It’s our very first Christmas movie of the 2025 season and it’s a royalty movie! Thanks, Hallmark, for starting us out….strong? Let’s see if A Royal Montana Christmas lives up to our royal expectations.

Princess Victoria (Fiona Gubelmann) of Zelarnia is about to take over her mother’s royal duties. However, before she steps into her mother’s shoes, she decides to take a vacation to Peaceful Pines Ranch, a ranch in Montana that she visited as a child with her father. Upon her arrival in town, she meets Huntley Blaylock (Warren Christie), the son of the owners who are about to retire. As the pair works to bring back the ranch’s Christmas Holly-Day Dance, they begin to fall in love. But Victoria must go back to her royal duties and Huntley must stay in Montana to run the family business, right?

I’m not going to lie, this movie was so boring. There wasn’t anything interesting that happened. We don’t learn anything about Victoria’s family or country. We barely learn anything about the ranch or Huntley. This was two people walking around together and petting some horses. Oh, I guess they did argue about what type of tree they should cut down for the dance. Otherwise, I’m really not sure what they saw in each other.

Well, this isn’t the best start to the season. I hope that they can sprinkle in some really good movies in between the boring stuff. I need something to look forward to.

Rating: 2 wooden horses out of 5 - maybe someone should be surprised when the guest is revealed to be royalty

Every year, we get a slate of movies where the female lead (almost never the male lead) goes on a grand Christmas adventure in another country. Frequently, it’s Scotland or Austria, specifically Vienna. Now Hallmark takes us to Ireland with ‘Tis The Season To Be Irish. I hope they don’t turn the Irish characters into some sort of weird leprechaun stereotype or something.

Rose (Fiona Gubelmann) has just purchased a very cheap house in Ireland with plans to renovate and resell it. When she arrives, she finds the house is actually a dilapidated cottage. Sean (Eoin Macken), who sold the cottage to Rose, is also the town historian that she has to get approval from for any repairs. Deciding the cottage requires too much work, Rose decides to make it look nicer in order to sell it to someone else. But will she fall in love with the quaint Irish town nearby?

This is yet another movie that is just OK. Rose is supposedly a very experienced house flipper, yet she does zero research on the Ireland house before demanding the seller, who she does not know, brush off a current offer in order to sell the house to her. Neither of those traits make her likeable in the beginning. Then we’re supposed to feel bad for her when we see the state of the cottage? I think not. Also, I have no idea how she fixed the cottage so quickly. There was a giant list of major repairs needed yet she got them all done before Christmas. Maybe that was her real fairy wish.

As for the rest of the movie, Sean is fairly bland for a leading man. He spent a lot of time complaining about things and, at one point, even rejected a kiss from Rose. I’m not really sure why we were supposed to be rooting for him. Rose had more chemistry with the lamb that kept following her around town. It makes me a little sad because I wanted to enjoy a nice Irish trip. But all we got was some pretty scenery and boring characters.

Rating: My fairy wish is to be anywhere else.