There is a whole market for crap Christmas films that all tell the same story but are easy to throw on and waste a bit of time watching. This model has been around for years, and Netflix has dived into that market and is pumping these shit films out at a pace. This is not me knocking that by the way, if there is demand for it then go ahead. And on a selfish level, it also means that I will be able to do these Christmas reviews indefinitely as I’ll have a constant supply. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t help that I find these films a waste of time, as was the case with today’s film, A Castle for Christmas (2021). The film follows an author called Sophie (Brooke Shields) who retreats to her ancestral home in Scotland after receiving backlash for killing off one of her characters. While in Scotland she visits a castle where her father had lived as a child of the groundskeeper and decides she would like to buy it. The current owner, Duke Myles (Cary Elwes), is not too impressed by this idea and challenges Sophie to live there for 3 months as a way of finding out if she can look after the place, but really hoping to scare her off. As you can guess because it is a crap Christmas film, they initially can’t stand each other but as the film goes on find themselves falling for each other and you know the rest.
My thoughts on this film are not as black and white as I thought they might be or as my general apathy in the introduction would suggest. That is not to say that I enjoyed the film, far from it in fact. But at the same time, it isn’t heinous. Not once during the film did, I find myself thinking I hated it or desperately wishing it would end. And I think that is a result of the film doing a good job at exactly what it set out to do. It knows what it is and who the audience is, and that audience clearly isn’t me. I mean, all you have to do is look at that synopsis and you know this is effectively the same story as all those crap Christmas films that litter TV around this time, where a city woman moves somewhere more remote and is a fish out of the water at first but learns to love the lifestyle and also thaws the heart of a grouchy man, backed up by the power of Christmas. It’s old hat, but the reason this film wasn’t a complete y pointless venture is that it has a decent budget and name actors in it, and they all do a decent job with the material they have been given. I know Cary Elwes was slaughtered for his Scottish accent, and it is pretty terrible, but the rest of his performance is decent, and his presence elevates the film quite some way.
But you didn’t come to this review to have me be all blasé about it because it isn’t pure shit. You came to see me have a go at it, and there are things in it that were pretty horrible as a viewer. First of all, the film on several occasions has characters in face time where we see Sophie as the main subject of the frame, but off to the side, we have a mock-up of her phone screen so we can see the other character as they are talking as well. Pretty standard stuff which has been done before. However, this only appears when that character is calling so it just keeps popping in and out and it is so off-putting. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just leave it there. It would make the scene run smoother instead of feeling choppy. I have already mentioned how the narrative is cliched crap, and so you can expect that the third act kicks off with the two main characters having an argument which seems to have torn them apart. That obviously happens in this film, but it comes out of nowhere and feels very forced. I feel like it was a rushed job to get it in because you have to have that plot point in the film somewhere. So even in a film using a narrative so old, you can probably find it in cave paintings they still mess it up somehow. Finally, I need to mention the slow-motion montage after this argument. The montage shows moments where Sophie and Myles were falling in love while a cover of ‘She’s the One’ plays over the top and it is cinema at its peak. When I say I laughed out loud, I mean I laughed out loud.
I was trepidatious going into this film as I felt it would be one of those that would have me pulling my hair out at how much I disliked it, but for the most part, it's fine. I mean, it isn’t good, but it does exactly what it needs to for the kind of film it is and will be enjoyable for the audience it is aimed at. To back this up, immediately having watched the film I messaged my mum to recommend it to her because she likes this kind of stuff. And that also means I kind of have to recommend it as I directly have done so. Who would have guessed that would happen?
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