The plot to this Christmas television movie is pretty flimsy. It relies upon characters to act completely illogically. For those of you don't know it already, I'll give a rundown. Basically, Melissa Joan Hart is a screw-up whose parents nag her about her life. She somehow manages to snag a rich, good-looking boyfriend. He dumps her right before they are supposed to meet her parents at a cabin for Christmas. So she has what I would call a psychotic break and kidnaps Mario Lopez. How she does this is the beginning of many far-fetched happenings in the movie. Basically she plans on using Lopez as a stand-in for her boyfriend at Christmas with her family.

The movie is surprisingly funny and the characters likable. However, prepare yourself for lots of convenient lapses of logic in order for the plot to work. Lopez allowing himself to be taken prisoner. Lopez not trying very hard to escape. Hart's family believing her ridiculous excuse for why Lopez is claiming to be kidnapped. Lopez getting a phone and not calling 911. After alerting his girlfriend about what happened, he decides to go along with Hart's plan. His reasoning made no sense really but it's needed to allow his hostility towards her to cool for the inevitable happy ending. Still, it works more than it should, in large part due to the likability of the cast.

Give it a shot if you see it on TV. It's better than most TV movies these days. But if you have ever been in a relationship with someone as unstable as Hart is here, you might feel less generous about the film and its premise.

Television veterans Mario Lopez (Saved By The Bell) and Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina The Teenage Witch) star in Holiday In Handcuffs which despite its title is not a Christmas bondage story. The story is about the Bohemian non-conformist daughter of an overachieving family who is so tired of getting asked why she isn't settling down that on an incredible impulse she kidnaps Mario Lopez out of a convenience store and brings him home to her rural family farm house to show off to the family the boyfriend she promised to bring home for Christmas, but who in fact had dumped her before the action of the film started.

If you can wrap your mind around the concept of Melissa without Sabrina's magic kidnapping hunky Mario Lopez than you've got more imagination than I have. But a funny thing happens, from as incredibly stupid a premise as this one starts with Holiday In Handcuffs does kind of grow on you. Even Mario starts to sympathize with Melissa after meeting her family consisting of parents Markie Post and Timothy Bottoms, brother Kyle Chandler, sister Vanessa Lee Evigan and grande dame grandma June Lockhart.

Of course Mario is also slightly engaged to Gabrielle Miller, but in these kind of family films things like that do have a way of resolving themselves or just going away.

Holiday In Handcuffs has become a staple on the Hallmark Channel in the past two years. I suspect it will remain so for young folks in love and those in love with love who dream that a boyfriend like Mario Lopez is a pistol and restraints away.

An utterly ridiculous premise. A girl breaks up with her boy friend, and kidnaps a guy with hand cuffs to get him to pose as her boy friend for Christmas with her family. Make sense? Of course not, but it doesn't matter.

Even using her Sabrina powers, I doubt the tiny MJ Hart could over power Mario Lopez. Nor is it likely the parents would be fooled by this absurd scheme, especially when the guy starts yelling to them for help! Well, it's a rom-com, so anything goes. On top of that, the Christmas theme demands the exact sentimental outcome you'll see coming more than 50 light years away. Even if you can't give it the poetic license it needs (a lot, lol),you can still laugh at how ludicrous the whole thing is.

Silly nonsense, but utterly harmless. For a brainless diversion, this one, believe it or not, works.