Love at the Christmas Contest Review

A daughter enters a town's Christmas tree decorating contest to honor her mother. In Love at the Christmas Contest, love is in the air between two competitors who were best friends growing up. Here's a review of the Great American Family's newest Christmas movie.

Love at the Christmas Contest Overview

Angie (Samantha Cope) is having a hard time this Christmas. It's the first Christmas without her mother and she wants to honor and remember her by doing everything that she loved. That includes entering the town's Christmas tree decorating contest. The winner's tree is used at the Christmas Eve tree lighting ceremony and it was her mother's dream to win the contest some day. So Angie would like nothing more than to win the contest in her mother's name.

One of the competing teams is David (Ross Jirgl) and his daughter Gabby. David was Angie's best friend when they were growing up, but she hasn't seen him in 10 years. Now he and Gabby are visiting his sister for the holiday and the friends get to re-connect. David lost his wife three years ago and he hasn't done much to celebrate Christmas in recent years.

Now David and Gabby get to celebrate the holiday, and have fun enjoying the snow. Gabby has never made a snowman before, so building one with her Dad and Angie is lots of fun for her. The three spend lots of time together and there is an obvious connection between David and Angie.

Love at the Christmas Contest Review

Love at the Christmas Contest is a quiet, but comforting Christmas movie. There's nothing too exciting about it, but there also wasn't anything glaringly wrong with it. It's just a middle of the pack movie. And when I say it's quiet I mean that on several levels. First, there aren't any big moments in the movie. Yes, there are some nice scenes with a Christmas dance, and of course the Christmas tree lighting. However, these are still quiet scenes.

The movie is also quiet from a music perspective. The way that this movie was filmed and edited, it has a very quiet soundtrack. I think this negatively impacts the movie as scenes didn't have the weight they could have.

Love at the Christmas Contest is also quiet in the personality of David and Angie. They are both very soft-spoken and quiet characters. Not that this is a bad thing. I think it's actually one of the more appealing things about the movie because it did make it a very soothing movie to watch. So while I wouldn't recommend the movie, if you do watch it, it's not a bad movie to have playing while you multi-task and do something else.

The Verdict: Vanilla. Nothing glaringly wrong with it, but no substance that makes it worth watching.

Love at the Christmas Contest Recap

Love at the Christmas Contest is a typical movie for GAC. It's a bland Christmas movie without a lot of emotion, substance, or memorable moments. While I think that the story of a Christmas contest is fun, there just wasn't a lot of enthusiasm or excitement surrounding this event. With so many movies to watch on Hallmark, Lifetime, and GAC, I think there are better movies to watch before this one.

Great American Family

Reviews for other Great American Family movies this year: Catering Christmas and Christmas at the Drive-In