Christmas on the Vine – Film Review
A young marketing executive is assigned to help a struggling family-owned winery in a town that has lost its Christmas spirit due to a large wine conglomerate.
You may be asking me “Why are you watching yet another cheesy Lifetime Christmas original movie?”. My honest answer to you is: I don’t know. These films all feel like the exact same movie just with different actors but they almost always have the same storyline that follows the exact same tried-and-true formula and they also seem to feature similar cinematography too, which is quite weird.
As the amazing Taylor Swift once said in her song “Exile”, “I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending”. But not only did I not like the ending of Christmas on the Vine, but I didn’t like the whole thing. This film tries to be a little bit different and shake things up by being a Christmas movie all about wine but at the end of the day, it falls into the same exact problems that all of these Lifetime Christmas films have.
For some reason, all of these movies have to feature a “Mr. Perfect” type of character. A man that seems way too good to be true. He is the sweetest person you could ever dream of, does absolutely no wrong, and always does something romantic to woo the film’s lead character. Yes, Christmas on the Vine has one of these characters as well.
Courtesy of Lifetime Television
Chilton Crane and Alistair Abell do their best in the roles of Evelyn and Principal Carmichael respectively, but they feel like actors who are genuinely talented straddled with an extremely poor script to work with. To be honest, these actors all felt like they didn’t actually want to be a part of this project but only accepted it just so they could make a little extra cash. I’m not sure if that actually is what happened, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if it turned out to be true.
It’s not as dreadfully dull and corny as a large portion of Lifetime holiday movies but that doesn’t make it enjoyable or even slightly good. Christmas on the Vine is filled to the brim with tropes, flat characters that are just quirks, a sense of humor that’s incredibly dry and one-note, and a predictable story that heads down the same road as any other film from Lifetime. Maybe one day they will produce a genuinely amazing Christmas movie, but unfortunately, Christmas on the Vine is not a course correction.
Christmas on the Vine suffers tremendously from a corny and predictable storyline that feels like something you’ve seen done a thousand times already.
Overall Grade: F
MPAA Rating: TV-PG
Cast: Alistair Abell, Sherilyn Allen, Meredith Baxter, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, Dalias Blake, Liam Boland, Jon Cor, Chilton Crane, Amanda Friesen, Julianna Guill, Kate Isaac
Directed by: Paul A. Kaufman
Distributed by: Lifetime Television
Release Date: November 13, 2020
Running Time: 87 minutes