Hallmark usually puts their magical item movies over on their Movies & Mysteries channel. A Magical Christmas Village managed to make it to the main channel! That must mean it’s not very magical, right?

Summer (Alison Sweeney) is working on rebuilding an old building in town while raising her daughter Chloe (Maesa Nicholson). When her mother, Vivian (Marlo Thomas), has to move in, Summer’s perfect world is rocked. Vivian sets up a miniature Christmas replica of the town and tells Chloe that any wish she makes will come true. As Chloe creates scenarios with the mini villagers, wonderous things begin to happen.

It’s funny that the movie is named after the Christmas village set but the set isn’t highly featured. Yes, we get scenes of Chloe setting it up and playing with the characters. Those scenes are fairly far apart though. Granted, we still understand that Summer and Ryan’s (Luke Macfarlane) budding romance is only happening thanks to Chloe. But maybe we could have had a little more of the village appear.

Both Sweeney and Macfarlane are decent actors and Marlo Thomas is classic television royalty. So the movie is not lacking in the talent department. However, it is a basic by-the-book Christmas romance movie. The Christmas village twist does make it slightly more interesting. But I think the most interesting part of the movie is Vivian’s character. Her hippy ways seem way more magical than the village. It might have been cooler if all of the magic was Vivian’s. Like she was the one making her granddaughter’s wishes come true.

A Magical Christmas Village is actually a pretty good movie. It’s not the most interesting that we’ve seen so far but it’s not terrible. I think this is the first movie where we’ve had the two romantic leads actually have something real in common instead of only living on the same street or in the same town. This was one of the few couples I was rooting for. Thankfully, it’s a Hallmark movie so I knew they were going to get together in the end.