UPTv
Rating: 🎄
Description: Lady Ella Portman arrives at a secluded Canadian ranch just before Christmas, determined to help her struggling competition horse recover in time for an important championship. As snow-covered trails, holiday traditions, and a charming horse trainer named Theo draw her into a simpler way of life, Ella begins to question whether the future planned for her is truly the one she wants.
Overall Review: Sometimes there are bad Christmas movies that are so spectacularly ridiculous you find yourself watching just to see what nonsense happens next. A Royal Stables Christmas falls into that category. Make no mistake, this is not a good movie. But I can’t say I wasn’t entertained.
Let’s start with the one thing this production absolutely got right: winter.
Real, honest-to-goodness Canadian winter. Actual snow, actual cold, and scenery that didn’t look like someone had attacked a suburban lawn with a can of spray snow. It was beautiful, and I appreciated every minute of it. Unfortunately, the scenery couldn’t act, and the people who could were apparently unavailable.
The accents alone deserve their own review.
We had fake accents that ranged from questionable to downright distracting, including a single family whose members apparently came from entirely different countries. The movie attempted to explain away the daughter’s American accent by telling us she’d attended school in the United States.
Oh, well, that clears everything up.
Apparently, a few semesters abroad are all it takes to completely erase the accent you developed during your entire childhood. Who knew? Besides her accent and love of social media that apparently only afflicts American students, I can assume she also returned home with a newfound love of ranch dressing and an inability to understand the metric system.
And then there’s the horse.
Now, I understand that people love their animals. I have no problem with that. But our leading lady’s emotional attachment to this horse was operating at a level that made me wonder whether the horse was the actual romantic lead. Every development involving the animal seemed to require another emotional crisis, and after a while, I was ready for someone to offer her a tissue and perhaps a little perspective.
But just when I thought I had this movie completely figured out, something unexpected happened. At roughly the ninety-minute mark, the filmmakers dropped a secret revelation that completely changed the central conflict.
Wait. WHAT?
I genuinely didn’t see it coming (I will openly admit I wasn’t paying that close of attention before that point). And while the sudden turn gave me a bit of narrative whiplash, I have to admit I appreciated the surprise. After sitting through so much predictable nonsense, it was refreshing to have the movie do something I wasn’t expecting.
Was it enough to rescue the movie? Absolutely not. From a filmmaking standpoint, this movie deserves every bit of its one-tree rating. But from an entertainment standpoint? I had fun. Not necessarily the kind of fun the filmmakers intended, but fun nonetheless. I rolled my eyes, questioned the characters’ decisions, and occasionally found myself laughing at things that were almost certainly supposed to be serious.
If you’re looking for a quality Christmas movie, stay far away. But if you enjoy a little unintentionally hilarious holiday nonsense, saddle up. Just don’t ask any of the characters where they’re supposed to be from.
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