Movie Review: A Christmas Class Reunion (2022)

Synopsis: Elle has been successful at just about everything she has tried. However, after a disastrous incident at her senior classes holiday dance 15 years ago, everything the former class president has tried to organize for the class of 2007 has been a failure, giving the class the reputation of being cursed. Elle hopes to break the curse with the 15th class reunion, but everything seems to be going wrong with that too. Fortunately, she has help from her former friends, especially Devin, her former class vice president who is now a single dad and owner of a holiday event company.

Who's in it? The movie stars Aimee Teegarden, Tanner Novlan, Dejan Loyola, Maya Ford and Stephanie Bennett.

Review: After a long day of driving my daughter home from college during the gap between two winter storms, I was happy to just spend the rest of yesterday on the couch in front of the electric fireplace and leave any snow shoveling for today. My wife and I decided to watch another Christmas movie and since this is one I wanted to see, selected it. Unfortunately, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

Even though I thought the idea of a holiday class reunion was about as thoughtless as having a Christmas wedding, I at least thought the concept had some potential for some unique storylines. Instead, the movie ultimately wasn't anything unique, other than maybe going with the various cliche themes in bulk - successful woman who stops worrying about her career because of a man, married couple that is on the rocks but reconciles before Christmas, and another woman who is looking at a successful career but still willing to put it aside for a man (though, to be fair, that one didn't work out). Oh, and let's not forget the cliche regarding an event that suddenly needs a new venue, and everyone pitches in to make it work.

When it was all said and done, however, I think my biggest complaint about this movie was Elle (Teegarden) wasn't very likable. Frankly, I feel like she was kind of heartless because the company she was working for was on the verge of going out of business, leaving plenty of people, including her awesome assistant, out of work before Christmas. Yet, that was put on the backburner so she could relive her high school days and, when she did discuss it, it was solely about how it would affect her reputation.

My wife and I also both rolled our eyes during one scene where her assistant is telling her the bad news and freaking out then suddenly became more interested Elle's potential love life. That's something that you'd only see in a Hallmark movie.

To make matters worse, the movie doesn't even have a happy ending when it comes to that part. The company goes out of business but, because Elle finds her man, nobody seems to care about everyone who just lost their job. We don't even find out if Elle found a new job for that matter, just that she was engaged a year later. I shouldn't get frustrated watching a holiday movie but kind of was.

Final Opinion: This was a movie that had an opportunity to try new things and be unique but instead settled on a basic plot that, at least in my opinion, didn't paint the main protagonist in a good light. I didn't like the film as a result.

My Grade: D