Review of Lost at Christmas

This was a decent Christmas movie. The story here is about two strangers, who are going thru some difficult times in their love life, coming together to find a way home for Christmas. What both don't realize, at the time, is that this journey home is more than simply catching a ride together. It becomes more about helping each other move on (and potentially work thru) their relationship woes (and the importance of spending time with others, even if they are strangers, during Christmas). I thought the story worked well for about the first 60 minutes or so. The dialogue between the leads was pretty good. There were a couple of nice scenes at the bar (at the inn) with some good conversation/dialogue between Jen (played Natalie Clark) and Rob (played by Kenny Boyle), our two protagonists in this story. I even had a few laughs during some of the scenes with Sid (played by Sanjeev Kohli), Ernie (played by Sylvester McCoy) and Frank (played by Frazer Hines). However, the story, I thought, broke down on Christmas morning. I am referring to the scene where Jen asks everyone to celebrate Christmas, they all say bah humbug, and she runs off into the woods (as opposed to running/walking along the road, which seemed odd, by the way). Shortly thereafter, Rob had an epiphany and runs after her, and when they get back, everyone is suddenly on board for a nice Christmas dinner. There is a big hole in the script between the first 60 minutes and the last half hour. The writers don't set the viewer up for the last third of the film. Thus, the final third seemed forced (or rushed). It is a pity, really. The acting, overall, was strong, I thought. Both Clark and Boyle' performances were convincing, and, as I noted above, they had some nice dialogue together. The chemistry between the two started to build up a bit on Christmas Eve, but, again, the writers could have done a better job setting this up before they jumped into bed together. For the most part, the supporting cast was great. As I alluded to above, Kohli, McCoy and Hines's performances were quite good (funny, I thought). The Scottish landscape in the film was a plus. There were some beautiful shots on the rolling hills. All in all, it is an entertaining Christmas movie, pretty good for the first two-thirds of the film.