No Time Like Christmas Review

“True love… it’s never forgotten, it lives with us forever.”

Emma goes home to Vermont and finds herself at the same bed-and-breakfast as her first love, Fletcher, who now has a child. They find themselves working together to put on a play and save the local theater.

Meanwhile, Emma has an important deadline that she must meet for work – an ad campaign for a watch brand. Will Emma and Fletcher get a second chance at love, or will they run out of time in the 2019 Lifetime movie, “No Time Like Christmas”.

Our Review: “No Time Like Christmas”

We’ll just say it:

This movie is terrible.

The only reason we didn’t rate this one lower was because we did quite enjoy the work of Jim O’Heir, who played Noel and Charles (and Mitch apparently). He was a magical Santa-like person who guided several of the characters in the direction they needed to go to find love.

Also, it looked very Christmasy. The houses and bed and breakfast were all made up – although the sister’s house did look a bit like Christmas threw up all over it. It looked pretty staged and over the top.

And that’s it for the good.

So now let’s count down the 12 fails of “No Time Like Christmas”.

Fail #12

Who launches a holiday watch ad campaign on Christmas Eve on social media? Duh. If you want people to buy a holiday watch, you may want to launch that campaign a little earlier.

And Emma is given just 16 days to come up with a crucial campaign? Really?

Yes, Emma, this is crazy, and we’re just getting started.

Fail #11

The conversations via video calls with Emma and her sister, Bronwyn, are super forced and canned. They’re also full of exposition to shove in a back story.

Fail #10

Katherine is madam superlative. Everybody is the most beautiful. She acts like she hasn’t seen anyone in years and just saw them yesterday. All extreme compliments to every single person.

Fail #9

Let’s talk about fate. Thomas, the innkeeper/baker/artist/mayor goes through this long story about how some old guy complimented one of his paintings and convinces him to start paining again, so he went to the store to buy paint, where he ran into Katherine, Fletcher’s mom.

Emma thinks this is fate. Us? Quite the stretch. Thomas and Katherine were both just at the same bed and breakfast that Thomas runs one day earlier! Plus, both of them live in the same town!

Fail #8

Fletcher has a chip on his shoulder about her being a workaholic. But he’s a total workaholic too – and even talks about how he spent so much time away from Lola, his daughter, and her mother, when he was doing a play in England.

For a workaholic, Emma does no work on her ad campaign. She just lucks out by accidentally sending the movie poster and script to the client.

Fail #7

Sarah, the young actor, is way too young to play the role of competing love interest.

Sarah looks like she could be the older sister of Fletcher’s kid, Lola. Kind of gross.

Fail #6

We’re never a fan of leads who are mean toward each other. And that was the case here.

The sarcasm and biting mean comments toward each other throughout the movie wasn’t at all romantic or healthy.

Fail #5

It felt like they were trying to tick checkboxes on a Christmas movie list. Have to decorate a tree. Everything has to be super Christmasy.

However, everything just felt forced and overdone.

Fail #4

The mix-up was super obvious and contrived. From her room, Emma overhears Fletcher “talking” to Sarah about how he’s been thinking about her and loves her. Emma gets super upset.

It was totally obvious they were just running lines. And Emma can’t figure that out – even though he gave her the revised script a few minutes later.

Fail #3

At one point, Fletcher mentions how they have 4 days to go until the play, and the actors have no chemistry.

Ironic, because the two leads in this movie have no chemistry either! And it feels like it was written in one day.

Not to just single out the leads, by the way. Most of the acting in the movie was pretty bad (read: robotic or like they’re all Stepford Wives).

Fail #2

The play is written in one night. But it still major flaws and goes through several rewrites.

The auditions happen with a week to go. So that people can learn original music and dialogue. Plus, Emma writes and original song that they have to learn.

Sarah, the lead actress, is just randomly handed a script on the street and told to try out for the play. Because that’s how auditions work.

And all of this starts with less than 2 weeks to go before the play is put on. Seriously?

Fail #1

If seemed like every few seconds, there was a magical swoosh sound effect. It was gratuitous.

These should only be used sparingly. And, honestly, this movie isn’t all that magical.

And we could probably go on longer, but we’ll leave it to just 12 for now.

Winter Storm Megan Strikes Again

Winter storm Megan made an appearance in Vermont, and wreaks havoc on the play (the main actors can’t get there and there’s worry the sponsor won’t make it either).

Megan is also mentioned in the Lifetime 2019 Christmas movies Sweet Mountain Christmas and The Road Home for Christmas.