This is the fourth movie I’ve watched on UPtv. I’m already getting very tired of their UPlifting Christmas Movies tagline. The other channels don’t tell me their tagline nearly as often. I’m also tired of the Gilmore Girls marathon commercial. I can’t wait until those stop.
Workaholic Kim (Rhiannon Fish) was expecting her boyfriend, Steven (Jonathan Hawley Purvis), to propose. He broke up with her instead. Her mother, Mary (Lynn Whyte), convinces her to go on a week-long Christmas retreat to relax and reconnect. At the retreat, Kim meets Mark (Clayton James), a newly unemployed executive who happens to be the brother of the retreat’s owner. Will they be able to find what they really want out of life?
The Christmas Retreat was going so well. The romance between Kim and Mark was progressing well until all of a sudden Steven shows up. That is probably my one biggest complaint about romance movies. A woman will be having the time of her life without her current or former partner but the minute that person shows up, they forget everything and go running back to them. Kim knew that she didn’t love Steven any more. She knew that she was so much happier without him. So why in the world would she run off with him when he randomly shows up at the door? She doesn’t even say “Well, I still have some stuff to do here so I can’t leave with you right now.” Women are not carpets to be walked all over.
Does this mean I don’t think you should watch this particular movie? No. It is pretty cute in a lot of ways. There’s a sort of advent calendar type of thing that counts down the days of the week-long retreat that also tells us how the retreat is broken up into different sections. It was cute and seasonal. Kim and Mark do have pretty good chemistry, which is maybe why I was so pissed off when she went off with Steven. If I was using a give star rating system, this one would probably be a three. Good enough to watch but kind of annoying at the same time.