The Draw: Vintage Hallmark. DC Arrowverse star as lead. Paul Campbell. And because I had to get one more Hallmarkie in for Toasty.
HERstory:
Sloan is super keen to get the job, but her boyfriend, high powered Wall Street banking douche (is there any other kind?) Kenneth (Kenny) is pouting because Sloan will not be able to go to Aspen over the holidays if she gets the new job. But he sees that she wants it, so he tells her he'll talk to old man Maguire's kid at the club and the job is hers. She declines and wants it on her own merit.
Jake poses as a sleepy artists model in the evening so he can paint in the studio after. The next morning, they're to present Tiny Mustache with their pitches for a window display. Sloan gets the south window with her pitch, and Jake gets the North window with his sketch that he just cranked out on a napkin 7 minutes before the pitch was due. They're told that each one getting window is now the competition and the one to bring in the most customers between now and Christmas(!?!? How on earth is that measurable? Are the cashiers taking a survey? What's going on here).Sloan complains that she worked all night on her pitch and Jake just cranked his out, to which Tiny Mustache says he would have got both windows if his second napkin design wasn't all smeared with frosting.
Rita (Naomi Judd) is the bitchy bathroom attendant just keepin' it real with Sloan, but of course she gets along great with smarmy Jake. Turns out she's Sloan's mom. Both Sloan and Jake get along with Mac, the window cleaner who they both chat up in the mornings.
Sloan's window is a NY skyline with a gold cutout of the Statue of Liberty with a Santa hat on it standing in cotton batting. Jake's is Mr. and Mrs. Claus watching TV in a very green room with some pithy signage. Nobody really likes Sloan, and she's told to work on hers or lose her window to Jake. After work Sloan winds up at the art studio where Jake is once again modelling. Apparently Tiny Mustache told her to go and attend. As she sketches his eyes, she starts to smile (in small part because Jake keeps mugging at her). After session, he shows her the painting he's been working on, but notes he can't finish it. He also notes his real desire is to be an artist, but he's struggling in NY and everyone back in his Maine small town is taking bets on when he's coming back, tail between his legs.
At dinner with her mom and Uncle Jimmy? Bea talks up how nice, funny and handsome Jake is... not like that ugly Kenny.
Their next window displays are Yoga Santa on a surfboard against a red background, while Jake's is a wood panelled "Santa's Man Cave". Their displays are somehow getting a great write-up in the local paper (you know, the local New York City paper) and sales are indeed up, so good work you two. Tiny Moustache says someone is definitely getting the promotion.
And then we learn that Jake actually living in the store. Bea tells Sloan she should invite Kenneth to their family "Christmas Eve Eve" event,but he's busy, and she then suggests Jake. Next morning Jake and Sloan chat up Mac and Jake starts suggesting Mac might want to meet a nice lady... like Bea... to which Sloan immediately tries to downplay and says to Mac, just leave it to me... without telling them Bea is her mom. The next window displays are Surfing Santa and eco-conscious Santa...both, so, so, so basic and not at all impressive.
After leaving the building for the evening, Jake does his usual sneak-back-in routine to live at the store for another night, and Sloan follows him in. The jig is up. But Sloan promises not to tell Tiny Moustache (even though it's grounds for termination and possibly illegal), but because of the alarm settings they're trapped inside until morning, meaning that Sloan is missing Kenny's office Christmas party, but Jake says he'll show her a fun time in a closed apartment store. And it's bonding time, leading to a brutal honesty exchange. Sloan confesses she is a facade, she is a window display and confesses Bea is her mom, and she's embarrassed that she's embarrassed of her mom, while Jake feels shame that he's broke and his family doesn't believe in him. They both boost each other and inspire each other to a new level of store displaying. Sloan invites him to their Christmas Eve Eve event. Then they dance for some reason and he almost kisses her, but then security comes by (wait, now there's security? Where've they been this whole time? And there's no alarm on the rooftop door) and they hide behind the cosmetics counter until morning.
The Times comes by and takes pictures of them...absolutely terrible pictures. At dinner with Kenny, Sloan apologizes for missing the party, but Kenny said he feels sorry that she had to be trapped in the store with "that guy" and she lets slip that he's been slipping there. Kenny immediately wants to call his dad and tell old man Maguire, to get Jake fired and Sloan the job. The next day Mac lets slip that Jake has the security alarm codes and they didn't spend the night together by force, it was Jake's choice. Complication! She thinks he's trying to sabotage her, and oblivious that he just likes her. That's Kenny thinking, Sloan.
They toil through the night, and the next morning, Jake and Rita and Sloan are all chatting outside the back of the store. Kenneth rolls up in his limo and offers to take Sloan to Aspen one last time, but she declines. Then Kenny calls Rita over and drops some change in her mug of hot coffee. Sloan admonishes him, and then admits that Rita is her mom. Kenneth doesn't understand her confession, and it's hard to tell if Kenny is just being shallow and doesn't like that his girlfiend's mom is a bathroom attendant, or that she was lying to him. Probably the former.
Jake shows Sloan his final pitch, and she thinks he's deliberately throwing the competition. He admits that he is, that it just means more to Sloan than him. At Christmas Eve Eve, Jake has showed up, surprising Sloan, and even more of a surprise, Jake has brought Mac as his plus one. And Mac and Rita admit they've been sweet on each other for quite a while. It's tur-dunkin' time (a turkey friend in Dunkin Donuts batter) and bun tossin' time. Sloan sees Jake having fun, and it's evident she realizes that Kenneth would never, ever, ever fit in this scene.
The Christmas Eve window unveiling ... Jake's display is just cookies and milk and a Santa hat. Minimalism. "Jake," Tiny Moustache says incredulously, "we're a department store, excess is what we do". Sloan's is a live display, a Christmas dinner scene with actors, that turns into a family food fight, but not the fun and playful display from her family gathering the night before. It gets uncomfortably brutal. People are repulsed. And Tiny Mustache fires them both! Oops. Now not only is Jake jobless, but homeless as well.
Sloan finds Jake at the art studio, apologizes to him, explains that she lost herself somewhere along the way, and asks him if they want to break back into the store and fix the mess. Along the way Kenny pulls up in his limo, with flowers (because Colorado is snowed in) and they have it out. Kenny, "I'm willing to overlook those people," and Sloan sniffs out that Kenny was on a date with the perfume counter girl. Yeah, this bullshit isn't going to work. Yeah, fuck that guy.
They get the display set up, but also set off the alarm trying to leave and they get arrested. But then a limo pulls up, and they think Kenny, first, but then the cuffs are taken off. Turns out, it's Old Man McGuire... Mac! Their friend the window washer is rich, and owns the department store, and loves these crazy kids and digs Sloan's mom. Their new window displays is a "classy" dinner table setup, and a living room display with Sloan and Jake as live models and Jake's painting and they make out.
The Formulae:Well, Sloan's got a dick boyfriend, that's classic holiday romance stuff. There's a sort of Christmas deadline/promotion angle the characters' journey as well. And of course there's the starting off as rivals only to fall for each other. And so many establishing shots of New York City. Honestly, I was expecting for a vintage Hallmark movie that there would be more tropes.
Unformulae: No Christmas tree shopping, no cookie baking, no snowball fights, no skating, no cotton batting as snow, no dead parents/spouse, no child and/or precocious niece/nephew, no hot chocolate or cider, no Christmas market, no perfect small town, no big city girl needing to get back to her roots.... close to nada formulae.
True Calling? All the window displays were fucking atrocious. Have the filmmakers and set decorators never, like, ever seen a Christmas window displays before? These are all...how do you say... tacky as fuck. They're like 2000s era hipster ironic, meaning in 2013 they were out of date already. They're embarrassing. Sloan should be embarrassed, Jake should be embarrassed, the set designer and director and everyone involved should be embarrassed. There's not a single display they show us that is even on the cusp of being "good".
The Rewind: There were quite a few funny lines, a lot of wee chuckles here (upon receiving a window display, Jake starts into an acceptance speech ending with "...and of course I wouldn't be sitting here today without...this chair"). Paul Campbell's Jake is 100% styled after Jeff Winger on Community, in look and attitude. That's not the only Community riff, composer James Jandrisch (whom we had to rewind to find out right back to the beginning because he's not credited in the end credits) seems to be riffing on Ludwig Goransson's Community soundtrack work with its whistles and keyboard instrumentals.
The Regulars: Paul Campbell is a Hallmark hunk and one of the best of them. One of the three wisest one might even say. Always enjoy him and he's so... youthful here. Chyler Leigh, who played Kara's sister Alex in the Supergirl TV series (and across the Arrow verse), I was certain I had seen in a Hallmarkie before, but could not find anything in her IMDB profile, so this is it. Cameron Matheson was a Hallmark hunk until he jumped ship for Great American Family, the right wing a-hole alternative to Hallmark (I liked him in the Christmas Club fwiw) but he does too good a job being the dick BF here, and I don't like him at all. Naomi Judd isn't really the well known Judd in the acting realm, but she's got this, 1999's "A Christmas Romance" and 2014's "An Evergreen Christmas" (Before you get excited, Toasty, it's unrelated to the Christmas in Evergreen series and, in fact, the main character's name is "Evergreen"...let that sink in). Christie Liang plays the perfume counter girl who flirts with Kenny... she's been a bunch of these, but most before 2020 (she's also an Arrowverse veteran, having played Diggle's sister(?) in Arrow).
How does it Hallmark? Hey, I was kinda charmed. I thought Campbell was fun, Leigh didn't do that whisper talking thing she's prone to doing when she wants to be dramatic much (only once, I think), and the film felt situationally unique. Like I noted, not a lot of tropes in this one. It's not a top tier, but it's certainly upper middle.
How does it movie? It's...no. It's not. Let's not fool ourselves here. For a minute there, Hallmark seemed to flirt with "do we want to try, like...really try" but the reality is, no, they didn't want to try that hard. The only reason this seems like it's got a bigger, better budget is because they got to shoot in a department store in Vancouver at night, and that gave them sets that felt tangible and real. But then you get to those window displays and, oof ba boof, you can tell there was no budget for anything left and the store didn't let them raid their basement. As well, I really wanted this to be ... sexier. It would have been so much better if it had the danger of sex percolating around it. Like what if they *had* slept together at the store when they were trapped there, but Jake had lied about them being trapped... oooh, there's a real complication. Even when Kenny is busted for having been with the perfume counter girl, it was "just drinks", but you know it wasn't, but does the movie know that it wasn't?
How Does It Snow? The only snow is the cotton batting in the window displays. Otherwise it rains, raining that Vancouver, erm, I mean, New York rain.
The only way crowds of people were gathering in front of those windows was to marvel at how bad they were.
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