In 2015 Dolly Parton brought her life to the small screen with the made for TV film Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors. The film did well enough that the Parton and the cast returned including Ricky Schroder, Gerald McRaney, Alyvia Alyn Lind,  Hannah Nordberg, Jennifer Nettles and Dolly Parton herself for the follow up holiday themed sequel Dolly Parton’s Chirstmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love and now thanks to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment you can bring it home.

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Dolly Parton’s Chirstmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love continues with the story of young Dolly Parton as the Parton Family experiences a true Christmas miracle drawing the Parton’s closer together than ever - with deepened faith and love for one another. An unexpected blizzard threatens the Parton family while Dolly’s father (and his kids) make sacrifices to raise enough money to finally buy his loving wife the wedding ring he could never afford. Meanwhile, an important person in little Dolly’s life begins to see that her amazing voice and musical gift might just be made for something bigger than rural Tennessee. I have to admit up front that I was not a fan of the original film but also know that I am not really the target audience. Going into this one I kept my expectations low understanding what the original delivered and that it was a made for TV film. Thankfully so as this is not a film that will work for most. I found it so generic and often times sadly forced that it was really hard to enjoy the message it had buried underneath it all. Every scene just seemed to be a random moment to listen to try and create some moment for young Dolly to either be sassy or sing and never really had a chance to do much else. Had they just let it be a good life drama with the message then it might have worked a lot better.

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I hate really saying anything bad about films like this because they are meant to be more about the message than much else and that is here. The focus on faith, struggle and family is forced down your throat pretty often throughout as opposed to letting it just come naturally. That is fine and good for the audience that will no doubt enjoy this film, but for me I just don’t enjoy that. I am fine with faith based stories, but I want to make me feel what these characters are going through and why they make the decisions and turn toward or away from faith, but here it just felt like another throw away TV movie that was just trying to use her name and the success of the previous film in hopes to bring something they just didn’t have to a franchise. 

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If you enjoyed the first film then you will no doubt enjoy this film as it is pretty much the same thing, but if you didn’t then this won’t be for you. Thankfully if you have not seen the original you can walk right into this one without missing a beat and decide for yourself if you want to revisit the life of Dolly Parton in this film series.