Sometimes when watching a movie, you want to see the art of it, but when it comes to Our Christmas Mural, I didn’t see that. I didn’t see the art – even though it was right in front of me. I saw the magic of Christmas.
I can’t understand why it is that I can overlook over bearing parents, annoying secondary characters, insta-love, and more in these movies. But when it comes to Countdown to Christmas, I am willing to overlook a lot. Except chemistry.
I personally think that the leads in this movie were lacking just that. Chemistry. That being said, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t like the movie. I just couldn’t get into it the way that I would have hoped, because the chemistry between the two took me out of the movie.
It made me feel less as if I could escape and more as if I just had to pay attention to the story.
And well, that made me a little sad. But, I still got the point of this movie and I still liked it.
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: After losing her job at an art museum in the city, Olivia, (Paxton-Beesley) a single mom to an adorable eight-year-old son, Parker, (Viggo Hanvelt, “Snow Day”) heads back home to New Hampshire to spend Christmas with her parents, Mack, (Neil Crowne, “Murdoch Mysteries”) and Betty, (Kathy Laskey, “Being Erica”). Knowing Olivia is struggling with an emotional and artistic block since her husband’s passing two years earlier, Betty secretly enters her into the town’s inaugural holiday mural contest and, to everyone’s surprise, she wins. When Olivia has trouble facing the blank canvas, she partners with runner up Will Campbell, (Jeannotte) a beloved teacher in the community. She finds herself clashing with the headstrong yet handsome Will, but as they get to know one another their connection to the arts creates an unexpected romantic spark. With a Christmas Eve deadline looming as well as Olivia and Parker’s impending departure, they must navigate their growing feelings and juggle unexpected curveballs in family and career, all while creating a Christmas masterpiece that will inspire the townspeople for many years to come.
WHAT IT’S GIVING: Art
STANDOUT PERFORMANCE: I don’t have an answer for this because I feel like they all blended together. I just really felt like miscasting was all over the place.
GRINCHISH THOUGHTS: Sometimes it takes a big push to make us change. I get that. I understand that it we can all be scared. Failure is a big thing. It’s a motivator for change, but it’s also something that can make us fear moving forward and doing the things we failed at again. I guess that for me – this movie was all about the changes that we need to make, the things that we need to do, and setting the fear of failure aside.
Olivia is an artist who works as a curator at a museum. Right before Christmas she finds out that she’s going to loose her job. It’s not because she’s bad at her job. It’s a matter of funding. Still though, it’s depressing to hear right before the holidays. But she handles it like a champ on the outside, even though on the inside, she’s worried.
Going home, as with most of us, it’s a mixed feeling. She is trying to do everything she can to give her son a great Christmas. Her husband had passed and neither one of them are moving forward. They are grieving and as we all know that grief is not linear.
When you go hone sometimes you find yourself and if you can’t sometimes other people help you find yourself. Parents are going to help you move forward, even if you don’t want to.
For Olivia, she hasn’t been able to move forward with her art, so her Mom does what she needs to in order to make her do just that. She enters her in a contest to paint a mural for the towns Christmas walk.
While I do love that Olivia’s parents push her forward, her Mom is a little overbearing. It’s a lot to see a Mom that doesn’t listen, but I think we’ve all been there.
What I am having a hard time with is why the runner up is willing to help her. The two have not gotten along and they’ve been quite rude to each other. But we see the two over the course of the movie start to fall for each other. Only Jeannotte and Paxton-Beesley don’t have chemistry on the screen and that makes me not care about the romance aspect of it.
The two feel as though they are friends by association, not two people who are falling in love. While I do love the fact that it brings Olivia out of her shell and see that she has a life worth living to its fullest, it really just feels like a forced thing. I think that the story for this movie was good – but it is a serious case of miscasting.
And therefore, this wasn’t the movie for me. But it still had a lot of Christmas cheer.
CHRISTMAS CHEER: 🎄🎄🎄