This is a decent ION Christmas movie. It centers around Nora (played by Tristin Mays), an associate attorney who recently moved to the same city as her college BFF (played by Melissa Ordway). Amid unpacking, her BFF calls from Europe to ask her for a favor: to babysit the kids as they (the parents) are facing flight delays on their return trip home. To Nora's surprise, the parents have also asked the father's brother Max (our other protagonist in this story, played by Nathan Owens) to babysit the children. The two must work together, which is challenging at first, but soon things start to change between the Christmas sitters. The story is fun and cute. That said, parts of the script are rather weak, especially the scenes where a conflict between Nora and Max emerges (e.g., the scene after Nora returns home from picking up work documents from the office). The dialogue/lines in these scenes are, at times, unimpressive, not very convincing. From about 35 minutes in, I started to engage with the story and characters more; i.e., the movie started to pull me in. The acting, overall, was pretty good, I thought. Mays had a solid performance, though it took me about 20 minutes to warm up to her. She had some nice scenes with the kids and Max, especially during the second half of the film. Owens also had a solid performance. What worked on screen for me was their chemistry; it was quite good, I felt. They both too had some lovely scenes with the children from Christmas caroling to some afternoon skiing. Indeed, there was a lot of Christmas spirit and festive cheer in the second half of the film. There was also some good music selection and editing to boot. All in all, it is a pretty good Christmas movie; one the whole family can enjoy.
Review of The Christmas Sitters
