With Love, Christmas (2017)

Melanie Welch (Ullerup) is a hard-working ad executive who finds herself teamed up with uptight coworker Donovan Goodwin (O'Connell) to come up with the ultimate Christmas commercial for a new cell phone. To make things more complicated, Melanie is Donovan's secret Santa in the annual office gift exchange. To keep her identity secret, she sends Donovan emails from Santa to determine the perfect gift for him. However, her plan comes to a halt when Donovan mistakenly assumes another co-worker is his secret Santa, prompting Melanie to work to show Donovan that she's his perfect Santa.Written by nadawi

Directed by Marita Grablak
Written by Marcy Holland
Stars Aaron O'Connell as Donovan, Emilie Ullerup as Melanie, Rebecca Davis as Jude, Milo Shandel as Mr. Farnsworth, Lindsay Winch as Alicia, Kazumi Evans as Tracey, Jett Klyne as Zach, and Michael St. John Smith as Atty. Andrew Goodwin

The above summary is from an imdb user.  The last part is not exactly correct, but it's close enough. 

Did I like it?  It could have been better, but I felt so light inside, especially the ending.  I kind of knew in my heart that it would appear somewhere in the film because of creative integration, then forgot about it, until it happened towards the end of the film, so my heart kind of leapt for joy.

At imdb I read somewhere that AARON O'CONNELL remained stiff until the end.  For me, his acting was just right, and in character. He's a deeply wounded person since childhood, so though he is a very capable adman, his talents are compromised during the most wonderful time of the year.

He and EMILIE ULLERUP have good chemistry, even if it's not great.  It still boils down to his being in character.  I really like Ms. Ullerup.  I'm glad that I was able to accidentally watch her again because of a misleading youtube channel.  

The story?  Well, it's been done before, but I like the email exchanges, and how they got to know each other slowly behind the screen, and face to face. 

I also like the people around them, including Alicia(LINDSAY WINCH).

REBECCA DAVIS plays a smaller, but vital role in Melanie's life.  She's her big sister, Jude.  

If this were a big screen flick, I think they would have added certain things.  Some things Donovan suggested even if he didn't have a wounded spirit could have been thought of better by an elementary student during career day.  I'm exaggerating, of course, but he's supposed to be a candidate for the position of a creative director.  Well, they had some sort of excuse.  It's just during the Holidays... oh, I already mentioned that.  ;-)

So I guess that's it.

Thanks for your time. 

 Both Photographs are from imdb