This is one of worst Hallmark movies ever. If anyone involved in this production had enthusiasm for it, it must have been the caterer, because it sure was not the actors, director, or the writer. (Note to Hallmark: during a writers' strike hire scabs to cross the picket line that have graduated from kindergarten.) I understand that Hallmark movies follow a prescribed formula, but that does not mean that the script has to wallow in the ruts and seldom come up for air. If most of the characters were portrayed any more woodenly, their noses would grow when they lie. I think I heard the director's snores behind the monotones of hackneyed dialog. If you want to feel like you have wasted six hours, watch this hour and half home movie.

As soon as Hallmark released the ultra-cute poster for Friends and Family Christmas, I was dying to see it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disjointed dud with scenes of one female always running to work and the other babysitting the former's parents.

Their one-on-one moments, albeit brief are gold and I wanted more of that not just thirty seconds here and there before they run-off in opposite directions.

I'm sort of bummed they didn't give us the Hallmark princess moment of Dani walking down the stairs all gussied up, and Amelia turns and and she's speechless. No. They meet on the stairs as Amelia turns around from talking with a co-worker?.

In all honesty, I'm unsure how they started liking one another. They're rarely together. They don't decorate the tree they buy. They don't make holiday crafts despite Dani dragging Amelia to these events. Instead, Amelia is doing all of this with Dani's parents, while she's running around like a chicken with her head cut off.

I took off stars because I fell asleep twice and finally made it through the third attempt.

I've watched a few of these this Christmas season and I was very excited to see Hallmark's first Lesbian iteration of its classic rom-com formula. Given that it's hallmark my expectations were on the floor, and I was pleasantly surprised by this movie as it featured something we rarely see in hallmark movies: character development.

The main conflict of the story is that the two main characters are set up by their overbearing parents who (kind of funnily) want them both to just find someone already. Being sympathetic to each others situation they decide to "fake" being together in order to relieve some of that pressure for the holiday season, and in a surprise twist nobody saw coming, actually kind of fall for each other.

The movie develops this by placing the characters in (somewhat) realistic situations where their feelings and pasts are tested, such as when Kylie (the villain) name-drops the blonde character's ex-girlfriend and awkwardly shoehorns in that she moved to WeHo which causes her to pass on a karaoke night because she was feeling a bit overwhelmed from that. Idk, there were lots of small moments like this that made the movie feel like it had some actual meat to the characters here versus the usual one-wordedness of the vast majority of them. It's something you do not usually see in most of these movies.

The two main characters had a little chemistry that didn't actually fel forced between them, which was a nice surprise!

I also need to mention that Kylie, the poet, visual artist, (& more) is the source of like 90% of the movie's conflict for basically no reason. She's the reason for the disaster Karaoke scene, she's the reason behind the giant teddy bear pickup, and she at the end of the movie just blabs that Humberly's character is going to be travelling to Japan (something she ABSOLUTELY was never told) to the blonde main character which obviously causes a rift and deprives them of having an actual discussion. I never expected to see a villain in a hallmark movie, but it was a funny surprise that they seem to have created this accidental one.

Overall, one of the more watchable movies of the season featuring some actual characters versus cardboard-cutout stereotypes. More like this hallmark, please.