Hanukkah on Rye

It is very tempting to write than I like it. In fact, I expected it , as History teacher talking to students about the winter as frame for Christmas and Hanukah , as Greek Orthodox discovering , in childhood, the very small comunity of Jews from Gura Humorului , as grandson hearing the stories of my grandmother about her Jewish friends and the mornings of the trains to Transnistria.

Sure, a special Hallmark- my tears of emotion at final are reasonable proof - but the gift of this film is not the subject or the acting but the atmosphere , from the prayers lighting menorah, to the bubble authority, accents, way to New World at youth of XX century, letke recipe and the ...humor.

The romance becomes one of elements , not the axis and the result is charming at whole.

I don't say that as critical of Hanukkah on Rye, it's just that the guy moving in with a "more modern business model" and the anonymous correspondence angle can't help but remind you of You've Got Mail, which reminds you of The Shop Around the Corner. :-)

This movie is great fun, with many warm moments and many amusing moments, including laugh out loud moments. It's also the first Hallmark Hanukkah movie I recall that was all Jewish. The other had one of the romantic leads pretending to be Jewish, or vice versa. We liked those movies too, as it turns out.

Watching this movie WILL make you hungry, as great looking and sounding food is displayed constantly in the delis represented. By the way, we're not Jewish, but we enjoyed this movie and will watch it again, more than once.

I'm not Jewish, so I don't know how accurate this movie was or how authentic the scenes of Hanukkah celebrations are.

I can say that I enjoyed the movie more than any other Hallmark Christmas movie this year.

I have enjoyed three of the Hallmark Christmas movies this year, 2022. I liked this Hanukkah movie better than the three best Christmas movies.

The script has snappy dialogue and the actors perform it well and keep the story moving quickly. The lead actors did a great job and all of the other characters are played by talented actors as well.

The story moves a lot faster than most really boring Hallmark holiday movies. And it's actually somewhat believable.

I recommend this movie.

I love finally having a Chanukah movie that made celebrating Chanukah seem like the norm. The conversations, the intonations, the references, the traditions - I felt like I was watching a movie about people who could actually be family. It just resonated with me. My only gripe was that when they were singing the prayers while lighting the menorah, the subtitles read "singing in Yiddish" when it's Hebrew. Otherwise, just a feel good Chanukah movie. It feels so good to write that! I didn't even realize I'd been waiting for a movie like this! We just don't have enough modern Chanukah movies and I've now found my new Chanukah movie to watch every year.

For a Hallmark film, I would give it an 9 out of 10, but rating on an overall film scale I would rate it a 7/6.5. Hallmark films tend to have the same test formula. This film does breaks the mold in several ways. The dialogue was much better and the plot was well executed. The film uses many of the same plot elements of "You've got mail."

The positive aspects of the film includes the following: The plot moves forward fast after the first 15 minutes, the main characters have a lot of chemistry, the small supporting characters worked well, such as the Apartment reception person, the delivery person, and the matchmaker. The movies does attempt to deal with issues that you would not normally associate in a Hallmark film, such as the decline of the Deli in New York City. Most importantly, the film delivers on what Hallmark movie fans, which is a fun romantic film with a holiday theme.

My many problem with the film is that it does not pay attention to details, such as labeling prayers are in Hebrew, not in Yiddish. In my opinion, there was too much use of Yiddish words that were forced and not correctly pronounced. In an age where the movie "Menache" was successful (which was in Yiddish and used all Jewish characters), I don't understand whey they can't cast all Jewish people for Jewish characters in a Hanukah film, use real dialogue that Jewish people would speak, and get the details correct.