Heart of the Holidays

This was a decent Christmas movie. The story was nice, the acting was good, and the scenery, props, and sets were festive. It just did not have that 'extra something' compared to some of the other very good Christmas movies this year by Hallmark. For example, I recently saw The Angel Tree; it had great chemistry between the leads. The Christmas House was fun and made me laugh. A Timeless Christmas and Cranberry Christmas had different stories to tell...and so on. In this one, it was not until nearly an hour into the film (the scene where Sam decides to organize the Christmas party at the foodbank) that I started to be pulled in by the movie. The acting was pretty good. I last saw Vanessa Lengies in the Christmas movie, A Date by Christmas Eve, where she had a fun and cute performance. Here she had a decent performance. Corey Sevier had a solid performance as well. He had sort of a gentle and confident feel to his portrayal of Noah, which worked, I think. The chemistry between the two was fine, believable. Not the strongest, but certainly not the weakest I have seen; there have been a few thus far where chemistry was rather lacking. The supporting cast had a strong performance; Hallmark usually does a very good job with casting such roles. As I mentioned above, the sets were very polished and festive. I was impressed with that very large gingerbread house that they carried to the truck; the scene where we saw the first spark between the leads. Overall, it was an average, middle of the road Christmas movie that fans of Hallmark will likely enjoy.