source: Serving Up the Holidays

I wish I had read these reviews before I watched this movie. I wasted 2 hours of my life that I can't get back. (And now I have to waste more of my time to come up with 600 characters to post)!!! The female lead is SO bad and thinks she's right about everything. She is not a pleasant character, has an arrogance about her and thinks she's better than everyone else. And her friend/business partner is just as bad, in other ways - like being bossy and pushy. The male lead wasn't much better. He too was a know-it-all, but he was also boring. No charm there. The other characters were just there in the background - not much talking or acting.

I mean, for a simple holiday movie, it's great! The scenery is beautiful with all the city scapes. And the storyline was perfect for this type of movie. The camera work and editing was clean. The acting was acceptable. I liked the main character. The chemistry between the main characters was pretty believable. I liked the focus on living in the moment and not all this heavy weight pulling down the easy breezy feeling of the show. What do you expect in this genre? If you are feeling like like a simple, fun, RomCom with food, then this is your flick. If you want a complex drama, go somewhere else.

One of those cosy Christmas movies you have on in the background whilst wrapping presents. Festive production design, sweet story, solid acting. A warm gingerbread hot chocolate.

The film has little going for it. A chef in the run up to Christmas goes on a week long cookery course with the aim to develop a Christmas menu! Yes because that's what restaurants do so close to Christmas when they already have decorations up.

This has the most unpleasant, vain, conceited, nasty woman as the main female protagonist. If she truly had a restaurant she'd go out of business. She's just bloody horrible without even a hint of pleasant. So I truly hoped the romance would end badly. Then she whines that she was cheated out of Christmas by parents who worked really hard in the restaurant business. As a nurse who often works Christmas I wanted to slap her a shot. So me me me. Anyhoo I gave up halfway through the movie when the vacuous lead made a gingerbread tiramisu. Just avoid it. You'll thank me for it. Or if you're into sadomasochism, go for it. You'll love it!

Mediocre main actors, awfully fake/bad supporting actors. The movie has painfully long and shallow conversations continuously, from one conversation we are jumping into another one in the 90% of the movie. The only positive side is that sometimes there are short clips of a nice winter scenery between them. Anyway these conversations are so boring that you would want to hit your head to the wall instead of watching the movie. Or write an honest review to imdb during the movie like what I'm doing right now and eagerly wait for the end credits. I've seen some bad Christmas themed movies but this is by far the most boring and annoying one that I've ever seen.

This film is so profoundly bad I started an account entirely to write that. The acting is laughably bad, the storyline horrendous, and the attempts at characterisation juvenile. I had the mispleasure of having this playing whilst I changed in a Liverpool Hotel room and I nearly requested a refund on my entire room the strength of how badly it stunk the place out. Offensively bad.

Scarlett is a goddess among chefs, according to her own mind. She is right about everything. Only the most sophisticated dishes will do. And that is her attitude through more than half the movie despite the fact her business is struggling, her partner is trying to push her to new and simpler for the holidays, and she goes on a cooking retreat to gain inspiration. The instructor of the retreat is a rival from her past, James, and she is resistant to everything he wants to pass on. It comes to a head about halfway and her creation gets no praise from the rest of the class, but she seems unphased. So, James' solution is to tell the entire class to take a holiday as a break from class. Finally, Scarlett and James spend some quality time. Even then, Britt Irvin and Zach Roerig have no chemistry. And I wasn't impressed with the acting of either of them. Usually at this point there is a budding romance that gets threatened by a conflict. The conflict does come and is the result of Scarlett's arrogance but there is no evidence of an actual romance despite the fact that the story continues as if there is one. The story might have been mediocre, but the portrayals of the characters by the lead actors left it far worse than even that.

Did the use a chef as a consultant on this movie, it's hard to believe, the good is ludicrous. The sugary food and sickly plot may give you diabetes. It's all standard stuff, from the cute meet to the blossoming romance and irrelevant sub plots but it will put you in a Christmassy mood if you aren't overly worried about realism.