concern is the fact that another bakery has opened up right across the street and it is owned by her former best friend "Shelby" (Kyana Teresa) who she hasn't spoken to in years. And even though her father's bakery has hired an outstanding baker by the name of "James Meadows" (Marc Bendavid), the customers are all lined up at Shelby's bakery instead. To that effect, in order to keep the bakery in operation, Hazel decides to enter a baking contest which offers a prize of $100,000 to whoever can build the best gingerbread house in Chicago. What she doesn't realize, however, is that Shelby and several other notable bakers have also entered this contest and they are equally determined to win this prize as well. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that was one of those films that had potential but failed to really deliver on it. I say this because it had a decent plot and an okay cast to help the film along, but it seemed like the director (Pat Kiely) was more interested in making a political statement than focusing on the task at hand. For example, I wasn't so much concerned with his apparent need to promote diversity and inclusion as I was about the fact that--for a romantic-comedy--it had very little romance and very little comedy. But then, I guess that doesn't matter. Be that as it may, while I don't consider this to be a bad film necessarily, I was still somewhat disappointed with it overall and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.
Review of A Gingerbread Christmas
