Don't expect any surprises when you snuggle down to watch this wholesome, Netflix Christmas magic, time travel, rom-com.
Kindly 14th Century knight Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse, best known from his role in Poldark as Demelza's 'fancy man') is whisked away from snow-blanketed Norwich, England, to a snow-blanketed, proto-Utopian, Bedford Falls-like, small town in Ohio in 2019 and told he has one week - until Christmas Eve - to achieve his "quest".
Upon arrival, he bumps into science teacher Brooke (Vanessa Hudgens) and the two form a fast friendship when she agrees to let him stay in her garden guest house, thinking he is an amnesiac cosplayer whose memory loss was caused by his collision with her car.
Maybe it's meant to be an element of the crone's spell that catapulted him to our time, but Sir Cole adjusts to the 21st Century remarkably - if not ridiculously - quickly.
Neither he, nor Brooke (who soon realises the knight is actually who he says he is) can figure out what his "quest" actually is until the final moments of this 90-minute tale, despite the audience screaming it at the television screen.
While not a film to be thought about too deeply, I would question writer Cara J Russell's choice for the name for the knight. "Sir Cole" too often sounds like "circle", which is really odd and distracting.
Conversely, Cole shares a lot of interesting factoids about his life back in Medieval England, from his youth right through his training, suggesting elements of this movie are subliminally educational.
A formulaic, twee Hallmark Christmas romance, with a script that veers from quirky to cliché, The Knight Before Christmas still manages to be endearingly sweet.
This is thanks largely to its charismatic leads, despite the total absence of any logical sense of "why" or "how" in the ultra-lightweight storytelling.