Holiday Spin (2012) Garrett Clayton, Allie Bertram, Ralph Macchio, Karen Olivo Movie Review

Holiday Spin (2012)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Holiday Spin (2012) Garrett Clayton, Allie Bertram

Not a New Spin

Seventeen year old Blake (Garrett Clayton) finds his life turned upside down when his mum dies in a car crash and he wakes up having survived to find Ruben (Ralph Macchio) standing over his bed, the father who abandoned him and his mum. To make things worse as a minor Blake has to go and live with him and his fiance in Miami where he runs a failing dance school. Ruben's hopes of survival rest on his prodigy, Rob (Benji Schwimmer) and talented young danger Pia (Allie Bertram) entering the Holiday Spin, a Christmas Carol themed dance competition with $50,000 as the top prize. But there are issues between Rob and Pia and when Rob does the dirty on her and takes a different dance partner Blake steps in although he hasn't danced since he was a child.

Whilst children busily write their lists for Santa those who make Lifetime movies already have a list to work with, it's called the "Lifetime Rules of Drama" and it is filled with the sort of cliches you will come across in many of their movies. And that brings me to "Holiday Spin" a movie which works with a lot of "Lifetime Rules of Drama" cliches. We have the son rebelling against the estranged father whose business is in trouble, we also have the nice girl who has a cheating partner which of course brings in the bit of romance a movie like this needs and a lot more detail such as Ruben being his son's age when he was born and was too young to handle fatherhood.

But whilst "Holiday Spin" has more TV movie cliches than you could shake a tail feather at it is also a Christmas movie as well as a dance movie. But the thing about "Holiday Spin" is that like all Lifetime movies it puts the emphasis on the cliches so as a Christmas movie I don't rate it with it really only used as a backdrop for the drama whilst being a dance movie means we have a variety of training cliche scenes and enough giving Garrett Clayton to appear shirtless. Maybe for fans of Clayton this will be enough but for me it wasn't and sadly "Holiday Spin" is one of those movies you watch, waiting for something good to happen and finding yourself still waiting when the movie is over.

What this all boils down to is that "Holiday Spin" didn't do it for me and in truth was a bit of a disappointment as it failed to deliver on the Christmas whilst the dancing side of the movie was often far too cheesy.

Tags: TV Christmas Movies, Christmas Movies


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