Movie Review: The Christmas Waltz (2020)

Synopsis: A few weeks before her dream of having a Christmas wedding becomes a reality, Avery's fiance chooses his career over her, forcing her to break things off with him. While trying to get a refund on the couple's ballroom dance lessons she paid for, the dance studio owner, Roman, convinces her to take the classes by herself instead. As she makes progress on the dance floor, her self confidence improves and she begins to have romantic feelings for Roman.

Who's in it? The movie stars Lacey Chabert, Will Kemp, Katrina Reynolds, Jeremy Guilbaut and Julia Harnett.

Review: This film was added to our movie library yesterday morning. At first, I was going to save it for another day but, after some consideration, my wife and I wound up watching it last night.

On the surface, there are a lot of things about this movie that I would normally dislike while watching a film. This includes the movie being somewhat predictable, both with Avery's (Chabert) relationship with Roman (Kemp) and how the film would ultimately end - let's just say I was never convinced Roman would be dancing his big waltz number with anyone other than Avery, despite the movie's attempts to convince me otherwise.

That being said, my wife and I did wind up enjoying this movie a lot more than expected. I think a big part of it is the chemistry between Avery and Roman, both on the dance floor and throughout the film. As a result of that, their romantic connection was a lot more believable than many other films I've seen in this genre over the course of the past few weeks.

I also thought the movie had a decent supporting group of characters, though, to be fair, there might have been a couple too many (a couple of them seemed to overlap a bit and/or not get enough screen time). This is always a good thing in movies like this because it keeps the film from getting extremely dull when one or both of the leads aren't on screen. At minimum, I found myself wishing I knew a little more about some of the other characters versus wishing the movie would have just left them out completely (as has been the case way too many times).

At first, I wasn't crazy about the ending of the movie because I felt like it could have used a little more closure (I'm still not convinced Avery really liked her job). However, after some reflection, I did find I actually liked how the ending essentially leaves the little stuff (her career, their relationship, etc) open to the imagination. And, who knows, maybe there will be a sequel.

Final Opinion: There are definitely movies I've liked better than this one but, at the same time, I didn't hate it and would recommend it.

My Grade: B