Did Hallmark actually combine all of the things I love to see in a Christmas movie with Inventing The Christmas Prince? We have a main cast that is mostly people of color and a plot where the main couple’s romance isn’t the star attraction. We should be careful, right?

Shelby (Tamera Mowry-Housley) is a single parent working as a rocket engineer. Her boss, Evan (Ronnie Rowe Jr), isn’t exactly a “people person” and now his job is in jeopardy due to his employees quitting. When Shelby’s daughter, Grace (Isabel Birch), sees Evan, she thinks that he is the Christmas Prince, the main character in a story passed down through Shelby’s family. Can Shelby convince Evan to play the part and grant Grace her twelve wishes?

For the past couple of years, Mowry-Housley has been starring in some terrible Christmas movies. So, at best. I was fairly sure this was another movie heading into the “Meh” pile. Was I surprised when I found myself actually enjoying this one! Sure, they could have left the whole rocket engineer job out of the movie and only focused on Grace’s wishes but I think it gave Evan a little more reason to start acting like a real human being instead of a robot.

If I was to give Inventing The Christmas Prince any criticism, it would be with the conflicts. I know, I know. Most of the conflicts in these movies are dumb. However, the conflicts in this movie barely exist. We have Sherman (Brady Droulis), who is basically a kindergarten bully. And the issue of Grace’s wishes, though that is honestly resolved in like a dozen lines of dialog. Not really a conflict. It would have been nicer to see Shelby and Evan working together a bit more to get the wishes granted and maybe running into a few more snags. I think it would have given the movie a little more realism. But, as it stands, those are minor quibbles.

Yes, Inventing The Christmas Prince is worth watching. It probably won’t be your favorite movie of the season but it is a sweet family movie.