The lead actress is actually not bad, and most performances are fairly decent, but she does not cut a lead feminine romantic figure appearance (too chubby for the role, to be blunt). There are some scenes terribly hokey, and wow, ankle injury disappeared like magic, but it's a decent job done with a bad script. The settings help. A travel show featuring Vienna sightseeing would actually be much more watchable than this.
The relationship with the brother is odd, and the director/script allowed the brother to be undeveloped and didn't explain his purpose except to be used for a typical romance movie stunt blunder ("That wasn't my boyfriend, he's my brother!"... Hey, if you are that chummy with your brother, he's most definitely your boyfriend!!!).
But it was tolerable as Christmas buffoonery goes. The ballroom dance scenes took directorial patience, and you can tell that the terrible acting by the bad girlfriend of the prince was just accepted to get the flick done, and the diversion of the American male nurse random meeting the fellow American in Vienna was another implausible personality...not sure if that scattershot character was necessary since it was the uncle who pulled through with the hokey last second tickets and best dress.
If they ever do a movie with a Megan McCain character, the lead actress here will be a good choice. She just played an overly dramatic 'skinny' version role, so not much rehearsal to get into character required.
You can watch this, but probably skip it unless you need a turkey of a Christmas movie playing to ignore while cooking a turkey in the background.
*Director prank(?): One ballroom dance scene, one of the extras has a male prosthetic attached to his nose... It's only a second, but it's as if it was done so you'd look at later scenes of all the dancers so you'd see that the director actually did some pretty good work getting large groups of dancers fitted into the scenes...but to my eye, I only saw it the one time.
Review of Christmas in Vienna
