Chrissie

The thing that struck me first was how many of the characters look like they've stepped straight from the Uncanny Valley -- especially our Stylish Santa. Whoever did makeup and hair for this movie needs to go into an entirely different line of work, perhaps at a mortuary college where nobody expects lifelike results.

The bad guy (I'm not sure if he's store security or a supervisor.) is cartoonish. The rest of the supporting cast are stock characters with no memorable traits.

Basically it's a Hallmark Movie. If you like that sort of thing, you'll probably enjoy it. If Hallmark Movies make you gag, skip it. I only ended up watching it because an intellectually disabled woman I was looking after that evening wanted to watch it. I used it as an example of how men who lie to women are only charming in movies. "If he was willing to go to that much trouble to lie to her, how much do you think he'll lie to her when it's easy and doesn't involve putting on a wig and fake beard?"

I found LHotP when I was searching YouTube for Laura Ingalls Wilder audiobooks. The very first clip I spotted should have told me everything I needed to know: While Ma's back is turned, Laura deliberately knocks her spoon off the table. Pa also deliberately knocks his spoon off the table. This was an obvious habit between the two of them for Laura asking for a discreet word with Pa, and Pa obliging. As if Pa would have ever gone behind Ma's back for anything! The two of them have a brief, "We understand each other!" moment as they pick up the spoons. Then Ma came to the table, with her clothes and hair all wrong, and clearly Pa was sharing a private joke with Laura at Ma's expense.

Yes, Pa and Laura understood each other in a way that no two other members of the family did, and yes, they had a special bond -- but that fact could have been conveyed in a way that also underscored the respect Charles Ingalls had for his wife, and that both Ingalls parents demanded that the children show to adults in general and their parents in particular.

I jumped around a few other spots and found the non-bulldog Jack and the non-Ma Ma so distracting that I just gave up. Caroline Ingalls was a prim, proper Victorian woman who managed to remain one in the most difficult circumstances. There is no excuse for turning her into a casually-mussed modern woman.

A few more beefs: Where was Carrie? Pa's fiddle? Laura's BROWN hair and her hated sunbonnet? Next up: An episode of The Simpsons in which Homer neither overeats nor drinks beer, Bart doesn't do a single bratty thing, Maggie never takes a single suck of her binky, and Lisa doesn't even own a sax.

I agree with the other reviewers who suggested that as a generic prairie family/Hallmark Channel type thing, this might have worked. But please, take the Ingalls family's names off the thing! That wobble in the earth's orbit is them collectively spinning in their graves.