Three sisters try to save their beloved home from the bank before Christmas. Starring Kinsey Leigh Redmond, Justen Jones, and Jeffrey Staab.
This film has a lot of the basic Christmas movie themes. We have the big bad bank coming to take the family home that has been in the family for years. Then you have a You’ve Got Mail romance happening between the loan shark and the librarian sister, who’s working hard at trying to keep the family home. The storyline isn’t bad, but this film is terrible. It’s the worst I’ve seen in filmmaking in a long time. It might be a first film, and if it is – keep trying. The editing is bad; there were scenes cut into other scenes that hadn’t happened yet. I actually had to rewind the film multiple times to understand what I was seeing since it made no sense with the scene that was playing. In addition to a bad script, there are multiple times when the songs don’t match the tone of the scene. To top it off, there are bad camera angles and bad lighting. In fact, the poor lighting always took me for a loop – I was like, “Is my TV dying?” Then I realized that it only happened on one angle. Oops.
To bring it back to the bad writing, I’ll mention the father character. I could never understand anything about him. It’s crazy: he’s there and then not. It was like he died, but yet, there’s no mention of the death – and then he’s there. When we finally get to one of the last scenes, the father tries to lead his daughter to God. I loved it, but since there was no mention of God before in the film, it felt out of place. I loved the scene, but it was just another jarring point in the film.
The film is like a person learning how to drive a manual car. It’s weird. There are more problems with the writing, especially with the loan manager. I could never figure out his character – is he sweet or a loan shark? He’s introduced as a sweet guy that loves his son, but as he goes to work, he doesn’t know anyone’s name and is fine with forcing people out of their businesses. No wonder the librarian can’t figure out his character. I will say, I did like the moral of the story – that none of us are perfect, but we still love each other just the way we are. Overall, however, this film is not worth the watch.