A Castle for Christmas is a Netflix original movie starring Brooke Shields (from Muppets Take Manhattan) and Cary Elwes (from Princess Bride obviously).
The story goes something like this. The main character, played by Brooke Shields, is an author of romance novels and in the 12th book in the series she kills the main character. She runs away to Scotland to avoid a scenario like in the Stephen King movie Misery.
She ends up at a castle that her father worked in as a kid. The owner of the castle, played by Cary Elwes, is an anti-social grumpy non-communicative Duke. At some point, she decides to buy the castle, and he gets even grumpier.
Because she intends to buy the castle, he insists that she move in so she can learn how to care for the castle. He does his best to scare her off, and she does her best to charm him and the community around the castle.
It turns out that secretly he's a really nice bloke, and is only selling the castle to pay off the mortgages on all the farms around the castle.
They fall in love, they throw a Christmas party, everybody's happy.
Then she suggests that after she owns the castle, he could stay. He gets angry because of pride.
She decides to leave, but not before promising to pay off all the mortgages of the farms in the area, thereby saving both the community and the castle. But before she can leave, he comes to his senses and professes his undying love.
It's a Hallmark-style Christmas movie designed to be as bland as possible, with only the most predictable romantic comedy plot. No surprises, just an evenly-paced predictable but satisfying romantic movie set during Christmas. If that's the kind of comfort cinema you're looking for, this movie fits the bill.
Lead photo by Anika De Klerk on Unsplash