Love on the Slopes
Director: Paul Ziller
Writer: Bruce D. Johnson, Kirsten Hansen
Cast: Katrina Bowden, Thomas Beaudoin, Elysia Rotaru, Anthony Konechny, Corey Woods, Chris Shields, Tony Giroux
Seen on: 23.12.2019

Plot:
Alex (Katrina Bowden) really wants to be a travel writer, but so far her job at a magazine has only consisted of copy editing. When a contest is announced for a new writing gig, though, Alex jumps at the chance, suggesting an article on a reclusive sports photographer. Instead her boss suggests that she should write about trying out winter extreme sports instead. Used to a mostly pampered, comfortable existence with her fiancé Barton (Anthony Konechny), Alex is hesitant about that, but ultimately can’t pass up the chance. So she finds herself in Ridgeline looking for somebody who can show her the ropes (quite literally) and finds Cole (Thomas Beaudoin), the photographer she wanted to write about in the first place. As they start exploring the mountains together, they become ever closer.

Love on the Slopes is exactly what you’d expect and want it to be. There is not a single step that strays from the usual romance path, but formulaic as it may be, it’s also pretty charming.

Look, from my five sentence plot description, you can probably already guess exactly how this movie is going down and you’d be right. There really isn’t anything here that isn’t a trope – from the journalist who sucks at ethics and it doesn’t really matter in the end to the way the main and supporting characters are set up.

But it appears that nobody is unhappy with that – least of all me. Nobody is trying to have the film be more than it is. It is content with being a cookie cutter romance and it’s good at being what it is. If they had tried to deviate more from the tried and tested formulas, things would have probably gone very wrong.

Bowden and Beaudoin are charming and have nice chemistry and their characters get to grow with each other. The pacing is good, there is a bit of “life lesson”ing, but not too much and there is an honest sense of enjoyment and levity to the film that made it really pleasant to watch.

Despite the fact that it isn’t actually a Christmas movie, Love on the Slopes was one of my favorites from this year’s Christmas movie binge as it brought me tasty, mostly empty movie calories to warm me up.

Summarizing: cute.