Christmas on TV: Will You Merry Me?

As the promotional poster makes clear, Will You Merry Me? focuses more on the feuding mothers-in-law to be than their engaged children. Lifetime clearly intended to appeal to their typical audience of women over 40 by validating the emotions of women facing the imminent marriage of their children rather than the romantic emotions of those marrying children.

In theory, this underrepresented segment of the Christmas movie population should create some refreshing new protagonists for the genre. In reality, the movie plays as a Christmas spinoff of Bride Wars. A bad movie cannot a good knockoff inspire.

Aside from the mean matriarchs, the central couple opens the movie by getting engaged, an act meant to convince the audience that they are in love, but as the movie goes on and it becomes clear that they have never discussed their goals, their futures, or even their political beliefs, their "love" becomes less believable and their feuding more inevitable.

Indeed, feuding is the central element of the movie. Christmas vs. Hannukah. Career woman vs. housewife. City-dweller vs. suburbanite. Lawyer vs. artist. Unbelievable vs. Implausible. This movie's major flaws stem from the fact that it believes conflict must come from polar opposites that are clearly imposed by a writer instead of natural conflict stemming from character choices.

Plus, there's that nasty pun in the title. Will I "merry" you? No. Christmas is merrier without this movie.