With all the sweetness and light in Christmas Lodge, just viewing it will get your teeth a rotting. The people depicted here are just too good to be true. Even the guy who dumps Erin Karplunk does it in a nice way.I will say that the film boasts some lovely scenic photography of British Columbia in this Canadian production. Right in the middle of the forest primeval is a now rundown resort that Erin Karplunk and her family used to go to. The great grandson of the builder of Christmas Lodge is Michael Shanks and he's trying to restore the place, but it's an uphill battle for he and his little daughter.Then in the God moves in mysterious ways category Karplunk shows up with the soon to be dumper boyfriend and she works in a foundation that gives grant money for restoration of old buildings. In this film you KNOW she's going to get it done by hook or heavenly crook. And fate has decreed that Karplunk and Shanks of course are fated to be mated.Despite my cynicism I did enjoy Christmas Lodge and for those who are into restoration and there are many in my neck of the woods who are. Preservationists, this film is for you.

Way too preachy to my taste. In all honesty, it felt like a catholic priest was directing the movie.The characters were not believable and never once there were real conflicts or disagreements. The majority of the time they were smiling like idiots without any reasons.The two boys and their father did not even say boo!!! They just stood there like props. I can't believe that in a 2011 a man would say to a women "I wish you could come live with me at the lodge if we were married". It was a ROFL moment for me.I've seen school plays with more feelings.Please save yourself money and don't even rent it, unless you are a bible thumper. Only they'll be satisfied with this drivel of a movie. Too bad I cannot give zero out of ten. This is basically the worse Christmas movie made in the past 30 to 40 years.

I'm a sucker for a good, get-in-the-mood Christmas movie as much as anybody else -- some of my favorites are Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, and Elf. It's my habit to start watching Christmas films the weekend after Thanksgiving to get myself into the spirit of the coming holidays. So last year I rented Christmas Lodge, and really, really tried to get into the spirit...or at least the story...the romance?....meh. Okay, it was a nice setup for picturesque wintertime scenery.Christmas Lodge's plot is about a woman who is inspired to restore an old family building to please her dying grandfather. I hope I got that much right, because honestly, a year later the details escape me (not a good sign for the memorability factor). In any case, there's a subplot about a romance between the lead actress and another man who also has connections to the lodge; lots of family memory moments; and a wholesome message about faith in God.It pains me to have to put down a film with such good intentions and Christian messages, but..there is no charitable way to say that I thought the acting was flat and wooden all around. Any higher praise than that is simply lying. The dialog and the overall direction of the story did nothing to make me engaged or interested in the characters or their plight: I can barely even remember most of it, except that the production values seemed decent, because this is a "Thomas Kinkade Presents" after all..but the guy's a painter, not a filmmaker. Whatever made him decide to sell his name for movies? Films are a lot more than pretty "moving pictures"-- somebody should have thought of that before making this one.So dear readers, my purpose in outing this movie is now clear: I don't want anybody to waste their time/money on Christmas Lodge simply because a famous name that appeals to Christians and evokes sentimentalism is plastered on the cover. It's such a blatant money-grab on the part of the producers. There are a much more heartwarming and romantic Christmas films out there than this one if that's your desire.

The '4' is for the scenery, which is lush, and for Erin Karpluk, who turned in her usual competent performance despite the lame dialogue, and for the cute little girl and her dog.The title is a cheap attempt to cash in on the season. This movie has little to do with Christmas except for the obligatory family-togetherness lesson. For family togetherness to work as a plot device, there has to be a smidge of conflict beforehand. But in this movie everyone was so nice, so bland, that their 'apartness' could have been cured with an invitation to dinner or a night of board games in any month before Thanksgiving and the 'project' brought them all together anyway.As someone else mentioned, there was utterly no chemistry between the romantic leads. Even though both Erin and Michael Shanks are competent actors, it's hard to see why they would take roles that offered so little scope for their emotional range either as individuals, romantic partners, or family members. Everybody in this film suffered from botox of the emotions. Believing in God doesn't and shouldn't equal living your whole life in emotional neutral. If you can't know pain, you can't appreciate joy.Frankly, it wasn't the religious expressions that turned me off as much as the blatant unreality of the basic setup. Even Christian business people can't simply walk away from 3 months worth of scheduled work to satisfy their ailing grandfather without suffering consequences to their business's reputation for years to come. That kind of blatant guilt trip ought to be unthinkable for an ethical elder of the family. And any grant-funding organization that steered a huge part of their budget to the family business of an employee's dad would be in serious hot water with everyone from their private donors to the IRA.I had to wonder, too, what message the writers/director thought they were sending, because it came across to me like 'If you're a Christian and pray a lot, you can convince total strangers to allocate millions of dollars to give your family's company money to rebuild an old lodge just because your ailing grandfather once had happy memories there.' Silly me; I thought Christianity meant more than using God like a cash machine. Especially at Christmas.