Too much of everything

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I loved this movie! It just shows you that you can't always trust ratings. We all have our standards I guess. I'm a lover of Hallmark movies and I hate sad endings. For me, this movie was incredibly heart-warming and gave the message that doing the right thing will always win. Jason Gray-Stanford (some of you may remember him from Monk as Lt. Randy Disher) was 100% believable in his character. At first the movie seemed like a slap-stick sort of comedy but it quickly became clear there was more depth to it after awhile. Don't shy away from this movie because of the beginning. Stay with it and you'll be pleasantly surprised. One of my top favs.

This is not really a Christmas film, it's a romance set at Christmas time. So there's no real festive spirit or seasonal joy.What you do get though is a more realistic, than normal, love story. Elizabeth Berkley does a great job playing the struggling mother who wants to give her son everything while having the job she dreams of. She works hard at three jobs trying to bring her dreams to fruition. So when she wins the lottery all her dreams come true... only to be ripped to shreds when her car is "borrowed", along with the winning lottery ticket. She does a great job showing the emotional roller-coaster she's on... and before things get better they get worse.Jason Grey-Stanford does a passable job of depicting the charmer who, unintentionally gets pulled into Elizabeth Berkley's life. There are a few laughs and heartwarming moments along the way, but I doff my cap to the writers and director for taking a more realistic storytelling path.In all the glitzy, schmaltzy, Christmas tales this is a breath of fresh air; one that I would recommend. If it's repeated in a couple of years I'll probably give it a second viewing.

Lucky Christmas has a few issues at its core, and they have nothing to do with the fact that the bachelor who is thrown in the single mom's life is handsome or that boy kisses girl right before the end credits. This is a holiday TV movie and I believe a fair share of the viewing public understands the requirements of the genre. What we don't (or should not) tolerate is a sloppy and irritating ride to the big kiss.Lucky Christmas is the story of a single mom (Elizabeth Berkley) who wins the lottery but gets her car (in which she left the ticket) stolen by the first major problem of the movie: the handsome bachelor's friend. That character has nothing to do in the movie and the more we see how handsome is developed, the less we understand the friendship which looks more like a plot device.The second issue is handsome himself. There is something unsettling about his dreams and aspirations (as well as the kind of personality that would be associated with them) when seen within the context of his family. None of that seems to mesh well together. Not to mention who he hangs out with and how he chooses to deliver the ticket. We are well familiar with irritating romantic comedy ploys, so the ticket wandering around, in and out the house, is not surprising, but mailing it? Really? The movie seemed to be too determined to mess things up, creating a very inconsistent male lead character in the process.The last issue, and the most damning, is how the single mom (who is despite that the most appealing of the bunch) ties forgiveness to finding the ticket and then professes that she doesn't really care about the money. There's something wrong in there somewhere, which makes the character appear more materialistic than she should have for the story to work.

The run up to Christmas is the one time of year I am prepared to watch predictable and cheesy films. This film is just about as predictable as it gets, you know what is coming from the first minute and you aren't proved wrong. Sometimes however you really do just want to watch something undemanding and this fits the bill. What makes this an above average TV Movie is the cast. It suddenly clicked halfway through that Elizabeth Berkeley is the 'star' of the infamous 'Showgirls'- but she is OK in this movie. The real star however is Jason Gray-Stanford who I thought excellent in this. I watched this film with my wife and kids and we all enjoyed it so I recommend it to those who know what to expect.