An Ice Wine Christmas

Honestly, this is really hard to watch. It's a visual mess. Random stock footage and pointless cutaways. We gave up after 10 minutes as I was worried I might get eye cancer.

The plot was interesting enough but this Roselyn Sanchez? Oh my...Wayyyyy poor acting and ruined the movie. Too melodramatic; too over the top critical and a most uninteresting, not well rounded character. I never thought one person could ruin a plot. She was, most distracting with an overly negative character. Too many TV Christmas movies are "pumped" out without real forethought or GOOD designation of actors as movie characters. Such a shame.

Ice Wine Christmas is, how do we say it, irritating to watch and totally skippable. We follow wine connoisseur Camila (Roslyn Sanchez) go back to her home town of Evergreen and get all worked up over ice wine production after the magical old grandpa who owns the winery decides to - gasp - retire and go to Florida for the winter. He hires Declan (Lyriq Bent), an intelligent down to earth scientist to take over but Camila doesn't like him from the get go even though Declan is the only normal person in the entire movie. Camilia talks down to Declan, makes him wear a ridiculous bright yellow coat, and undermines his scientific credibility - this all comes across quite naturally for Camila so it is a grating adjustment when the plot requires these two to be in love. It just...doesn't...work. The two leads have about as much chemistry as a trash can and an old tire. I'm honestly not sure why the director thought basing an entire movie on an ice wine harvest prediction was a good idea. The jerky nervous anxious editing doesn't help. Camila is not very likable and has unexplained motivations to be annoying, skeptical, and negative. What Declan sees in her, I have no idea. Manufactured drama over automating ice wine production is only so exciting. Camila isn't even an employee of the winery yet she is furious over the business decisions of the owner who by all accounts is doing everything he can to keep everything going per usual after he retires. Camila's Anna Kendrick look-a-like sister seems confused and lost. Nobody seems to bother to look at the weather forecast, weather is predicted by chickadee feathers and dirt in this universe. Camila's overly embellished Miami style accent is out of place and obnoxious. They all want the ice wine frost to come on Christmas but that means they have to do hard manual labor picking grapes all night, in the cold, on Christmas. This makes absolutely no sense. I won't sugarcoat it, this movie is a dumpster fire. It's not cheesy bad, it's just bad. Declan always acts like he wishes he is somewhere else. I don't blame him. Rating: F, 1 out of 10 stars.

There is an element of gut over science, almost of magic, in this movie. I had difficulty pushing my attitude into that realm. There are plenty of movies during the Christmas season that ask you to accept that element of magic, like when a nice old man with a white beard walks out of the picture and next thing you know there is the hint that he is flying away with his reindeer. I can usually accept that and deal with such movies as Christmas fantasy. I just couldn't tell in this movie whether the movie makers were asking us to take a similar step in our minds, or whether it was simply a matter of someone with an intuition that puts together facts subconsciously. That disconnect spoiled the movie for me. It left me confused. I'm likewise uncertain in what I think about the acting and chemistry between the leads. I didn't see the chemistry, but it may have been because of my confusion over the other issues. Certainly Roselyn Sanchez is appealing in her character of Camilla. Sanchez has an elegance about her. I also didn't understand Camilla's indecision over her promotion offer. She's asked several times if she likes her job and she doesn't seem to know. I can understand indecision, but in this case I didn't understand the specific reasons for it.

And this one is not Armenian? TBF, I thought she was Vanessa Marcil (or something like that) from a Vegas show (minus Robert Urich) but then I realized that was in the 2000's so she'd be much older now... unless the wax works had her plastified like that horror movie (Sunset Blvd unless it was House of Wax?) and then I came here and... she's not even Amerinian?? So they all have the same botched face. Add to that list the other Vanessa (Kobe's widow) and no woman is allowed to have her own face on TV? They all look the same like in that Twilight Zone episode where you pick which face you want, 1, 2 or 3 out of the catalog? Eva Longoria was the better version of that face, the others look like they chopped the nose off too much etc. Anyway, Lifetime movies suck. No one can act in them. I was bored, I don't have that many channels left that I haven't watched the same one show they keep reairing for the past 5 years over and over again (seen all seasons times aplenty) so I stopped here: bad mistake, huge. Ok not huge but why does Lifetime channel suck so badly? Who watches this? When they're not doing forced relationship movies the entire December, they beat women the rest of the year. How is this channel still in existence? Maybe they just go to Canada acting schools and pick the worst of the worst of students? (Wait: that was one I tried to watch earlier today but also quit after like 10 min.) Look if you're bored I get it and if you have few channels I also get it. So find a website to play Solitaire and let this channel sink into oblivion and bankruptcy. Where are Arielle Kebelle and Brandon Routh? They ought to make a movie together and raise the bar at this channel! 1/10.

This being a Hallmark-style movie you're not going to get an original plot or particularly good writing. The most you can hope for is clever dialog, decent acting and maybe even some chemistry between love interests. This has none of these. I found it so tedious that I turned it off after 20 minutes and I wasn't even really paying attention anyway (cruising the web on my tablet). Bad acting. Really bad writing although the female lead didn't seem to follow the script anyway. The scenery was mostly Hallmark standard B-roll from Canada but ironically I don't think it was from the area where they make ice wine (Niagra). Skip It.