Christmas Next Door

My wife and I settled in for some festive TV watching a couple of weeks ago, and we landed on Christmas Next Door from the Hallmark Channel. However, we also had things to do, so we only watched parts of this movie over the course of two hours. By the time the movie was over, I estimate that I had watched about 18 minutes of this actual movie, and my wife probably watched about 12 minutes. There was some overlap in our watching, but there were also some parts one of us watched while the other person was doing something in another room. Together, we pretty much got the gist of the story.

It seems that the guy in the story, who early on had his black hair completely slicked back, did not have the Christmas spirit, and did not like decorating for Christmas. There was some annoying man who lived on Slicked-Back's block who wanted to decorate the front of his house for him, but Slicked-Back was having none of it. After not watching for a little while, my wife and I tuned in to find a blonde woman, who also lived on that block, talking to her sister about how Slicked-Back doesn't like to decorate. This part was troubling to me, and I honestly feared for Slicked-Back's life at that point. It seemed that the whole neighborhood was obsessed with him. I was afraid that the neighbors were going to drug him, kidnap him, and perform medical experiments on him where they tried to make him part reindeer. I imagine that they probably would have attached the antlers to his head, kept his face in tact, given him a reindeer torso, kept his human arms and legs, and then attached hooves. Sleep with one eye open, Slicked-Back!

I guess my fear wasn't so great that I had to keep watching because we stopped paying attention to the movie for a while. When we started watching again, Slicked-Back was still alive, BUT he was hanging out with the blonde woman enjoying Christmas carols AND his hair went from being slicked back to an even side part. This encapsulated the main character's transition from being a bad boy who was too cool for xmas to the side-parted teddy bear who wanted nothing more than to buy the prized goose for Bob Cratchit's family. My wife noticed this too, and we both instantly knew that Side-Part had found the true meaning of Christmas. I was so moved that immediately hugged my daughter, but she was busy tearing napkins to shreds and therefore did not seem to care about my hug.

You can pick away at any Hallmark movie's details. There's always something that doesn't fit or how about that half of them are shot in the summer and have melting foam everywhere! The whole point of watching these movies is to suspend reality for a couple of hours. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be watching them.

I actually thought this moving was refreshing. It was modern and I enjoyed the dialogue. The kids were well cast. They weren't annoying and whiny which is often the case.

I know Jessie Metcalf's hair was ridiculous and so was April's (can't remember her real name), so many ugly extensions! But her acting was great and was beyond TV movie quality and all and all I think the cast was believeable.

I also liked that they shot this movie in the fall (guessing) at least. I could see that the tree branch's were bare and in certain scenes you could see their breath because it was chilly out. I hate when they shoot these wintertime movies in the summer!

This is the first time I've ever written a review and it was because I thought this movie was a cute, original, thoughtful Christmas movie.

Fiona Gubelmann and Jesse Jesse Metcalfe have great chemistry. Their flirting is sparkling.

Otherwise, this is pretty much a run-of-the-mill Hallmark Christmas movie. There's nothing wrong with that, just no great highs or lows. The conflict is one of the old standards - misinterpretation of something witnessed. The movie uses most of the usual Christmas activities. Both of the leads inspire the other to big things.

Like so often is the case, kids add to enjoyment.

Well I liked this, I thought it was warm, with some nice laughs along the way.

Nice to see some non standard Hallmark actors pop up in the lead too.

At the beginning Eric was annoyed at April because her violin students distracted him from his writing. He turns up his music which in turn annoys her. When the street is shown, the houses are not connected, and later Eric says to somebody that April lives 2 houses down from him. Somebody dropped the ball there! As a reviewer early said, watching the violin playing was cringeworthy. I think my dog could have done a better job than the actress. The story was typical light romance from Hallmark and I enjoyed it.