Small Town Santa (2014)

The movie sure deserves a better rating! It is a low budget production but it captures the mood of Christmas so well and keeps one entertained for the 1.5 hours.It has this typical Christmas spirit. There is romance in it as well but it isn't just some Hallmark romantic comedy. Romance is just part of it, part of showing how human relationships matter on Christmas, and one doesn't dwell too much on it. Besides that we also get to see friendships, child and parent relationship and just small townees being there for each other.The movie doesn't have a very complex plot, but it is a joy to watch. And there were so many times when I literally laughed out loud from some pretty innocent joke.The only actor I knew in it was Dean Cain. He is great as a main character who is dealing with being sad in life without seeing happiness right near him. The rest of the actors for the most part don't have much experience judging by their imdb lists but they do a good job. The kids seem to act too amateurish but somehow this adds to the charm of the movie so maybe it is also done on purpose.I recommend to watch this movie for people who love Christmas in the next Christmas season and enjoy the charm, sweetness and magic of the time we loved as kids and that such movies can make us feel again.

Being from the area I enjoyed seeing some familiar spots. I enjoyed it as much as any of the Hallmark movies I love.

...that it was ever made at all.Killing time in the afternoon, I turned on this movie in Netflix. I was looking for something light and entertaining, but what I got was the worst acting found anywhere.The script might have been fine, but it's hard to tell with all the campy acting going on throughout the movie. The speech is stilted, the actors are over-emoting both with their actions and their facial expressions, and I think someone else said it best when they said the Santa Claus came off as a perv, rather than a benevolent old man. And it's not just one actor/character, but all of them! This played like a movie filmed in someone's basement or as a college film school project, a bad one!Had it been just one or two of the actors, okay, I can live with that, but for it to be everyone was astonishing. I was thinking throughout the entire movie how bad the director must have been to think this was okay.I gotta say, it's the ex-wife that totally threw me. After being a shrill, screaming, horrific woman who treated the sheriff like crap throughout the movie, calling him awful names at every turn, becomes all sweetness and light as soon as she needs something from him and no one bats an eye.This is a movie that needs to just go away, never to return, and I'm not recommending it for anyone with any sense.

Why, oh why, must we be subjected to inane scripts and insipid acting in so many of these holiday movies? Here is another log on the pyre of "truly bad cinema". We are encouraged however, to overlook the plethora of flaws in the name of good intentions and holiday cheer. I weary of the sport. The characters are so shabbily constructed one really doesn't care if they live or die. The story itself progresses too rapidly and then reels off unexpectedly into bizarre flashbacks where the viewer is left uncertain if they're coming or going. The cliche's, corny attempts at humor, and patently UNoriginal plot make this a tedious journey. It's sad to say it took an exercise of will just to finish a movie- but it did. Go back to your lives citizens ; there is truly nothing to see here.