I have to agree with reviewer "gammajanie" on several fronts. The plot here is predictable ,,, very much so, but
the good cast makes it worth your time. Keshia Knight Pullman is a very endearing actress and she has some really fine chemistry with Brad James, who is also charming and very good here. And it is always great to see the wonderful Tim Reid in anything and he is good here, too, playing, are you ready ?....80 year old Patti LaBelle's love interest ! I'm not kidding. As for Patti LaBelle, I believe she was one of the most powerful and talented singers of the last century. Lately, she was in a couple of Hallmark Christmas movies where she wasn't really given much to do but, basically, just kind of hammed it up in a couple of scenes. But here, she is one of the leading players and has a lot more to do, so she really hams it up ! No great actress, but she's a lot of fun to watch, once you get over the fact that she has had so much face work done that she looks better and younger than she did when the record "Lady Marmalade" was released in 1973 ! LaBelle plays Loretta, Brad James' grandmother, who owns a praline bakery. The producers of this movie made the mistake of including a scene between James, as the grandson, Loretta, as the grandmother, and James' mother (Loretta's daughter). The only problem is, the actress playing James' mother looks old enough to be Loretta/LaBelle's mother even though she's supposed to be LaBelle's daughter ! And there's no way that Loretta makes the best pralines in New Orleans with those long fingernails - she had a hard enough time counting the money in the cash register ! And why the producers didn't tell Patti that this was a Christmas movie, so maybe could you take off that aqua blue nail polish and wear some red, is beyond me.
So, there's stuff like that in the movie that, thanks to LaBelle, adds a layer of fun which makes this mediocre and typical story that is well-acted by a very sincere and believable cast, more interesting and worth a look. I would have given it 6 stars because of the script, but it's a 7, thanks to the irrepressible, unstoppable, and irreplaceable
Patti LaBelle.
