Nov 17

Nov 17 'Countdown to Christmas' movie review: 'Write Before Christmas'

Fans of "Love Actually" will find a lot to love about the holiday romance "Write Before Christmas" (premiering Nov. 17 as part of Hallmark Channel's Countdown to Christmas), which follows a handful of people whose lives are changed by a Christmas card they receive.

In short: After Jessica (Torrey DeVitto) gets dumped before Christmas, she sends five Christmas cards, affecting her best friend, brother, aunt, a pop star, and her past cello teacher - which brings the teacher's photographer son and Jessica together. Chad Michael Murray, Lolita Davidovich and Grant Show also star.

Taken on their own merit, each vignette is ... nice. The core of each individual side story has a genuinely moving sentiment, with widowed aunt Lila (Davidovich) meeting a friendly neighbor (Show), or her brother enlisted Carter (Madison Smith) trying to find the nerve to approach Angie, another soldier he's attracted to (Lanie McAuley). The heart of each segment is rooted in some nice theme, be it being homesick during the first Christmas away from home, making long-delayed amends or finding unexpected love.

The basic idea that Jessica would take a break from dating and reach out to the most important people in her life is honestly the best part of "Write" -- because energy-wise, this Hallmark flick is pretty flat. This has a lot to do with the fact that "Write" has no almost stakes at all. It's impossible to get too invested in any story with there's little to nothing compelling the story forward. The film could be pretty easily summed up as "Jessica writes letters, then meets a guy." There's some b-plots moving in the background, but despite the fact that the side stories are rooted in moving thematic cores, the ancillary plots themselves are very thin. Very little happens, with very little at stake.

For a film that is barely 90 minutes, "Write" takes too long to get the story moving along. This is particularly a problem for "Write" because the movie itself doesn't just have a few moving parts - the entirety of "Write" is a mass of intertwined moving parts. The story comes up with a pretty standard "getting dumped before Christmas" plot turn to justify Jessica's Christmas letter campaign. It's very nearly a half hour into the movie before the letters are finally delivered and start to shake up the lives of Jessica's loved ones. The problem isn't the story itself - "Write" is just inefficient with its pacing, robbing the side storylines from precious screen time to develop into truly magical stories.

Final verdict: Instead of one well-told story, "Write" is five rushed, very loosely connected vignettes. It's a perfectly nice little movie that never reaches its potential.