Gotta save something.
In this case, the family bowling alley. But please don’t save his hair…
Before watching this I had seen some commentary online that the lead’s hair was bad to the point of distraction. It isn’t always one of the first things I tend to notice, but oh my goodness… it was either the worst wig or he has the more intensely extreme hairline out there.
Once I got past that, this was an ok watch, but firmly in the B-movie class for Hallmark. Audrey is home for the holidays to discover that her family is selling their multi-generational bowling alley that someone still holds pride of place on the main street. Jason is her high school ex turned local newscaster, who takes on telling the story of the bowling alley to help drum up interest in the sale. But being back in her old haunts leads Audrey to fall back in love with… running a bowling alley… to the detriment of her business partner who was counting on her to help launch a new restaurant business.
Sure, there are a lot of the standard tropes - some off-key carolling and Christmas-themed bowling activities, but it doesn’t do enough to really pull you into this movie.
Watching this one of the things that stood out for me (besides the hair) was how new everything looks in some of these movies. I’m going to go ahead and guess that there are financial constraints that make renting out new builds easier than finding sets that actually feel like long-time family homes, but it makes it so much more difficult to get that homey feeling when everything is so new and crispy white, and the actors look like they’re worried about leaving fingerprints on the furniture.
This was a miss for me. Onto the next…
