A Castle for Christmas

Netflix Christmas movie week continues with 2021’s A Castle for Christmas. This movie actually got decent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, but (spoiler) I was less than impressed, though people who generally like Hallmark-style movies do seem to enjoy this one. Like before, I watched the first twenty minutes of the movie, then made predictions about the rest of the movie.

[Spoilers ahead.]

A Castle for Christmas starts out with author Sophie Brown (Brooke Shields) dealing with the fallout from her latest Emma Gale novel, the twelfth in a series in which she’s just controversially killed off her main character’s love interest. To get away from the drama, she decides to go to Scotland to visit the castle Dun Dunbar, where her father worked as a groundskeeper. Upon her arrival, she meets a knitting group at the inn she’s staying at who all warmly welcome her to Scotland. Not as happy to meet her: Myles (Cary Elwes), the twelfth duke of Dunbar, in charge of Dun Dunbar with the help of Thomas (Lee Ross) and the dog Hamish (Barley). However, it turns out that the castle isn’t doing well financially, so is for sale. Sophie decides to buy the castle, and she and Myles must figure out how to manage Dun Dunbar together.

There’s actually surprisingly little conflict in this movie beyond the obvious – after Sophie buys the castle, she and Myles have to spend time with each other. Despite his best efforts to chase her off, Myles and Sophie will fall in love and live happily ever after in the castle. Somewhere along the way, Sophie will also be so inspired by the wonders of Scotland that her writer’s block will be cured. And that’s basically what happens. A few side plot points are mentioned briefly – Sophie’s ex-husband getting remarried on Christmas (do people do that?), her daughter being away at school and unable to join Sophie for the holidays, a former romance between Thomas and one of the knitting group members – but either don’t factor into the rest of the movie or are resolved in about two seconds.

The movie ends after a Christmas Eve party at the castle brings everyone together for bundles of festive cheer, then skips forward to Sophie having just written her new bestseller, inspired by a tragically lovely Scottish tale Myles told her. Cue applause. Roll credits.

One of the big problems I have with this movie is that I have some trouble feeling that bad for someone who jets off to Scotland for an indeterminate amount of time, at one point offers to pay off the mortgages of an entire village, and on top of everything else, impulse buys a castle. This isn’t to say that rich people should just be happy with their piles of money, but I never felt that Sophie was that bothered by any of her problems – she didn’t seem very concerned about the backlash to her book or the ensuing writer’s block and she also didn’t seem that lonely and in need of a grumpy duke to love.

The other major issue for me was the lack of chemistry between Sophie and Myles. They were unconvincing when they allegedly hated each other, when they were falling in love, and when they were supposed to be in love. In other words, throughout the entire movie. The movie overall was less glurge-y than Falling for Christmas, though a lot of the dialog was still not good. The acting was okay, but the plot felt disjointed. A lot of the scenes didn’t really lead into each other – Myles and Sophie will be arguing in one scene about her taking over the castle, then in the next scene he’s taking her for a romantic horseback ride across the country. Setting the movie in Scotland was a choice, because the majority of the cast was then stuck speaking in Scottish accents, with varying levels of success, for ninety minutes. I found the movie watchable (one good thing about these Hallmark-type movies they keep churning out is that a decent number of them are kept to just over an hour and a half, so they don’t drag on too long), but I can’t say that I really enjoyed or liked it. A Castle for Christmas gets one star for Hamish the dog, one star for Thomas’s kilts, one star out of respect for Cary Elwes, and one star for the castle/scenery, and that’s about as high as I can go.