On Thanksgiving Day I tuned to this movie by accident (one channel off from the football game), and soon realized it was terrible. Before I could change to the game, though, my brother-in-law and some friends dropped by and they started watching the movie and joking at how bad it was. Its awfulness became sort of a cause celebre. We started to feel bad for the actors and writers and anyone involved because the whole thing was insipid. None of the characters had anything interesting to say except maybe alfalfa (not a spoiler). There were two dead characters but we didn't know why (not a spoiler). None of us had the heart to turn off this mess. We watched it all, laughed most of the time, then turned to the football game. Rated 5 for the unintentional humor.

The rating according to Amazon Prime was 3 out of 5 stars. Not exactly sure why though. This movie had a cute story line, and the cast was picked well enough I guess. The acting was a bit plain as they seemed to be just memorizing their lines immediately before the scene was done. The producers definitely didn't seem to put much effort into making sure you could hear the actors clearly as there were several instances where the wind or other background noise would drown out the talking. You can tell they probably didn't have a very high budget for the movie to be made. I feel like there could have been more effort put into everything overall. Maybe someone else could do a remake of this movie and improve it immensely to a 7 out of 10 stars on IMDb?

It is obvious the filmmakers involved wanted to make a Hallmark type Christmas movie but even considering the level of quality of most Hallmark movies. "Christmas at the Holly Hotel" falls far from that target.

The movie revolves around Kathy played by Jesi Jensen who is a food critic and she is coming back to her home town to stay with her parents who run an old hotel that is also the town's big tourist attraction where Kathy used to give tours. There is a very big restaurant inside and of course a few ghosts still reside in the place.

On Kathy's drive into town she is pulled over by a friendly cop and given a ticket. Of course they start dating. Turns out Kathy's parents want her to get married and so does the cop's very talkative Grandmother played by Shirley Moon Koebbe. This part calls for somebody with the timing of Estelle Getty or Ruth Gordon but Shirley Moon Koebbe has NONE of their wit or comedic talent so EVERY line of dialogue spoken by the Grandmother falls so flat it just becomes awkward and dull. The acting all around is truly at amateur level. There are a few ghosts that pop up and interact with Kathy's father and the part of the ghost calls for somebody like Cecil Kellaway or Henry Travers (You can look them up) but what we get is just another very ordinary performance from another bland actor.

We keep hearing that Kathy is a fantastic cook and people try and convince her to break free of the food critic position and concentrate on her cooking. Towards the very end of the movie there is a huge Christmas dinner being held at the hotel, so big the President of the United States arrives. None of the cooks at the hotel can make anything other than a grilled cheese sandwich which is played for laughs but makes little sense and Kathy surprises everybody and arrives in the kitchen to make dinner. The problem is we never even see her take charge and start preparing the dinner! We have no idea what she is even making, the scene literally just dissolves to AFTER the dinner where everybody including the President says it was the best dinner of all time. The movie is so shallow it cannot even give us ONE scene where Kathy is doing ANYTHING in the kitchen and the whole thing about her cooking was the entire subplot of the film!

The film is amateur like on ever level. During one scene Kathy is having a conversation with her parents in the hotel and the shadow of the boom mic can clearly be seen going across Kathy's face.

I will leave it at that. Jesi Jensen is very attractive and she could fit into some kind of TV show perhaps and the movie is usually in focus. Those are my positive comments.