Joyeux Noel

Leah is a copy editor at a newspaper. Her dream has always been to publish a story with her name on it at said newspaper, so when the opportunity comes she pitches about a Chrisgmas Market in France where people fall in love. Mark is a senior reporter who gets chosen for this article, Leah gets the chance to go with him and work on it together. So, I always say that when the actors get involved in their projects, it's always better. Doesn't matter in which capacity. And this is no exception since it was co-written by our lead actor. This story was just the sweetest. Grumpy guy who softens at the girl's optimism never fails. The leads had ok chemistry and who doesn't love a good scavenger hunt? Resolving mysteries while getting to know the other... One thing I didn't like is that Jaicy always seems to play her characters the same way. But I really liked the ending. While, of course, it's a happy one for our leads, this still is a Hallmark movie after all, not everything turned out the way we expected as we watch it. That alone earned it one more star. Overall, cute moments between the leads, nothing over the top, a realistic relationship with no "I love yous" after a week, and a fun plot. I would watch another movie written by Brant and his wife.

6.2 stars. Joyeux starts out with a lot of promise, but immediately I was deflated by the way they forced a potential adventure to become a flat non-event. She finds something by chance, but the chances of this would be about one in 10 billion, that's just a guess. Astronomical does not begin to calculate. You'll see what I mean. And then after she finds it, goes low key about the whole ordeal and then finally has to fight her way into getting the story, and is stuck with a guy whom we can see shares no chemistry with her. Then they are in France and the whole story had so many missed opportunities and so much potential was hamstrung. Just a really fowl production, something that could've been one of the greats. Wow guys, you really blew chunks on this one. I'd normally award it 5 stars, but the acting was good, the little girl's games and pranks were refreshing, and the city scenes and backdrops were breathtaking.

What can be wrong with a Christmas movie about love and family. More the movie action is placed in so romantic country like France and city Paris. There cannot be any chemistry between the hot guy and the average girl. There is no way in the real world that a girl like that can have a guy like that. This is not how love and romance and attraction laws work. The girl should be also beautiful and slim same like the guy who is great looking, if you just want to make a movie about inclusion you will not have any normal people like it since it is not normal what is going on. So this is for 2 stars given.

I thought this film would be really romantic so I stuck with the story that Lea & Mark were investigating. I wish I hadn't bothered. There was no chemistry between the lead actors. As for the script - it was so painful particularly the church scene where Lea asked who were the characters in the nativity display - it was dreadfully painful to sit through & embarrassing. The fake French accents were also obvious although that didn't apply to all. I also found it difficult to get my head around the fact that Jaicy's character, Lea, had never left the country (assuming that she didn't have a passport), but was able to magically travel to France the next day!! The only redeeming feature of this film is the location. This is 1.5 hours I'll never get back.