At its core, Christmas In Big Sky Country is telling a story you've seen a lot if you're a fan of Hallmark/made for TV style Christmas movies. Big city corporate guy goes to small town, falls in love with struggling small business owner, realizes his corporate job isn't where his heart is and simultaneously saves the small business. It's a tired but comfortable plot which has been done in some version dozens, perhaps hundreds of times over.
The specific plot here is that our male lead Logan works for Big Oil, having taken a job/promotion as a PR guy. Our main female lead Becca is a struggling small business owner in Montana whose brother in law works on an oil rig in Alaska. There's an accident on the rig and the brother in law has his communication cut off which causes concern for Becca and her sister's family. Big Oil makes Logan's first assignment in PR to go to Montana to show they care about the oil worker families.
While in Montana, Logan falls in love with Becca but gets put in some moral/ethical dilemmas as Big Oil does some shady stuff to the oil worker families to prevent a lawsuit. Logan has conflict with his boss as his ethics come into question, Becca briefly thinks Logan is just self interested and doing his job as opposed to actually caring about her/the brother in law. All pretty predictable drama
There are a few things which hold the movie back. The acting is passable but not great, specifically the scenes where the leads express their feelings for each other. The dialogue here is clunky, corny to an extreme even for this genre. The plot itself has a familiar message seen in these movies (big corporate bad, small business good) which is expected but delivered in a very hamfisted manner where Logan's boss ends up almost a caricature of a bad guy.
There is also some stuff to like here. Becca's dad, albeit in limited screen time, gives a good performance with a few amusing dad jokes early on. There is a scene which is surprisingly serious for the genre, where the brother in law is trapped in the rig and Logan has to talk to him to keep him awake. This was a bit more dramatic and serious than the usual dramatic scenes in these movies and I found it to be refreshingly different. The setting of the movie was a little bit different, with the inclusion of the oil rig and that helped the anti-corporate theme work a bit better for me
Overall, for this genre, it's a decent watch but certainly not a great film. If you like Hallmark movies, you might enjoy it if you can overlook some of the overly corny acting.
The specific plot here is that our male lead Logan works for Big Oil, having taken a job/promotion as a PR guy. Our main female lead Becca is a struggling small business owner in Montana whose brother in law works on an oil rig in Alaska. There's an accident on the rig and the brother in law has his communication cut off which causes concern for Becca and her sister's family. Big Oil makes Logan's first assignment in PR to go to Montana to show they care about the oil worker families.
While in Montana, Logan falls in love with Becca but gets put in some moral/ethical dilemmas as Big Oil does some shady stuff to the oil worker families to prevent a lawsuit. Logan has conflict with his boss as his ethics come into question, Becca briefly thinks Logan is just self interested and doing his job as opposed to actually caring about her/the brother in law. All pretty predictable drama
There are a few things which hold the movie back. The acting is passable but not great, specifically the scenes where the leads express their feelings for each other. The dialogue here is clunky, corny to an extreme even for this genre. The plot itself has a familiar message seen in these movies (big corporate bad, small business good) which is expected but delivered in a very hamfisted manner where Logan's boss ends up almost a caricature of a bad guy.
There is also some stuff to like here. Becca's dad, albeit in limited screen time, gives a good performance with a few amusing dad jokes early on. There is a scene which is surprisingly serious for the genre, where the brother in law is trapped in the rig and Logan has to talk to him to keep him awake. This was a bit more dramatic and serious than the usual dramatic scenes in these movies and I found it to be refreshingly different. The setting of the movie was a little bit different, with the inclusion of the oil rig and that helped the anti-corporate theme work a bit better for me
Overall, for this genre, it's a decent watch but certainly not a great film. If you like Hallmark movies, you might enjoy it if you can overlook some of the overly corny acting.
