Interesting. Apparently, A Dickens of a Holiday! used to be called The Christmas Stand-In. I’m not sure which is the better title.

When her Scrooge comes down with laryngitis, Cassie (Brooke D’Orsay) turns to her former classmate, Jake (Kristoffer Polaha), to take over the role. With Jake’s movie-star status, the play is bound to be a success!

The only real thing I can about about A Dickens of a Holiday! is that it is so bland. In the beginning, they try to make Jake look like a stuck up diva but that lasts about a half hour into the movie. Then they decided he was more of an everyman shoved into an action actor role. Either one of those tropes would have been fine. They just needed to pick one. It would have been fine if he was an egotistical maniac that Cassie had to talk down at every moment to remind him that the play is not about HIM. Or it would have been fine if he was a shy introvert who only pretends to be the big action man when a camera is rolling. He can’t be both.

Sadly, I have to file this movie into the Boring pile. There isn’t anything particularly interesting about it. The big conflict comes when Jake has to attend a Christmas party in order to win the movie role he wants. But the party is on Christmas Eve, the same night as the play. It’s confusing because he supposedly got the chance at the role because his assistant sent a video of him rehearsing to be Scrooge. If the movie director liked his rehearsal footage so much, why would he insist that he back out on the play at the last minute? It makes no sense. It also makes for a terrible conflict.

Like the other boring movies, flip this on while you’re doing chores. You can easily pop in and out of the plot without losing track of the plot. Maybe that will make it slightly more interesting.