The commercials for A Holiday In Harlem never made the movie seem particularly interesting. They weren’t wrong.

Jazmin (Olivia Washington) is an executive that helps small businesses grow. When she accidentally causes her grandmother, Mama Belle (Tina Lifford), to get injured, Jazmine has to take over planning the annual holiday festival for the neighborhood. Thankfully, she has her childhood friend, Caleb (Will Adams), to help her.

I wanted to like A Holiday In Harlem. I want Hallmark to have more people of color in starring roles in their Christmas movies. Sadly, this one is just as boring as all of their other movies. And it’s a combination of bad writing, uninspired acting, and a fairly green director to blame.

First, the plot. While the plot is mostly dull, there are a few things that could have been worked on a bit more to bring them to the forefront. There’s a subplot about Jazmine’s parents, who had broken up when she was a child, getting back together without telling her. The script gave us some sly hints that the big reveal was coming up but then it fizzled into nothing. Sure, her parents were holding hands and whatnot but, otherwise, they barely seemed to like each other. It would have been nice to give them a little more to do to show us that they are rekindling an old romance.

In addition, this big holiday festival. All of the events that we were told were going to big, important pieces of the festival, were anything but. I think there were only two outfits shown in the fashion show and the basketball toss was little more than Jazmine yelling into a microphone while kids threw balls around. Spoiler: Everyone gets the same type of gift so I’m not really sure why it mattered if the kids got the basketball into the hoop. It would have been nice to see the kids that did get it in get something extra. That’s the whole point of a game. Maybe every kid gets a gift but if you get a basket, you get a candy cane or something. Either way, the festival wasn’t very festive.

Second, the acting. None of them felt like they actually wanted to be there. This was supposed to be a journey of Jazmine going from not wanting to go home for the holidays to remembering how much she loved her community and family and wanting to celebrate with them. Instead, she seems just as unenthused about being at home at the end as she did in the beginning. And she’s not the only one. Everyone has this underlying boredom in what they are doing. I think everyone would have had a better time sitting at home instead of doing festival stuff.

Finally, the directing. Normally, I don’t harp on the directing a lot. But this one is particularly bad. Too many scenes are people just standing there talking at each other. There should be more movement in the scenes. We don’t even get a stereotypical “walking down the street drinking cocoa together” scenes. The characters all just appear at different functions. No outside establishing shots at all. For all we know, Mama Belle’s house is really really big.

If you can’t tell by now, I’m telling you not to watch A Holiday In Harlem. Unless you are curious whether Denzel Washington’s daughter can act. (She plays Jazmine.) Then maybe give it a watch and wonder why her dad didn’t hire an acting coach for her.