This year I cooked a lot for the holidays and while I cooked, I watched holiday movies. During this process I got disgustingly hooked on ABC Family Christmas movies and this was the first one to catch my attention and gosh darn it I loved it!! Yes it is sappy but its also fun and hair-brained and ridiculous in the all the best ways and turns in a sweet and romantic story and perhaps most surprisingly and I'm not the only reviewer to say this...the acting was actually pretty good. The story is a bit ridiculous and over the top and yet the simplicity of the writing made it almost believable. It would have been a hit as a romantic comedy on the big screen with big stars so why shouldn't it be fun on the small screen, even on ABC family which I am fast becoming a fan of. As with any good Christmas film, the season plays an important part to the story of course and while there isn't any true supernatural "magic" to the story...it still feels truly magical and will make anyone smile.Those of us that grew up in the 80's and 90's can't help but smile and enjoy seeing Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina The Teenage Witch) and Mario Lopez (Slater from Saved By The Bell) in a movie together. I certainly would never consider either one of them "amazing" actors by any means and yet I sort of ate my words because both of them were fantastic. They played their roles perfectly and didn't make you feel like you've seen this romantic angle a dozen times. They were cute together and their chemistry was very good, it wasn't outstanding but it was solid. It absolutely worked for the story. Timothy Bottoms and Markie Post play Hart's parents and they are very good. They fit the cast well and don't take attention from the main stars. June Lockhart is terrific and fun as the bitter Grandma. I even think she was slightly underused and more scenes with her could have been a lot of fun and laugh out loud moments. Kyle Howard and Vanessa Lee Evigan round out the main cast as Hart's siblings. They are good but don't have a lot of scenes so they don't swing the cast any which way.Seeing the director, Ron Underwood's, resume makes me understand just why this tiny little TV movie is actually so well done. He has a wide variety of Television under his belt but really top notch Television. Then you look at his early movie work with the truly outstanding Mighty Joe Young (who doesn't cry at the end of THAT!) and the classic comedy City Slickers. He is very talented and he knows how to tell a story and he makes his characters come alive with emotion and true heart and that is exactly what this movie does. No it won't ever win any Academy Awards as I often say about movies like this...but when you're boiling something down to pure entertainment, I was purely entertained. I loved it! I was smiling all the way through, and even had tears in my eyes in the end and that to me makes a truly terrific movie. This is worthy of anyone's Christmas movie year rotation!! 8.5/10

Not bad for a TV movie. A perfect movie for movie marathon on the holiday.Mario Lopez as always is charming and sexy. Melissa Joan Hart played a good role too.I really like the plot. Some scenes cracked me. But something is bothering me.How could you possibly be in love with just a little amount of time and no chemistry between those two persons? Overall, let's just say thank God I was not wasting my money to watch this in the theater, but still good to watch.

Television veterans Mario Lopez (Saved By The Bell) and Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina The Teenage Witch) star in Holiday In Handcuffs which despite its title is not a Christmas bondage story. The story is about the Bohemian non-conformist daughter of an overachieving family who is so tired of getting asked why she isn't settling down that on an incredible impulse she kidnaps Mario Lopez out of a convenience store and brings him home to her rural family farm house to show off to the family the boyfriend she promised to bring home for Christmas, but who in fact had dumped her before the action of the film started.If you can wrap your mind around the concept of Melissa without Sabrina's magic kidnapping hunky Mario Lopez than you've got more imagination than I have. But a funny thing happens, from as incredibly stupid a premise as this one starts with Holiday In Handcuffs does kind of grow on you. Even Mario starts to sympathize with Melissa after meeting her family consisting of parents Markie Post and Timothy Bottoms, brother Kyle Chandler, sister Vanessa Lee Evigan and grande dame grandma June Lockhart.Of course Mario is also slightly engaged to Gabrielle Miller, but in these kind of family films things like that do have a way of resolving themselves or just going away.Holiday In Handcuffs has become a staple on the Hallmark Channel in the past two years. I suspect it will remain so for young folks in love and those in love with love who dream that a boyfriend like Mario Lopez is a pistol and restraints away.

An utterly ridiculous premise. A girl breaks up with her boy friend, and kidnaps a guy with hand cuffs to get him to pose as her boy friend for Christmas with her family. Make sense? Of course not, but it doesn't matter.Even using her Sabrina powers, I doubt the tiny MJ Hart could over power Mario Lopez. Nor is it likely the parents would be fooled by this absurd scheme, especially when the guy starts yelling to them for help! Well, it's a rom-com, so anything goes. On top of that, the Christmas theme demands the exact sentimental outcome you'll see coming more than 50 light years away. Even if you can't give it the poetic license it needs (a lot, lol), you can still laugh at how ludicrous the whole thing is.Silly nonsense, but utterly harmless. For a brainless diversion, this one, believe it or not, works.