Once Upon a Christmas Wish

Needless to say that I had, of course, not heard about this 2024 Christmas movie from director Brian Herzlinger prior to sitting down to watch it as part of my Christmas movie marathon.

The storyline in the movie was fair, I suppose.

Now I am sure that writers Brian Herzlinger and Megan Henry Herzlinger, with the former also directing the movie, had nothing but good intentions when they collaborated on penning out the script for the movie. And I will say that the storyline definitely were fair, but it just came crashing down hard simply because of poor casting choice. I cannot for the life of me fathom why they opted to cast Mario Lopez for the main role. His acting is subpar, and throughout the majority of the movie he looked like a goofy moose caught in the headlights of oncoming traffic. He seemed oblivious to the cast around him and it was impossible to deter attention elsewhere, as the goofy moose was there all the time.

And I have to say that the randomly added singing and dancing performances by Mario Lopez and Courtney Lopez didn't work one bit either. It felt cringeworthy, awkwardly staged and very unfitting into the narrative of the movie.

The acting performances in the movie were fair, for the most parts. As mentioned above, I can't claim to grasp why Mario Lopez was brought in to spearhead this Christmas movie. Sure, I haven't really seen him since "Saved by the Bell", well maybe from an occasional appearance here and there, but I can't remember seeing him in movies. And his wife, Courtney Lopez, was also in the movie, but also not endowed with a particular memorable acting talent.

I will say that the movie was sufficiently Christmassy to appeal to the audience that gobble up sappy Christmas movies. But personally, I just couldn't get past the goofy moose that bumbled around on the screen. So "Once Upon a Christmas Wish" was not a particularly enjoyable movie for me. Needless to say that this is by no means a Christmas classic for me, nor is it a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Once Upon a Christmas Wish" lands on a three out of ten stars.