Watch Hats Off to Christmas! For Free

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

BEWARE OF BOGUS REVIEWS. SOME REVIEWERS HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW TO THEIR NAME. NOW WHEN ITS A POSITIVE REVIEW THAT TELLS ME THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE MOVIE. IF ITS A NEGATIVE REVIEW THEN THEY MIGHT HAVE A GRUDGE AGAINST THE FILM . NOW I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 200 HOLIDAY FILMS. I HAVE NO AGENDA. I AM HONEST ABOUT THESE FILMS"Hats off to Christmas" fits the cookie cutter mold that Hallmark Christmas Movies seem to follow. This one is a widowed falls in love with the her new boss who just happened to take the job she has been coveting. Haylie Duff is always great. She shines as always and brings charm to spare in this melodrama that really is a "Movie By Numbers By Hallmark". In this film her husband died 18 months ago in a car wreck. That same wreck has left her son in a wheelchair but it will be "A Christmas Miracle if he ever walks again". I wish Hallmark would venture out a little more and do some films that don't follow the "Christmas Mold". They hire talented writers and directors! I just wish that would let them take some chances. Now this film is not bad but it is predictable.

With the exciting title and the interesting previews, once again my imagination was expecting a really good Hallmark Christmas movie...but once again, I was very, very disappointed. I did not find anything likable about this movie...............Plot as I saw it: "Mia" believed that she was privy to suddenly becoming the manager of the failing business where she worked...but she quickly became disgruntled learning that the owner's competent son was going to manage it instead......."Mia" eventually became familiar with the son and changed her unfavorable attitude towards him. Why?.......... Because she saw personal, selfish gain in having a "relationship" with him.....From then on, she gave nothing more than a profound impression that she only wanted a "relationship" with the guy primarily for him to be a "big brother" and then probably be a father for her son......After all, her employment family health benefits might be discontinued!....With her repeated pouting, she practically demanded him to invest all of his free time in her son.........Every time she thought he was interested in another woman (an old friend) because he spent some time with her,..."Mia" instantly showed her disgruntled jealousy and possessiveness....as if he was not allowed to his life's choice.

Here's the good news: the acting by the two romantic leads (Haylie Duff and Antonio Cupo) is good and they are assisted by a strong acting performance by veteran actor Jay Brazeau in the role of the business owner and father of the male lead. This movie would have been a total train-wreck without these actors.Now the bad news: Hats Off to Christmas suffers from terrible writing. It goes beyond scenes that are so poorly written that they damage the 'suspension of disbelief;' the film relies on cheap and cheesy plot devices that are unrealistic but intended to manipulate the emotions of the viewer. Many Hallmark romance movies are guilty of this, but Hats Off is the Al Capone of "cheap and cheesy." This Hallmark movie has it all, doled out in the most unrealistic and clumsy scenes imaginable:a backstory involving a dead husband (and father)a young son who is wheelchair-bound. Doctors think he is medically capable of walking, but emotional issues from the trauma of his car accident are suspected to be the real issue preventing him from walking again. Anyone want to guess where this plot-line is going?a female lead character, Mia, who overhears a fragment of a conversation about plans to address her employer's business problems and misunderstands what she has heard. Mia doesn't seek to confirm anything or wait for an announcement - instead she ends her relationship with the man she is starting to love and submits a letter resigning her job. Its hard to like characters who over-react in such unrealistic ways.a short scene where the male romantic interest, Nick, organizes a football game for the boy in the wheelchair. The boy makes a pass that goes about five feet and it is declared a touchdown. Then the boy is handed the football, and Nick pushes the boy's wheelchair downfield while everyone pretends that they can't catch him. This scene was intended to be uplifting, but is so deeply insulting to "wheelchair athletes" in the real world that Hallmark should be ashamed.so many "changes of heart" that it keeps your head-spinning. Not only do the romantic leads run hot and cold on each other repeatedly, but the major adversary in the film inexplicably "changes heart" and offers up some terms that resolve a lot of difficulties.supernaturally intelligent kids that advise their parents on their relationship issues (a core Hallmark plot device.)scenes where kids say something for about 30 seconds that advances the plot and are then told "Time to go to bed now. Its past your bedtime" leading to a scene where the adults talk between themselves. If you're a kid in a Hallmark movie, it is seemingly always your bedtime.-completely unrealistic depictions of financial analysts and business operations and decision-making. Some of these plot-devices might have worked in a movie that developed these situations adequately. In Hats Off, they are briefly introduced, and amateurishly disposed of as mere devices along the road to getting the romantic leads to realize they love each other and finally, to kiss. This move has such lazy manipulative writing and is so cheap and cheesy that I took no joy in the events that it showed.

Widowed Haylie Duff works at a small-town store where all they sell is Christmas-themed paraphernalia, all year round. When it turns out that sales are down for the last couple of years, her boss, whose immense office bespeaks the millions he has made off this venture over the years, parachutes his Wall-Street son, Antonio Cupo, over her. However, when he helps her wheelchair-bound son in a pumpkin-carving competition, things start to turn around in this ridiculously detailed but very watchable Hallmark romantic comedy.At least part of that is due to some very fine acting on the part of the leads. Neither of their characters wish to be in this situation and they behave in a way that bespeaks their dissatisfaction and professionalism -- pardon me if I think the actors felt this way about the movie and used that for their performances. Given the ridiculous assumptions as well as the obvious and cheap cries for sympathy in the script, this should have been one of the worst of the twelve Hallmark Christmas romcoms this year. Instead, it is surprisingly good.