Can a movie be a comedy of errors if it isn’t funny?
When Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) returns home for Christmas, she finds that her father has turned her childhood house into a bed & breakfast. Once the news is broken to the rest of the family, they find out that the inn isn’t doing very well. The gang decides that they need to attract travel blogger Bea Turner to their B&B in order to get a five star review and gain more customers.
I don’t want to give away the twist, in case anyone wants to watch this…but it will make it difficult to talk about. After all, the plot of the movie revolves around mistaken identities and characters lying about who they really are. Lucy makes her family lie about who they are, while making assumptions about the actual customers staying with them. It’s a bit of a mess.
To be honest, the best part of the whole movie is that Lucy’s younger sister, Amber (Grace Beedie), gets to use her alternate persona to discover what she would like to do with her life. Lucy’s older brother, Will (Blair Penner), and his wife, Suzanne (Barbara Patrick), have a major life change that is pretty much overlooked. I think they put in way too many characters. None of them get quite enough screen time to make them real.
Can I recommend Five Star Christmas? I don’t think so. The movie wants to be an ensemble piece but it just isn’t there. Hallmark should stick to focusing on the romantic couple rather than everyone around them.