Deck the Halls (2005) Gabrielle Carteris, Steve Bacic, Jocelyne Loewen, Ken Pogue, Steven Culp Movie Review

Deck the Halls (2005)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Gabrielle Carteris in Deck the Halls (2005)

Santa Needs Hip Surgery

Some time after her husband passed away Holly Hall (Gabrielle Carteris) and son Ben (Josh Hayden) returned home where her father has lined up a job for her running the accounts department at his Dreamland Toys Company. She also meets Nickolas St. Clair (Steve Bacic), her hip neighbour, when they get off to a rocky start due to him blocking her drive. And things gets no better when she learns that her father has hired Nick to run this year's advertising campaign. But with Nick owning his own sleigh and having small people working with him on the advertising campaign Ben not only believes that he may really be St. Nick but he also decides to try and set him and his mum up.

I am a lover of Christmas movies, in truth I start watching them when the weather starts to turn a bit colder I love them that much. But as someone who probably watches more Christmas movies in the lead up to Christmas than most people watch in a whole year I am well aware that Christmas movies can be a hit and miss. Sadly "Deck the Halls", the 2005 made for TV movie, is more of a miss than a hit because whilst it has a nice idea and some entertaining characters it suffers from being far too corny.

Steve Bacic in Deck the Halls (2005)

So what we have going on in "Deck the Halls" is the familiar storyline of a widow and her son with the son trying to set his mum up combined with that bit of Christmas mystery over the guy next door who seems uncannily like Santa. Of course there is also the antagonism thrown in as well as Nick initially winds Holly up but of course end up getting on when she sees that Nick is really a good guy. It is all very obvious, very sweet, very Christmassy cute and to be honest a little heart warming in a generic Christmas kind of way with no surprises for those who like me watch lots of Christmas movies.

But "Deck the Halls" is not without its problems none more so in the seemingly mismatched casting of Gabrielle Carteris as Holly and Steve Bacic as Nick. Not only does Carteris play Holly as far too uptight whilst Bacic over does the being hip as Nick they look like they have and would never have anything in common. The contrast between them is too large to be believable and unfortunately they along with Josh Hayden, who plays Ben, all over play their parts. It makes "Deck the Halls" far too corny even for a Christmas movie and whilst it doesn't completely wreck the movie it does drag it right down. What actually wrecks the movie is the ending which to be honest had me in fits of laughter it was that bad.

What this all boils down to is that "Deck the Halls" is a bit of a miss when it comes to the wide world of Christmas movies. Despite some nice ideas and okay characters the end result is just far too forced to the point of being uncomfortably corny with an ending which screams put bad movie.

Tags: TV Christmas Movies, Christmas Movies


LATEST REVIEWS