Falling in Love at Christmas
Published December 23, 2022
Film info
- Title Falling in Love at Christmas
- Director Sharon Lewis
- Year 2021
- Run time 1hr 25m
- Genres Romance, Comedy, Family
- Tagline Secretly santa
Miranda, a tech guru, has developed an app to help Christmas shoppers select the perfect gift for their loved ones. At a Christmas party, she is noticed by a mysterious Santa who seems to be on her wavelength, but they are parted before they can exchange numbers. Meanwhile, she is disappointed to learn that her app has been sold to another company and that they are merging with their greatest rivals.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 1:09 | “Did you use your app on me?” |
| 7:14 | Don’t much fancy kissing that Santa beard, to be honest. |
| 11:12 | Yay, they’re going to hate each other and then find out they love each other. It’s so You’ve Got Mail! |
| 17:42 | “That’s comparing apples with oranges.” “Mainstream with bargain bin.” |
| 19:55 | He’s right though, it’s not scalable for her to find every gift. |
| 27:37 | Second film in a row that has the tree needle trick in so must be true. Also, sticky sap trunk as well, apparently. |
| 33:27 | I have no idea where you’d go to do some curling. |
| 39:40 | “Quality and cheap shouldn’t be mutually exclusive?” |
| 47:03 | Meddling twin sister. |
| 57:04 | Hiding a gift in the back of the freezer seems a bit extreme… unless it’s ice cream? |
| 59:41 | I like ‘park your crusade’ as a way of saying shut up. |
| 1:14:28 | She must know that even trying to keep algorithms unbiased is impossible. |
| 1:24:26 | Not quite as good as walking through the park calling Brinkley, but I’ll take it. |
Thoughts
This is another take on the Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail story where people are rivals in real life and falling in love via their writing - this time it’s app messaging. That part of it was kinda fun, it’s a good storyline and they update it quite well. The leads do better when they’re bickering than when they’re getting on, but that’s okay.
The other part of it is the whole business side, which I think is a fundamental flaw to the whole movie. They’re making apps that help pick out gifts for people, which is a fine idea, although the movie struggles with some of the details of writing apps and the process of updating and releasing them. But I don’t believe the woman, particularly, who is so sentimental about the purpose and meaning behind finding the right gifts would be okay with an algorithm doing it instead. It goes against pretty much everything she says out loud in the movie.
Rating: 2 / 5
