5.4 stars.
If I was one of the writers at Hallmark and my boss told me I have a deadline to come up with a title and theme for 5 Christmas films today, I bet one of the titles would inevitably be 'Cranberry Christmas'. Why, because it rolls off the tongue, but a flashy name does not guarantee a good movie. In fact, it might be pretty bad like the real 'Cranberry Christmas'.
I could imagine the conversation with my boss:
Boss: "Give me a good title for our next movie in the next 10 seconds".
Me: "ummm, what, why, I need time to think on it."
Boss: "Just for giggles, now, spit it out"
Me: "uh, Christmas with Crawdads?"
Boss: "No silly, something Christmassy, something that is fun and colorful, bright, and jolly"
Me: "Christmas with the Cranberries".
Boss: "Sounds good, what is it about?"
Me: "It's about a family named Cranberry, a real sour bunch and they don't enjoy Christmas, a cool little play on words."
Boss: "make it happen, I like it".
Ooops, it never came to fruition, because someone else in the department already got approved for 'Cranberry Christmas'... turned out to be a big mistake.
What is the theme of this movie? It's not the cranberries, it's not Christmas, it's about saving a failed marriage.
The leads have ZERO chemistry. No, they have Absolute ZERO chemistry, it's the anti-chemistry. And is this absence of energy and chemistry by design?
What I learned from this is that it's actually a fairly realistic view of a couple who have grown apart. How do you salvage such a relationship? One must sacrifice pride, self-respect, even their own desires in order to provide an effective olive branch. It's messy. Some of this movie depicted it well, the rest of it was hogwash.
This movie was made because there was a deadline and they were out of ideas. This was on the back burner for a very long time (it had to be, right?).
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