Guess who’s back. Back again. Hallmark’s back. Tell a friend. Yep, it’s another Hallmark Christmas movie. You’re so very welcome.
A Rose For Christmas is yet another movie with a terrible name, so that sets the precedent for how terrible the movie itself is going to be at least. This one centres on Andy (Rachel Boston), an artist who is ardently passionate about the creation of the annual Christmas float in her California town. The float has been designed every year for generations by Andy’s family, but this year she is forced to consider the wishes of her client who commissioned it as he comes on board during the creative process. Things progress and yep – you guessed it – a romance ensues.
Here’s what I’ve noticed so far with these cheesy Christmas films. Every one of them follows the same trend of just launching you right into the story with no build-up. I appreciate the fact that they don’t mess about because Lord knows I hate an overly long film, but a little build-up or backstory wouldn’t go amiss, y’know?
Something about this one feels a little different, however. Don’t get excited: it’s still not good. However, setting a Christmas film in California is BOLD. Christmas in New York is overplayed at this point, so this is actually a refreshing spin on things. You have to give the writers credit for originality of location, even if the whole love story schtick is not unique in the slightest and completely obvious from the first line of script.
A Rose For Christmas is more like a long Christmas special episode of an average to poor teen TV show, but it has spirit at least. There’s some jolly music filled with bells, and one or two funny parts (the girl being scared of rye bread particularly tickled me) so it at least got the Christmassy tone right, which is more than can be said for some of the other garbage I’ve seen thus far.
The downside here is that the characters aren’t all that likeable or interesting, but the idea of basing the plot around decorating a festive parade float is kind of fun. Even if it’s cheesy as balls. And the corny family football montage was great. Sue me. In comparison to some of the other nonsense reviewed here recently, I’m not ashamed to say that this one was not so bad! Corny, yes, but not bad, per se.
Absolutely no one would cry if the awful singing scene ended up on the cutting room floor, but as far as crappy hallmark-style Christmas movies go, this could have been much, much worse.
A Rose For Christmas is available to stream on 5 On Demand in the UK.
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