Great American Family
Rating: 🎄🎄
Description: In An Ozark Mountain Christmas, when a dedicated young designer (Cohen) at a crossroads reluctantly follows her sister home to the nostalgic heart of the Ozarks for Christmas, she finds herself rediscovering not only her family’s legacy for commitment to craft, but also the quiet faith and purpose she has lost in the rush of modern life. With the help of Paul (Stoddard), Clara will reconnect with work rooted in care and community.
Overall Review: I’ve watched plenty of Christmas movies that were essentially extended advertisements for a particular destination. And honestly, I’m usually fine with that. If you want to show me a charming town, a beautiful resort, or a Christmas attraction and occasionally remind me that I should book a vacation there or do some product placement along the way, I can play along.
But An Ozark Mountain Christmas took things to a whole new level. This wasn’t so much a Christmas movie as a feature-length commercial for Silver Dollar City that occasionally remembered a plot. And look, I have nothing against Silver Dollar City. It’s a wonderful place to experience Christmas. But in this movie it came off as if the amusement park was being treated as an actual small town.
I’m fairly certain that’s not what the filmmakers intended, but the whole thing was so strangely presented that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
And then there’s the acting. Oh, boy.
The leads were B-level actors at best, and the supporting cast often felt like someone had wandered off of a community theater production and onto the set of this movie. Some of the performances were so unnatural that I expected someone to turn toward the camera and remind us that tickets to Silver Dollar City make wonderful Christmas gifts.
But I will give the movie one thing. The Christmas decorations were spectacular.
Of course they were. It’s Silver Dollar City. The place practically runs on Christmas lights for two months of the year. The decorations were enormous, elaborate, ridiculously over the top, and absolutely glorious. If the movie had consisted entirely of sweeping shots of the park at Christmas, I might have enjoyed it more.
Unfortunately, people kept showing up and talking.
And that’s really the problem. The best thing about An Ozark Mountain Christmas was the place where it was filmed. Everything else just got in the way. If you want to experience the magic of Christmas at Silver Dollar City, I’d recommend buying a ticket to the park.
Just don’t waste two hours watching the commercial.
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