The Santa Stakeout is more comedy than romance, with more smiles than laughs, but I enjoyed it. Paul Campbell is one of Hallmark's funnier actors, and his easy, engaging, natural style is perfect for Hallmark movies. He plays Detective Ryan and Tamera Mowry-Housley plays Detective Tanya. They pretend to be newlyweds and move in next door to art theft suspect Francis played by talented veteran sleazeball character actor Joe Pantoliano (Sopranos, the Matrix, etc.). He's known as Mr. Christmas and, in order to fit in and keep their cover, Ryan and Tanya, go all out in showing they embrace the Christmas spirit.
Ryan is divorced, cynical and not a fan of the holidays. But as he spends time with Tanya, he softens and they open up a bit to each other. Those are always the key scenes in movies like this because we get to see the characters learn more about each other and they either convince us or don't that they belong together. I liked the growing connection between Ryan and Tanya. And there was some fun banter along the way:
Ryan: "The German chocolate is my favorite; it's bitter but it's got a sweet edge." Tanya: "Just like you."
Tanya: "Being fake married to you has had its ups and downs, ... but I have no regrets."
Campbell was great in Hallmark's Christmas by Starlight (a better movie than this one). He actually wrote that one with Kimberley Sustad. He's very reliable and does a nice job again here. Mowry-Housley is effective at playing Tanya as a strong character willing to assert herself. Her character, a rookie, is actually the better more prepared detective. But neither character was really that effective as a detective, until the very end. In fact, their "stakeout" and surveillance techniques were pretty lousy and obviously played more for laughs than realism.
But there were a number of attempts at humor that really didn't work for me. In the beginning, in the Captain's office, the battle to show off more knowledge about a new suspect (with no prior knowledge of that suspect) was presumably meant to be funny but it just came across as silly. And both the Captain and his subordinate Talbot were caricatures that really weren't funny to me. The fishing gear scene in particular was a poor attempt at slapstick humor.
But I enjoy light, warm-hearted Christmas movies and so I tend to be more forgiving. This movie probably deserves a 6 more than a 7, but I really liked the leads. And Joe Pantoliano was a step up from the usual secondary actors.
Ryan is divorced, cynical and not a fan of the holidays. But as he spends time with Tanya, he softens and they open up a bit to each other. Those are always the key scenes in movies like this because we get to see the characters learn more about each other and they either convince us or don't that they belong together. I liked the growing connection between Ryan and Tanya. And there was some fun banter along the way:
Ryan: "The German chocolate is my favorite; it's bitter but it's got a sweet edge." Tanya: "Just like you."
Tanya: "Being fake married to you has had its ups and downs, ... but I have no regrets."
Campbell was great in Hallmark's Christmas by Starlight (a better movie than this one). He actually wrote that one with Kimberley Sustad. He's very reliable and does a nice job again here. Mowry-Housley is effective at playing Tanya as a strong character willing to assert herself. Her character, a rookie, is actually the better more prepared detective. But neither character was really that effective as a detective, until the very end. In fact, their "stakeout" and surveillance techniques were pretty lousy and obviously played more for laughs than realism.
But there were a number of attempts at humor that really didn't work for me. In the beginning, in the Captain's office, the battle to show off more knowledge about a new suspect (with no prior knowledge of that suspect) was presumably meant to be funny but it just came across as silly. And both the Captain and his subordinate Talbot were caricatures that really weren't funny to me. The fishing gear scene in particular was a poor attempt at slapstick humor.
But I enjoy light, warm-hearted Christmas movies and so I tend to be more forgiving. This movie probably deserves a 6 more than a 7, but I really liked the leads. And Joe Pantoliano was a step up from the usual secondary actors.