A Castle for Christmas.has, comfortingly, almost every cliche of the genre some of which were:
An 'exotic' setting, here a castle in Scotland.
The inevitable culture clash - here an American female bestselling novelist vs a grumpy Scottish aristocrat.
The resolution of traumas is a very important part of such dramasand here both protagonists have them to be resolved. For the novelist, this was a PR storm over her killing off the hero of her wildly popular, multi-volume franchise followed by a spectacular meltdown on Drew Barrymore Show which was meant to rehabilitate her in the eyes of her fans. For the Duke, it was trying to maintain his s ancestral home as well as letting down the emotional barriers he had put up against the world after his divorce. Both characters being divorced was a smart way of plausibly linking them.
There was a group of characterful locals, who formed a pub-based knitting group. And I enjoyed the unrealistic illogical and contradictory lavishness of the Christmas decorations in a small Scottish village and near bankrupt castle and its owner. Usually such dramatic incoherence would annoy me, but not here.
As ever, there was the use of current pop music on soundtrack to underline, sometimes ironically, the dramatic situation but it was not overly insistent and at times was surprisingly effective.
But one of the best and honestly original aspects of this is the fact that the two protagonists were mature individuals, not giddy teens/20-year olds. And they were played by Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes, both of whom look wholly unacceptably (and completely naturally) gorgeous at their respective ages (Shields 57, Elwes 60).
And towards the end of course, there was the obligatory montage to sum up a situation – not to mention the cute ‘acting’ dog for the really key moments!
Really well done and ridiculously enjoyable