Baby in a Manger

Monica Knox's acting is up to par, but Michael Morrone's is not. I think with a little more experience, he will be there. The plot is one I really anticipated, so I am looking forward to similar, unique stories in the future.

The female lead was tolerable, but as a child services advocate, caring for a baby should have been more natural. The male lead read his lines moments before saying them, had to it was so unnatural. The 16 year old had the best acting skills. But the writing...... Who just walks up to someone and hands them a baby. I fast forwarded through lots of this movie.

This is a great film about being there for others during the holidays. There are so many children in need and this film celebrates the kindness of strangers.

My Christmas film viewings over-time have been a very mixed bag. With some surprisingly good hits, where regardless of how predictable they are succeed in being full of charm, warmth and heart so succeeding in being light-hearted and undemanding fun. But also some quite big misses, where the characters are not likeable, everything is forced and shallow with implausibility too in some of the worst cases, the acting and writing being weak and basically with just nothing to them. Have seen worse Christmas films, but 'Baby in a Manger' really isn't good. Not irredeemably awful, but there are a lot of things wrong with it and when anything is bad goodness isn't it bad. It didn't entertain me. It didn't charm me. It didn't warm my heart. And it didn't move me. Actually found myself annoyed throughout, one of only two feelings felt throughout (the other being boredom), and it takes a lot for me to feel those when watching a film or anything for that matter. Especially now. It has a few plus points. Monica Rodriguez Knox is appealing and a natural presence. The baby is adorable. Did think it looked decent in parts in namely the scenery. However, this is all outweighed by the bad things. Absolutely agree with those panning Michael Morrone, who is on stiff autopilot throughout with yawn-worthy line delivery. One of the worst male lead performances seen in recent memory. Didn't detect any chemistry between him and Knox, they look awkward together and their constant bickering got repetitive and overdone. The supporting cast are forgettable at best and at worst annoying in a film full of one-dimensional caricatures passing off as characters. The filming too often is drab and the editing is very carelessly slapped together. While the music is not too awful on its own, how it's used is. Overused and often out of place, tending to intrude too. The dialogue has more cheese than the cheesiest of cheeseburgers and even fruit sherberts don't have this amount of cloying sugar. The direction is routine at best. The story is dull and unrealistically contrived as well as excessively predictable, no charm, heart or joy at all. Concluding, not good at all and at its worst very bad. 3/10.

This movie has the worst acting by a male lead, Morton's, that I have ever seen. Unfortunately due to his poor acting it overshadows everything else and that is all you think about during the movie. I was going to stop it 10 mins in, but I let it play thinking surely that must have just been a bad scene and must get better, but his acting actually got worse. Now the blame is not 100% his, how did the casting, director and all the other roles involved not pick this up. Not for a split second did I at any stage feel engaged with the movie. People watch movies to be taken on a story, and the skills of the acting and direction / producing make you for that hour believe and feel captivated, unfortunately the bad acting of 1 member made it impossible to connect on any level with the story. This is unfortunate as the other actors were very good. Those giving this movie a 9 or 10 are definitely linked to it to improve the ratings

I'm taking my time to strongly urge that you don't waste yours on this movie. The storyline is very thin. While it could have been flushed out with better writing, nothing can fix the abysmal acting and lack of chemistry. I've watched hundreds of holiday movies, and I'm hard pressed to think of many that are this poor! The story sounded like it had promise. A baby is suddenly left in a manger during a church production. It is unrealistic and goes down hill from that point on as they argue over jurisdiction though NOTHING that happens is based on real procedure. I saw this movie on the network UP which often has good, unique movies. Sadly this is not one of them. With so many holiday movies to choose from each season there is simply no reason to waste your precious time on this one.

This could have been a good movie, but the actors' direction is so bad that the movie losses it credibility. Many times, we hear the baby crying while she is not. Monica Knox is good though, but Michael Morrone is very bad.

After watching almost half this movie, I had to stop. I was hooked enough to want to FF to the end, but I didn't want to waste anymore time on it. Things seemed illogical (aka ridiculous) to me: how could a CPS officer not know how to change a baby's diaper, especially if she's had cases with babies before? Why would a cop say that legally he could not question an underage suspect without parents present & then do so? I felt filming this movie was rushed; the story had such possibilities. I also felt the actors weren't given specific direction on how their characters should respond to the actions in certain scenes. I did like the female police supervisor & the preacher. His response was great when the Christmas Day service was interrupted.