It didn’t take very long for us to move into the “female business owner tries to find love for Christmas” trope. And, yes, she owns a bakery! At least the title is kinda cute?

Josh (Eion Bailey) is a widower who has moved, with his son, to a small town in order to be closer to his family. He signs on to help his sister-in-law, Amy (Julie Lynn Mortensen), plan the town’s annual Christmas festival. One of his duties is to coordinate with the local bakery owner, Molly (Alvina August), to make sure there are Christmas cookies for all of the children. Since all of their conversations are over the phone, neither of them realize that they keep running into each other as they prepare for the holiday.

Can we all agree to stop bugging business owners, especially those who are running their entire business by themselves, about their love lives? Poor Molly runs a rather successful bakery all by herself yet her sister, Jane (Nadeen Lightbody), is all up her face trying to get her to date. Molly can barely handle all of the work she has. How about find her an assistant or something first?

OK. Rant over. Looking beyond the business owner trope, Deliver By Christmas actually has a cute take on it. Instead of a man trying to push his way into her life, both Josh and Molly are doing their own things. They’ll be out buying Christmas trees or getting ice cream and just accidentally bump into each other. They may have a spark but they don’t act on it until their Christmas duties are finished. I can respect that.

While it would have been nice for Molly to ask Josh about his relationship status instead of assuming things about him, I can understand why she didn’t. Since they only ‘met’ each other a couple of times and for just a few minutes each time, it would be weird to randomly ask a man with a child if he was married or something. “Hey, I see you’re here getting your kid some ice cream. So, is there, like, a wife in the picture?” Blech. It’s normal to assume he is married in that situation.

Despite the fact that Deliver By Christmas is a very cute movie, I did find myself getting distracted frequently. It was difficult for me to keep my attention on the movie. I think because the stakes didn’t feel high enough. For example, Molly kept saying she was busy but we didn’t really see busy. Yes, she was baking a lot but it didn’t seem like it was an unusual amount. Josh’s sister in law kept saying how much work she had to do to plan this festival but we didn’t see that. Josh did a ton of stuff yet he still had plenty of time to build snow forts, bake cookies, and whatever else was on the list of things to do with his son.

Another thing that bothered me was, in the beginning of the movie, Molly said she wished she could take orders on her website. And they established that Josh is a “tech guy” who worked a lot after his wife died. Yet at no point did anyone try to put the two of them together to get this accomplished. Molly’s sister was friends with Josh’s sister…there’s no reason they couldn’t have figured this out. I kinda hope that there’s a plan for a sequel so we can see the two of them working together…maybe he starts his own website business where he can help all of the small businesses in town while she hires some new people to help her at the bakery. Then next Christmas they start a new tradition or something.

This is definitely an OK movie to sit through. The military angle did seem a little forced but whatever. I think we all have to lower our standards for Hallmark.