Planes, Trains, and Christmas Trees

Predictable scripts, awful acting, irritating music throughout.

Both storyline and it's very title have been lazily copied and modified from the amazing, Planes Trains and Automobiles movie starring Steve Martin & the unforgettable John Candy.

Unfortunately, many writers of today's era are so badly talented with zero creativity. Directors appear satisfied just to meet targeted budgets & deliver on time without ensuring the casts can act.

In 2023, what is it with the Hallmark concepts of having endless stupid music & audio effects during the entirety of today's movies??

Rather than Paramount, Prime, Netflix etc. Producing endless nonsense, it's about time they learned from the success of talented box office hits from the past and understand how movie making in recent years have become boring, predictable and somewhat pathetic.

To conclude.... Planes, Trains and Christmas Trees is perhaps one of the worst Christmas movies of all times.

This movie begins with the common winter premise of being stranded. Isn't it great that Brett's relatives are so close by. The travelers consider planes and trains and rental cars, but don't make any serious effort for any of them until after spending days stranded. How many winter storms strand you completely for days in Ohio? Yes, this is all a weak setup to get Kayley and Brett to work together to produce, you guessed it, a Christmas festival. They do most of the usual things, but it does give them time together to develop a relationship. Even so, like so many Christmas movies, you have to wonder was there really enough between them to fall in love? Another common theme is where Kayley, the visitor, becomes the hero in making the festival a success, despite numerous obstacles including one of the most common - losing the venue.

The acting isn't awful. I find Kathryn Davis appealing when she plays a reasonable character. I was glad to see that although Kayley complained a lot about not being able to get to NYC, she still didn't throw any tantrums. The dialogue is OK.

Throughout the movie, Kayley has a boyfriend calling her from NYC. We learn absolutely nothing about him except that Kayley wasn't thrilled with him. Why? We never really learn.

In a holiday season with literally dozens of Christmas movies, 3/4ths of which are the same stuff, this movie is easily skipped simply because it is nothing special.

Event planner Kayley Cooper (Kathryn Davis) is desperate to get to New York for work. Her plane gets grounded. Fellow traveler Brett Matthews (Olivier Renaud) offers to help. The snowstorm catches up to them and they are stranded in his hometown where he is still a celebrated hero. He offers to help a local event with Kayley's help.

The title is an obvious reference to the classic comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The main issue with that is this movie is far away from that classic comedy. First, this is not a road movie. Second, this is nowhere near the comedy. At best, it is a passable romance and that's highly debatable. I don't like their meet-cute. It's better for her to be a workaholic single. That would be a cleaner connection. Their coming together is awkward and slow. This Hallmark wannabe doesn't have the whole formula.

Reel One Entertainment TV movies are notorious for the various technical issues, most notable are music and audio. This one takes the cake.

Remember notorious "Christmas Belle" TV movie? Remember how vast majority of us hated it for the constantly loud background music? Somebody at ROE TV tought it would be great idea to do it again, but this time would be different, right?

Act I is unwatchable because there is constantly obnoxious loud background music. Non-stop. I decided to watch till the end to see how deep rabbit hole. In Act II it was toned down a bit. "Just" ~75% of all time. Then again music was cranked up in Act III. It simply destroyed whole movie!

Olivier Renaud is fine TV actor. It is always a pleasure to watch Richard Waugh but he seemed a bit of exhausted. Writing was average but good enough for this type of movies. But you can't concentrate on anything because of loud music and it's especially annoying if you use good quality headphones.

Like so many other ROE TV movies in the last few years, it is almost always Hamilton or Kelowna pretending to be some US city or town, and this time it was Hamilton pretending to be real life Sulphur Springs, Ohio.

As with any other ROE TV movie, you can watch a trailer and see the whole movie compressed which I recommend to do to save yourself from the audio torture.

The actress playing Kayleigh over-acted so much it was cringe worthy. I often wonder if the stable of new actors used by the Hallmark studios are straight out of drama school - a) to give them experience and b) because they're cheap . As another has said Reel One Entertainment over does the musical background, and this is no exception.

The storyline is a staple for christmas output - leaving to get home / attend a meeting.... flights cancelled ...... meet a stranger ...... snowstorms ..... have to stay put... deadlines to meet and always by Christmas Eve. See, even I could put a suitable script together !!!

Often wondered why the Americans refer to "the holidays" (something we don't do in the UK) instead of Christmas.