A Wish For Christmas (2016) Reviews

• Yeah, not quite Hallmark's Best

  RNMorton2016-12-03

  But if Lacey Chabert's in it and it's Hallmark I'll usually give it a solid look. Lacey has become the Queen of Hallmark Christmas movies, she's quietly attractive, distinctive, and with a little edge to her. I really liked her last few Hallmark Christmas entries, this one seemed a little forced or something. Lacey is a marketing wiz who won't stand up for herself, at the company Christmas party she gets courage from Santa, and then gets thrown into a challenging marketing pitch with company CEO Greene. I know Greene is also a Hallmark staple (who I hadn't seen before), he was okay but something about this just didn't feel right (as opposed to, say, Once Upon a Holiday where things seemed to effortlessly flow). So I would recommend it to the Hallmark hard core but not necessarily others.

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• Missed the mark

  jonathanrspalding2016-11-07

  Lacey Chabert has made a niche for herself in the popular Hallmark movies of Christmas. Generally her movies have been above the norm and quite good. Unfortunately this one was not. A Hallmark Christmas romantic comedy has a narrow range of possibilities and outcomes so four factors make it work or not. One, is it romantic. Sorry, but not here. The male leads character was a jerk who makes his employees work on Christmas and refusing to see his family on the Holidays even though he was in town. The better romance would have been between him and Lacey's co-worker. Her role should have been expanded as it would have made the movie at least more comedic. Two, it is funny. No, this one was not generally funny nor really tried to be. Three, is it supported by good side characters and subplots that make the story enjoyable. This is more true here but still it was below par. Four, does it have meaning to the Christmas season. While this is kind of true here, it still could have been set in March by finding a leprechaun as easily as it was set in the Christmas season. All in all, while to be fair there are some good moments, specifically Lacey telling off her supervisor at the Christmas party, and nice elements generally it fails to really be romantic or funny which is not a good combination for a romantic comedy.

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• Psychsophrenic leads

  Jackbv1232017-07-17

  Lacey Chabert plays a total doormat who is turned into an assertive, confident closer via a Christmas wish. Question is, after getting the wish granted, should she still have some of that overly-apologetic wimpy character. My opinion is that it should be a lot less than the way it is played. Chabert goes back and forth from assertive to apologizing. Constantly. I guess the writers and/or director thinks otherwise, but to me it came off badly. Chabert didn't seem convincing in either one. Green also flip flopped. In the beginning he was over-demanding, shouting negative orders at the one guy who seemed to be his assistant. When he is with Sara on the road, he is ready to give up and only she salvages the car rental and the appointment. At times he seems to let her lead him around and at other times he seems angry that she is at least taking a last shot when there is nothing left to lose. He frequently has uncertainty in his eyes which is not consistent with the CEO of this company. After she seems to blow the pitch, he gets angry and bossy again. Then he shows up at work on Christmas as a nice guy again. I read reviews that complain the ending is too abrupt. While I agree that it wasn't totally comfortable, I also disagree thinking that there was no real mystery about what took place off screen. Neither scene, whether the client or the dad, would have been easy to film, or entertaining. I also read a review that said Sara returned to being wimpy. (BTW, that review has spoilers and is not marked as such.) But, her apologies to her boss after the failed pitch are no different than several apologies that took place earlier and it was certainly no wimp that climbed into the limo with the client. And she did not wimp out with her boss in the final scene. The film was lacking in romantic moments. It doesn't totally make sense that they are kissing at the end. And I don't remember a lot of humor. But there was a heartwarming sense of pride each time Sara took charge, and in the scene with the little girl, and with Peter's family. I was thinking we should call Sara "the fixer". I had trouble rating this movie. The first time I watched it, I left a rating of 9. After the second time, I downgraded it mostly because of the lack of romance.

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• Did they cut out a piece of the movie?

  beth-688122016-11-28

  I love Lacey Chabert and generally love everything she does. But my husband and I rewound this movie about three times looking to see if we had somehow skipped a part of the movie while fast forwarding through the last batch of commercials. It just felt like a chunk of the movie was missing. It felt like they ran out of money and said okay we got five minutes to wrap this thing up! They never told what happened between her boss, Peter, and his dad and yet the dad shows up at the end all happy. Yes, it shows Peter walking into the house saying, "Dad, dad." And then boom, we are jumped forward in time with his dad flying in to Peter's company and saying, "Thank you for coming home and straightening me out." What? Really? We were never told what happened to estrange them! Peter "changed" enough to provide his workers with Christmas dinner and gifts, even double pay, but not enough to give his workers the day off?? They didn't show how Lacey's character managed to change a real jerk of a client to her way of thinking after her Christmas wish had worn off. The ending really just felt disconnected to us. The effect ruined the whole movie. Thumbs down on this one!

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• What did we miss??

  tims-797142016-12-10

  Thank you to the other reviewers who wrote about the dissatisfying ending. I did the same thing, re-watching the ending to see if I somehow missed the conversations between the male lead (Peter) and his father, and the female lead (Sara) and the jerky client. How the heck did everything get wrapped up so neatly? And I agree that it certainly appeared that Peter would not have run after Sara at the end if she hadn't gotten the contract signed, since he was totally cold to her when she arrived. Wow. True love. And way too much wasted filler... for example, wouldn't it have been cool if the mother and daughter who Sara helped at the car rental agency turned out to be the client's family, which is why he had a change of heart??? As it was, it seemed like just a silly waste of time that could otherwise have been used to explain the "happy ending."

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