User reviews

These writers took an exciting and interesting concept and made it blah, plus managed to break their own plot.

The concept for this film came from a real story many years ago where a guy started with a paper clip and wound up with a house. It was a pretty crummy little house, but still a house. He did it over the course of only fourteen trades taking a year.

Here a woman wants to start with a Christmas stocking and wind up with a house in ten days, by Christmas.

The story of the trades could have been exciting and memorable, but they aren't. I said they broke their own plot. How? After the second trade, a reporter covering the story actually starts deciding on the trades and surprising her with them.

The acting is blah, the dialogue has nothing with any real personality, and it takes a long time in story days between each trade.

Searh for the Wikipedia article "one red paperclip" to get the sequence of trades in the real story.

I review a lot of tv shows on IMDB, but this is the first review I've written of a Hallmark movie. Trading Up Christmas hit the sweet spot for me - a cute story, a little humour thrown in, decent acting, and not too many of the usual Hallmark Christmas tropes.

I really enjoyed the two leads in this film - Italia Ricci and Michael Xavier. They played off each other well and both came off as people you'd like to spend time with. Ricci, especially, was a breath of fresh of air, as I didn't recognize her from any other Hallmark movies I'd seen. She has a real effervescence that I found very charming.

The story is a little far-fetched at times and there are a couple of plot holes and head-scratchers along the way, but it ended up being a cute story with a nice resolution at the end. As a bonus, there were very few of the typical Hallmark Christmas boxes that got checked, so that was a nice bit of relief.

If you want to kill an hour-and-a-half with a fun, entertaining movie, Trading Up Christmas is worth the time.