HOLIDAY IN HANDCUFFS

Director: Ron Underwood
Stars: Melissa Joan Hart, Mario Lopez, Markie Post, Timothy Bottoms, June Lockhart
Year: 2007
Rating: Not Rated (TV-movie)

Okay, I admit it - this movie review might get a bit of fun poked at me. It aired in December 2007, but I TiVo'd it and just watched it the other day. And yes, while the ending of this romantic, made-for-TV (the ABC Family Channel, specifically) holiday comedy has an ending as obvious as Godzilla's attack on Tokyo ... somehow, I still sort of liked it.

Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch") stars as Trudi Chandler, a young painter struggling with life, work and love in the big city. Her life, which is pretty much ka-ka (she works as a waitress, she's just blown a job interview set up by her father, and her parents seem to care infinitely more about her brother and sister than they do about her), seems to finally be coming around when Trudi lands not only a handsome, wealthy Ken doll for a boyfriend (Ben Ayres, largely wasted in his tiny role) - but he's also agreed to come home with her for the holidays! It seems Trudi's parents have rented a cozy cottage way out in the middle of nowhere, and amidst the snowbound festivities Trudi - at last - is determined to show her parents that she's getting a toe-hold onlife, at last.

But literally within minutes of leaving work for their trip, Nick - Trudi's boyfriend - enters the diner and tells her he's not going to spend Christmas with her, after all. Trudi - desperate for her family's attention, and love - tried to still get him to go with her, but after Nick reveals that he only dated her in the first place to get her into bed ... suddenly, Trudi's life doesn't seem to be turning around, after all.

Enter handsome (okay, obscenely good-looking) David Martin (Mario Lopez), who just happens to make the rash decision of choosing Trudi's diner as a place to meet his girlfriend Jessica (Gabrielle Miller) for lunch. His plans are to ask her to marry him that very day ... but these plans go horribly awry when Trudi sort of loses it right there in the restaurant, and - when David's on his way to the john - kidnaps him instead, forcing him to go with her to the family's Christmas in the snow-covered hills.

Believe it or not, it's not quite as lame as it sounds. They make it to the mountain retreat for Christmas, where Trudi manages to set things up so that no one believes that David isn't really Nick - that, instead, he's Trudi's kidnap victim. Timothy Bottoms, and Markie Post, as Trudi's parents, do a good job with the one-dimensional roles they're given to play - and Miller, as Jessica, is grea at playing the rich snob determined to get her man back, once David is finally able to sneak a phone call in to her. The humor is typical ABC Family cutesy, but there are a few surprises thrown in for good measure - not the least of which is June Lockhart, who plays Trudi's grandma - a former stage actress who is so bizarre and theatrical, you can almost see how the whacko genes got passed down to Trudi!

But for a one-note plot, the movie still has it charm. Hart is kind of uneven, at first, as Trudi, but is much better the second-half of the film. Mario Lopez, as usual, looks so damned amazing you can't stand it (and yes, there is an obligatory shirtless scene, where Hart has in her face what many viewers will be thinking in their heads: WOW). The supporting cast is good - even Kyle Howard, in a small role as Trudi's brother - and the setting and story are actually more believable than you'd think; the film not without the certain likeability.

So while it won't win any award, I enjoyed Holiday in Handcuffs ... a nice little cozy comedy on a winter night when ya got not too much else to do. **1/2 - Reel Mediocre-Reel Cool