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Be glad that this film is only 90 minutes long. So, if you end up not liking it, at least you can take comfort in the fact that the runtime was short. Directed by Ernie Barbarash, “I’m Glad It’s Christmas” is a Hallmark style holiday film which is as bland and uninteresting as cold clear soup on a winter’s day.
Chloe Bose (Jessica Lowndes) aspires to become a big Broadway singer/actor but struggles to balance her job at a gift shop with her numerous auditions. Love comes Chloe’s way in the form of a handsome divorced man called Jason Murphy (Paul Greene) who writes jingles and has a daughter. An old lady decides to play cupid for the two for no good reason – Gladys Knight plays Cora Lawson, a wealthy women who owns a bunch of buildings and wants to revive the Christmas spirit in her community, but her character makes you wonder if she is supposed to be some sort of fairy Godmother with a soft spot for bumbling wannabe singers.
Jessica Lowndes is like a pretty-looking robot, she is good-looking, but her acting is subpar. However, her singing voice is quite nice, but she doesn’t have a diva-like presence. You know, like JLO made the romantic-comedy “Marry Me” a fun watch despite the extremely predictable plot, which, by the way, is about a singer falling for a guy with a kid. Besides, there’s very little chemistry between Jessic Lowndes and Paul Greene. The plot about Chloe potentially having to put her childhood dream on the back burner for a guy she just met doesn’t help make the story any better.
It was challenging for me to maintain my interest in “I’m Glad It’s Christmas” despite its short runtime (the reason why I streamed it in the first place). Forty-five minutes in, I was bored out of my mind. Even though the sets are pretty and in sync with the Christmas spirit, the emotions and warmth of the festive season are completely missing from the tale. The actors look like they are in an off-off-off-Broadway play, with a decent budget for props.
Rating: 3 on 10. It’s available to stream on Netflix.
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