An Unexpected Christmas could describe almost any of the Christmas movies released by Hallmark or Lifetime, right? Something unexpected happens and then, bam!, it’s Christmas. It’s a dumb title. Let’s move on.

Jamie (Tyler Hynes) broke up with Emily (Bethany Joy Lenz) six months ago but he never told his family. The plan was to tell them after they had a nice Christmas together. But the family accidentally runs into Emily at the train station. It turns out that she is in town for a work assignment. Now Emily has to pretend that she is still dating Jamie in order to keep the peace.

While I dislike the title of the movie, An Unexpected Christmas was actually a decent flick. Unlike a lot of lead actors, Lenz and Hynes seem to enjoy being in the same room with each other. It makes their love/hate relationship easier to enjoy. A different set of actors could have royally screwed this up. I’m glad they didn’t.

There isn’t a lot that I didn’t like about the movie. Her job was a little annoying but I don’t think any of the Christmas movie script writers put a lot of thought into the jobs of the lead characters. They just want careers that absolutely INSIST that work be done on Christmas Eve or have projects that are so important their bosses call them literally every single day so they KNOW how important the project is and it NEEDS to be finished right now. Yes, there are jobs that have deadlines around Christmas but I don’t think any of them are quite as harsh as they are in the Hallmark/Lifetime movies.

So An Unexpected Christmas isn’t a must-see movie. But, if you are looking for something to waste some time on, it won’t make you hate yourself for watching it. There are some cute parts and there are some cringey parts. That is the life of a Hallmark movie.