Part of the charm of Hallmark movies is their predictable, cookie-cutter plots. Fans find the recycled tropes oddly comforting.
However, My Sweet Austrian Holiday is unimaginative filler used to beef up Hallmark's seasonal slate, and the lack of originality in this movie is pitiful.
What Is My Sweet Austrian Holiday About?
Charlotte recently moved to Vienna and became a chocolatier after inheriting her grandparents’ chocolate shop. She soon finds herself in a battle against a ruthless developer who wants to buy the building and sadly she can’t locate the proper records that prove that the shop is a historical landmark. She meets Henry, a businessman, and soon there is a romantic spark. Henry is a billionaire bachelor who has just taken over his father’s company. Eventually he realizes that he owns the company that is responsible for trying to take over Charlotte’s shop. When Charlotte finds out, she is hurt and angry that Henry was not honest with her once he discovered the truth. Thankfully he finds a compromise, with the new design incorporating her chocolate shop as the featured store within the development project. Charlotte forgives Henry and they spend their first Viennese Christmas together as a couple.
My Sweet Austrian Holiday Feels Like a Spoof of Romcoms
There is literally no out-of-the-box thinking involved in the script--just a cut and paste of every Hallmark movie ever made.
A business that is inherited from a relative that must be kept afloat to honor a memory
A building that needs to be given historical status to prevent its destruction
A person vying for chocolatier of the year
Someone who tries to unsuccessfully ice skate
Food accidentally smearing someone's lip
A character who wasn't "up front" with someone about their identity
My Sweet Austrian Holiday is practically a Love, Romance, & Chocolate reboot--a movie set in Belgium that also starred Bristow and Kemp, but with Kemp being the one vying for a special chocolatier title.
Kemp is an accomplished dancer, but when he waltzes with Bristow, it simply doesn't measure up to his stint with Lacey Chabert in Christmas Waltz or The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango. With a 5-inch height advantage over Chabert, Bristow's movements lack grace and look too lanky. The dancing scene is far too short to impress.
My Sweet Austrian Holiday Is Well-Received by Hallmark Fans Despite the Lack of Plot Creativity
Kemp fans adore watching him in anything, and Bristow is a passable actress, so Hallmark fans embrace this movie even though there is literally NOTHING new to see here.
Bristow's mother wrote the script, and her father directed it, so it seems her parents create projects in which they can get their daughter cast, which was also the case for A Safari Romance and A Tail of Love.
Try as they might, Kemp and Bristow fail to generate a tangible connection, so the chemistry simply isn't there. Whether the lack of a spark stems from a 13-year age difference, boredom with the recycled script, or something else, the wow factor is missing.
Though the acting cannot be faulted, the utter lack of originality lands this movie at a 2 out of 5-star rating here at RomCom Review.
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