Sometimes a sequel is better than the original movie. That almost never happens in Christmas movies. Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding is the exception.

There are only 2 days left until Jacquie (Kelly Rowland) and Tyler (Thomas Cadrot) have their perfect Christmas Eve wedding. When Jacquie’s family shows up, things go awry.

Last year, we saw Jacquie and Tyler meet in Merry Liddle Christmas. And that movie was terrible. Jacquie was too much of a control freak and her entire family is like a chaos tornado that ruins everything they touch. Somehow, they family has tamed their wild ways. Since the movie needs some form of unbridled chaos, we are instead given Garrett, the wedding planner who refuses to speak to anyone besides Jacquie and quits abruptly after her family talks to him a whole three times. (Yes, that part annoyed me to no end.)

Of course, once the infuriating wedding planner quits, the Liddle family jumps to work trying to get Jacquie’s dream wedding ready in two days. While there are still catastrophic accidents that occur, there aren’t nearly as many of them. That makes Wedding much more bearable than the original.

It’s also nice that Jacquie isn’t as ridiculously controlling as she was previously. I don’t know if that is because she’s been spending time with Tyler’s kids or if she had some sort of epiphany. She is still a little weird - she wants an entirely white wedding on Christmas Eve with these atrociously ugly decorations and she apparently tries to feed children goat’s cheese with vegetables. But she isn’t throwing tantrums when things get ruined. She just kinda shrugs it off disappointingly.

The best part of this movie? You don’t need to watch the first one to understand this one. There’s a “Previously in Jacquie’s life” opening and the family members still all call each other by their relationship: “Hey Sis!,” “I love you, bro,” etc. (Let me say that I have a younger sister and I don’t think I have ever said anything like “Hi, Sis!” to her.)

Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding is definitely on my watch list. There are some adorable moments that made me smile. And that doesn’t happen a lot in Lifetime movies!

Before I even start this review, I want to say how much I hate that this is the promotional picture for Merry Liddle Christmas. This has very little to do with the actual story of the movie. Let’s just get into this.

Jacquie (Kelly Rowland) is a successful tech entrepreneur, who is selling her business. In order to nab a new position that she wants, she invites her entire family to celebrate Christmas at her house so that a film crew can make a video of their happy celebrations. Hilarity ensues.

This whole movie barely makes sense. It would have been perfectly fine as a sort of National Lampoon-ish type of thing. Instead of trying to make it funny, almost all of the characters are selfish and unbearable. Jacquie gets mad when anyone messes up her house or her to-the-minute plans. There’s her younger sister’s untrained dog, neither of the kids are particularly well behaved (well, the infant is well behaved!) and no one steps in to correct their behavior, the family matriarch is unwilling to change any of their past traditions to accommodate new ones….pretty much everything that can go wrong does. It’s kind of annoying, to be honest.

Oh, and the romance! That gets jammed in because Jacquie’s niece asks where her “real family” is. Yes, the child actually says that she needs a husband and kids to have a real family. And the kid’s dad, who is sitting right next to her when these words leave her mouth, does nothing to tell her that Jacquie doesn’t need a husband or kids. She has a family. An ungrateful one that destroys her house.

Should you watch this? No. Absolutely not. Go watch Christmas Vacation instead.