Crown for Christmas (2015)

You won't be disappointed!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Blistering performances.

This movie was very refreshing because it had a totally new plot and twist from the standard formula Hallmark Christmas movie. All in all it was fun to watch. I do say that it is highly unlikely (and peculiar) that a European king would fall in love with his American hotel housecleaner. Also, Allie does not appear in ANY way to be from Brooklyn. She has all of the classic characteristics and mannerisms of a hometown Midwest girl from Iowa or Minnesota. Still, a good movie. This one scores an A-.

The real heartwarming part of this story is between the governess, Allie, and the pre-teen princess, Theodora. As we all expect, the governess wins the heart of the unruly princess. That doesn't make any less well done or sweet.Rupert Penry-Jones plays a stiff widower king with not much room to be real, so it is not surprising that he comes off as a little too stiff to really like. Danica McKellar gives her usual solid performance in this case as the lovable governess, even if she does the deer-in-the-headlights look a few times too many. But I think Ellie Botterill is probably the star of this show. I find myself not so much wanting to see Allie and Max get together as for Theodora to be happy getting Allie as a new step-mom.Some Hallmark movies don't have villains quite as mean as in this movie. And here we have three.I loved the background song playing over the final scene.

When your humble reviewer grew up (when dinosaurs roamed) there was no such thing as a Christmas movie.As the TV age dawned, older movies which perhaps had a X-Mas scene in them would be eagerly displayed by programmers at fledgling TV stations to try to establish a "theme." Look closely for example at Miracle on 34th Street (the original -- not the 200 remakes!) or even Its a Wonderful Life and you will notice they are actually real movies that just happen to have a secondary X-mas theme.So for those of us of a certain age, we grew up to the same half-dozen or so movies played over and over, season after season.As with everything else, the pendulum swung the other way and by the dawn of the new millennium, making these movies for the season had become a profit center. Now suddenly we have too many of them. And they are not all gems.But this one is. The pacing is wonderful as is the casting the acting and the performance of Danica McKellar. The script does not over-reach.Loved it.

OK the young, widowed man tries to raise his rebellious daughter. He is distant and clueless about how to raise her and hires a Nanny. Actually several nannies, each dispatched in short time by the little terror of a daughter. Oh yes, there's the scheming second wife/Queen wannabe who tries to scare off the nanny. Although it was entertaining, the idea has been done before in books (Jane Eyre anyone?), Broadway (Sound of Music) TV specials every year it seems, and movies (again, Sound of Music). It was obvious and it was predictable. The actors did their best with the scripts and it had its moments. As I said it was entertaining, but only as a variation on a theme.