User Reviews

I enjoy the sweet holiday movies, but the acting is just awful. Can you please improve on that. The lead actress is so boring and emotionless, it destroyed some of the cute scenes.

Notice no one ever wears gloves when taking cookies out of the oven? Not just in 'A Sweet Christmas Romance' but all the Christmas movies on Hallmark and Lifetime that are baking themed!

That aside, A Sweet Christmas Romance - starring Australia's Adelaide Kane and Greyston Holt - is set at a bakery in a small town in Maine. The original owner of said bakery is retiring and moving to Alaska, and there is uncertainty about whether it will be sold off or whether someone will take over running.

Enter Holly (Kane) a food stylist from New York City and Brad (Holt), a Florida refugee.

If you've seen even just one of these festive films, you don't need me to tell you that sparks fly between these two. Their chemistry is good, and the movie trundles along at a gentle pace, a slow burn romance between the two leads, with a handful of the usual tropes making an appearance.

Not the best Lifetime Christmas movie ever, but also far from the worst. An easy watch, and an enjoyable one.

I like Adelaide - she's a good actress and above the usual Hallmark standard. She and Greyston Holt make an acceptable couple. But this baking competition story lacks substance. Should have saved the two for a better story.

As a New Zealander who now lives in Australia and knows about pavlovas (long has the controversy gone on about just who invented it) I do hope Brad wasn't planning on serving up the one he made days before Christmas, on Christmas Day. Maybe a day after it was made it would be OK but not after several. It would have been a mushy mess by then. Might still taste almost OK but would not present well. This was a glaring mistake for me but all in all I enjoyed the movie, the acting and the storyline. Not a bad way to spend 90 minutes,

Actually really wanted to like 'A Sweet Christmas Romance' more. Love Christmas. Lifetime have proven more than once that they can do decent Christmas films, and that is including in their very variable 2019 output. The premise sounded quite sweet. And was very intrigued in seeing Adelaide Kane again, best known to me as being one of the best things about the generally disappointing final season of 'Once Upon a Time'. So it did have potential.

Which it didn't do enough with. The premise at first seemed like a change of pace but very quickly became very ordinary and lacking in spark. 'A Sweet Christmas Romance' has its moments and good things, have very rarely considered a Lifetime Christmas film irredeemable and it takes a lot for me to consider one or any film/show etc that. It also has too many very big flaws that sadly outweigh the good things. It could have been a decent inoffensive watch, but to me 'A Sweet Christmas Romance' was mediocre and mostly doesn't hit the sweet tooth enough while also at times being too sickly.

Shall start with 'A Sweet Christmas Romance's' good things. It looks professional and decently made, the scenery is attractive at least and complemented well by the never drab or static photography. The music isn't as intrusive as can be the case with Lifetime (though Hallmark actually do it worse).

Greyson Holt does what he can with his overused stereotype of a character, and manages to make him charming and not stiff. Loretta Devine is going to divide, and has divided, people, on paper her performance sounded like one that would have gotten on my nerves but count me in as another person who felt that she became the best performance of the film and gave it some kick when she appeared.

Kane however was a disappointment. This is yet another character of all my Lifetime/Hallmark etc Christmas film viewings where the female lead has negative character traits exaggerated to an insufferable degree, and Kane's performance is a mess of trying too hard and at other times being dull. The chemistry between her and Holt does have moments where it is obvious they somehow care for each other, but it could have done with more spark and that would have been helped by the relationship itself being fleshed out a lot more and not evolving at too fast a rate. The direction is get the job done without distinction in quality.

The writing overall is pretty much a mess. Very cheesy and stilted often and the sentimentality at times gets sickly. The story is paper thin, very predictable, pretty slow and often contrived with not enough warmth or charm. Not to mention the very that's it abrupt ending that is at odds completely with what came before.

Overall, lacklustre. 4/10

A wonderful movie. The Light hearted and inspiring!

I love a good holiday movie, but the acting was not great, and did no one else notice that the bakers, including the two leads, wore THE SAME CLOTHES for what was supposed to be like 5 separate days of the baking competition? The "judges" had fresh outfits, but the bakers didn't. It was so distracting.

We really enjoy the Hallmark movies. Sure, they are very predictable and if you a few minutes while you run and get a snack, it's easy to pick up the plot when you get back. That being said, this one was one of the worst we seen. Actors and actresses were annoying and the story just totally unbelievable. Interesting that one reviewer thought Loretta Devine was the best part of the show. We thought just the opposite. Way over the top with her acting and reciting lines. Nice to see new faces in the stable of Hallmark performers, but I know they can do better.

I tend to love schmaltzy Hallmark movies around the Christmas holiday season. You tend to see sane actors over and over again, but this movie contained many new faces. The best part of the movie was Loretta Devine, and the rest if it was truly awful. The acting was terrible, particularly the female lead. Wooden, self conscious, unbelievable performance. The male lead was only slightly better. Unbelievable story line. Spare yourself the agony of watching this train wreck.