Christmas on Mistletoe Farm was unenjoyable except for a single hilarious character. Without them, I would have stopped watching. 

The movie is a new Netflix original movie. Netflix tends to be hit or miss with Christmas movies, so I wasn’t expecting much, but I hoped it would be half-decent. As it turns out, Christmas on Mistletoe Farm is a cheap, off-brand hallmark movie, thrown together in a couple of weeks. 

The dreadful movie followed a newly single dad and his five children as they moved from London to their inherited family farm. Once arriving, they face many difficulties including a chaotic farm hand, rotten eggs, burst pipes, annoying townspeople, and more. The dad, Matt (Scott Garnham), had originally escaped to the farm for peace and quiet to work on a project, but after being there decided he wanted to sell the farm. The children and townspeople don’t want the farm to be taken over by malicious entrepreneurs and try their best to keep the farm with many techniques, one of which is love. 

Although the storyline sounds intriguing, it jumps around constantly. One moment, the father would want to stay on the farm, and the next he was calling realtors to sell it. It went back and forth and was overall a frustrating mess. It also had a lot of events all smashed into one, causing chaos. There were goat births, pipe bursts, mistletoe sales, a new school, a Christmas fair, and more all within the first half of the movie.

The farm hand, Beano (Scott Paige), is the funny and lovable character who carried the movie. Beano is first introduced to the children by accidentally startling them in the barn thinking they were intruders. After being properly introduced, he becomes a funny, kind character who brings life and humor to the movie. I only continued watching the film because I wanted more of his energetic and childish personality. 

Multiple scenes lead me to experience secondhand embarrassment. For example, in the few romantic love scenes between Matt and the love interest, Miss Ashley (Kathryn Drysdale), they all seemed awkward–and not in a good way. They were seen multiple times, alone, and every time it was either just a bad time in the movie or just gave me extreme embarrassment.

The movie overall seemed very cheap. Some scenes looked like a kid could have directed them. The goat birth scene was awful. Between the actual birthing, to the supposed faints, I could tell that it was all staged and didn’t give the feeling of ‘wow’ that other movies seem to do. Other scenes made me laugh just because of how bad they were. 

Christmas on Mistletoe Farm did have a few good moments when I felt emotionally moved but most scenes left me with a lingering feeling of cringe and embarrassment. From the storyline to the actual production, the movie could easily be left as absolutely terrible. I would not be caught watching this movie again unless it was for Beano, who was the only character that made me continue with the journey. I would not recommend Christmas on Mistletoe Farm unless you enjoy watching extremely badly made movies.