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Listen the premise is great but they made a mistake of setting this hometown small town vibe into a nyc posh hotel scene. No enormous posh hotel in nyc would be run by one manager who literally does everything and an assistant or whatever she is who is totally useless, one handyman guy. Single mingle jingle party is a small town hotel scenario. This is like someone mixed two screenplays together.

Its hallmark xmas so no expectations of depth of characters and scene development, but this is appalling cramming character development into the first 5 minutes, and way too many sub plots going on, ex prince, washed up singer, fancy guy that lost his dog, not even sure why thats there, grumpy santa...2 love development situations or more (flo the bartender and milton the handyman, manager and luke, and the housekeeper and belldesk)). And not enough time to develop any of those stories.

All these sub plots have potential just not all crammed in one movie.

Again, no expectations of award winning writing for hallmark. But this has way way way too much going on, like writer took every single idea they ever had for a hallmark movie and put them all into the same movie.

Regular cookie cutter story line. Which isnt unbearable on its own. Seen many formula rom coms with exactly same premise. The difference was the characters actually having chemistry. If there was such thing as negative chemistry, this was if, and the lead woman's voice was so unbelievably cringeworthy, I couldn't watch without hitting mute when she was speaking. Scratching a chalkboard with nails is more enjoyable than listening to her speak. And mr pastry dude idk ive seen him in a police drama show, his performance in this was duller than dishwater.

Ughh. It was on again and I decided to give it another go, thinking maybe I was in a pissy mood last time or whatever. Same cringe.

No the plot is not new, but its a twist on Cinderella meets Devil wears Prada. The villainous characters however, are not so entirely hateful and unbearable to watch. Marisa Tomei does a fab job as the art world version of Prada's Meryl Streep and she's somewhat less sharp around the edges. The 2 'evil step sisters' (not actually step sisters but the dynamic is the same) are not as shrill and ick as the Cinderella counterparts either.

Then the whole plot about pretending to be in charge and trying to keep up the charade makes you almost want to look away like please no dont get caught!

When I was looking for cheap entertainment and read the description I had low ish expectations for a run of the mill rom com. But it proves to be more well written. I am not an art world expert however so I cant poke holes in authenticity of the portrayal, if there are in fact any holes. So you know my 8 out of 10 is face value. I find often people use the same standards for all movies and so cheap easy rom coms get a worse rap than deserved maybe because you dont judge them the same as the documentary or Oscar winner etc. But often people judge with the same lens. One of better rom coms Ive seen in a while.