Big surprise! The leading lady of Christmas By Chance is named…..Chance. I’m not sure it can get more cringey than this.
Chance (Winny Clarke) owns a gift shop slated to close soon. She gets hired by William (Jacob Blair) to create the most romantic Christmas week for his girlfriend, Leyla (Celeste Desjardins), ending in a proposal. Will Chance be able to pull it off or will William’s proposal be ruined?
It is really sad that the worst part of Christmas By Chance is actually Chance. She is so painfully clueless about everything that I have no idea how she has been able to run a business for this long nor do I understand why anyone would hire her to plan anything. Despite the fact that she is fairly young (we don’t get age ranges on the characters), she knows nothing about the internet or social media. She literally relies on her young employee, Becky (Celine Tsai), to handle all of her online presence. That part is fine. Hiring someone to handle the online stuff while you handle your actual business is a normal thing. However, Chance doesn’t understand how to post things online and, when she is trying to research things that Leyla likes, she misunderstands all of Leyla’s social media posts. I know there are people that don’t spend a lot of time online but they still aren’t quite as clueless as Chance.
Unfortunately, since Chance is so unbearably annoying, the rest of the movie suffers. Characters like Becky, the social media guru, deserved way more screen time. She is adorable. Maybe she can get her own show where she teaches naive people about social media. The same goes for Ryan (Sharjil Rasool), William’s assistant. I know there is in insinuation that Becky and Ryan get together but I want a movie where the two of them go into business together teaching the old fogeys how to live their lives in the 2020s.
Needless to say, I don’t think you should watch Christmas By Chance. It was painful to watch. I wish there was a way I could unwatch it. Does anyone know a way?