So it's been awhile since I last saw a film with Melissa Joan Hart. I'm of the age that grew up watching her as Clarissa and Sabrina. She spoke directly to the viewer in those shows and it has left us feeling like we know her as a friend. I feel like she knows this familiarity the younger folks have with her and the general audience does with her modern sitcoms. This familiarity can cause artistic laziness in scripting and acting. I feel like Adam Sandler's modern films have a similar issue. You never get the impression that an actor is giving a performance. Instead, this is just another film where the actor is herself.
That isn't to say the film is without merit. Of its several storylines, a few are actually entertaining. The main one with Melissa and Ricardo Chavira as her love interest gets the most screentime. They have decent rapport. Apparently they sort of dated back in college and grew apart. For some reason, you get the impression they weren't really into each other then. I feel like the actors didn't give it much effort otherwise the stale story could have come off better.
I liked Chavira's interaction with Melissa's father and his children better. It feels a bit more natural when they are repairing heating equipment just figuring things out. The kids try to disguise the dog he has bought them as a reindeer. This leads to some hijinks and one genuine moment of cringe.
The remainder of the stories are really underdeveloped. MAny of them involve people who fall into certain minority groups: elderly women, Indian (from India) women, etc. I feel like these stories were added to pad the runtime. I applaud the film for including more than just white actors yet these groups deserve their own stories. The film, as a while, is watchable if unremarkable.
That isn't to say the film is without merit. Of its several storylines, a few are actually entertaining. The main one with Melissa and Ricardo Chavira as her love interest gets the most screentime. They have decent rapport. Apparently they sort of dated back in college and grew apart. For some reason, you get the impression they weren't really into each other then. I feel like the actors didn't give it much effort otherwise the stale story could have come off better.
I liked Chavira's interaction with Melissa's father and his children better. It feels a bit more natural when they are repairing heating equipment just figuring things out. The kids try to disguise the dog he has bought them as a reindeer. This leads to some hijinks and one genuine moment of cringe.
The remainder of the stories are really underdeveloped. MAny of them involve people who fall into certain minority groups: elderly women, Indian (from India) women, etc. I feel like these stories were added to pad the runtime. I applaud the film for including more than just white actors yet these groups deserve their own stories. The film, as a while, is watchable if unremarkable.