Christmas In Evergreen: Letters to Santa (2018, Hallmark)
We start as the Evergreen movies start, with Santa reading from a storybook, only now it's a sentient storybook that wants to rush ahead. "Our story" opens with "Jazzy rendition of "12 Days of Christmas" where we find Lisa and Oliver setting up Christmas merchandise in a store in "Boston". It's a very confusing opening. Are they a couple? Is this their store? They start talking about opening their own store some day...so... are they just...shopping? It's weird, an absolutely terrible opening IMO. And at first I don't like Oliver at all...he's got a fakey smile and v-neck sweater with no shirt underneath, and a slicked-back haircut which, in Hallmark movies, usually signifies the Dick Boyfriend/Fiance. But they seem to be getting along very well. So confusing. In walks Polly, who is effusing praise on the (non?)couple. Ohhhh! It's her store and they're like interior decorators but for stores, helping improve flow and appearance and whatnot. Polly is impressed and lets them know she's opening two more locations of whatever this shit is she's selling, she just needs to find the storefront spaces. Lisa and Oliver are on their way...they figure three more years and they will have a store of their own? But selling what? The very best in home decoration and design. Erm, ok.
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| Not *quite* a screenshot of someone's phone, but there's an insert of a screenshot of someone's phone. |
Also, it becomes clear that Oliver is the gay BFF...well, "clear" for Hallmark, which doesn't really want to acknowledge anything other than "straight" on the spectrum of sexual identity. But recognizing that he's not Dick Boyfriend but awesome GBPBFF (that's gay business partner and best friend forevergreen). Anyway, Lisa we find out grew up in Evergreen but moved away at around 8 years old as her parents were military/scientists or something, and she's going back there because it's lived long in her memory as a treasured place at Christmas.
On the only road into Evergreen, listening to jazzy Christmas tunes, Lisa comes across a vintage cherry red pickup truck that Hallmark fans will recognize as Allie's from the last movie. It's stalled on the side of the road with the hood up and a dude trying haplessly to repair it. Lisa gets out of her car and struts over to the truck...long slim legs in tight, tight jeans and high heels wearing a ridiculously cool purple leather jacket looking Cindy Crawford-esque supermodel circa 1993... compared to most Hallmark movies it's like she stepped out of the future. She's a total boss and takes control of the situation, the dude, modestly handsome, easily acquiesces to her alpha dog personality and give her the wrench. She pretends to do something, then hops in the truck and they get that sucker started. They exchange smiles, Merry Christmases and theoretically witty banter before heading out mutually on their way into town.
She gets into town, parks on the main street (which has never looked like an actual driveable street but a closed off pedestrian market, but I digress) right in front of the Chris Kringle Cafe, you know Allie's parent's place from the first Evergreen. Then she turns around to see the shuttered Daisy's General Store... woooooah FLASHBACK (!) We see Lisa as a little girl, super sad to be leaving Evergreen, getting help from Daisy at Daisy's General Store with writing a letter to Santa. This town has a magic wishing snow globe and a magic letters-to-Santa box. You guys, this place is magic. Her wish from Santa is to have Christmas in Evergreen every year, but Daisy helps change it to she wishes to have Christmas like it is in Evergreen every year, that way she can take Evergreen wherever she goes.
Present day, Allie's Hot Mom tells Lisa that Daisy's store closed a little over a year ago and that Daisy just died! She's dead! Just dropping death on us in minute 10. That's, like, a real bummer, man. Hot mom and Lisa make friends as Lisa reacquaints herself with town, and Kevin arrives in Allie's truck delivering vegetables and he and Lisa get a formal introduction. They depart again as Lisa checks into her B&B, where Kevin just happens to be dropping off a Christmas tree. Wow, three meet cutes.
Just before dinner, Lisa heads back into town to reminisce about Daisy's General Store (another flashback with sweet Daisy telling little Lisa that Santa knows exactly where she is). At the Cafe, Hot Mom seats Lisa with Mayor Ezra and Allie's BFF Michelle and they talk about Daisy's store, how they're having difficulty finding a buyer since it's in such disrepair (a freaking cross-beam fell down...that place isn't structurally sound), and they're trying to stave off big franchise retailers from entering town. Ezra owns the place for now, but the bank is about to repossess if it doesn't get sold in the next month. Allie, with the skillz to pay the billz, says she can whip that place into selling shape by staging it...all she needs is a contractor to help her with pretty much everything. And the only contractor in town: Kevin, of course.
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| You guys, Evergreen IS magic. Look how that cross beam crashed through that display case without breaking the top. A Christmas miracle (or inept set designer) |
Both Kevin and Lisa are transient folks, they don't like to get tied down. They both have jobs that take them different places where they only stay for a short time. For Lisa it's because she moved around so much that it's sort of the lifestyle she's used to. For Kevin it's been about avoiding his dad who he's not had the best relationship with since his mom died (when he was 8!). He's got firm ties to Evergreen compared to Lisa's loose ones, but he finds it painful being there.
They get to work on Daisy's General Store and, I guess, get closer? (As the script dictates they do). Honestly, there's a lot of pleasant exchanges but no real chemistry between them. I mean one morning Lisa and Allie's Dad shame Kevin into adding whip cream and caramel to his coffee, which he just wanted black (He doesn't want hot chocolate? SHAME!SHAME!SHAME!). Straight up coffee shamed him. Who does that? It's not festive, it's abuse. What if he's diabetic?
Meanwhile Hannah (whose shallow meet-cute with a guy wearing the same sweater as her at the Christmas Festival --which was held at Kevin's dad's barn, IIRC -- seems to have turned out to be nothing more than hot chocolate) has her brother and nephew visiting town. Hot Mom immediately sets up the only other black woman in town with the only black guy to come to town, and so we get a very weak secondary love story between Hannah's brother Thomas and Michelle (to be fair to Hallmark, though, secondary love stories in their movies are always pretty weak). Hannah and her nephew, meanwhile, spend the entire movie looking for the right place in town to fit an old skeleton key. The nephew tries jamming this monstrous key into modern deadbolt locks. Something's wrong with that kid. I think it's the script and the fact they got a 13-year-old mid-pubescent boy to play a role meant for a 6-year-old.
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| not even close to fitting dumdum |
While cleaning up the old store, Lisa finds Daisy's letters to Santa box. She brings it over to the cafe where her and Hot Mom discover what looks like a very old letter. They open it to find that it's a letter from K.M., age 8, the year his mom died. He wished that they could have Christmas like they used to with the candles and the carols and the bells. Poor boy, never got his wish. But who is K.M.? Well, Kevin, of course. Anyway...
Later Lisa is checking out the old ...church? shed? churchshed... where the town places all their homemade arts and crafts prior to the Christmas Festival's arts and crafts sale. While inside Hannah's nephew notices the bells, which Kevin notes haven't worked in decades and his dad spent years trying to fix to no avail, nobody knows what's wrong with the mechanism (I'm guessing it's missing a key, but whatever). He also lets slip that his mom used to organize the Christmas festival before she died and Daisy took over (and then at some point Allie took over and now Michelle...this timeline isn't totally working out).
Over cookie making with Thomas and Michelle and Hannah and her nephew (and Jazzy jingle bells montage...jeez), Thomas lets drop that he's been trying to hire Kevin for his logging company and he's expanding, and is waiting for Kevin's response on a foreman offer. Just as cookie baking is done, the beam is up and secured, but there's a new problem, there's a hole in the bookshelf from the crossbeam which both Kevin and Lisa are mistaking as a pipe-bearing wall for some reason. They have a little spat which is interrupted by Ezra, noting that a potential buyer is on the way and they need to get shit together fast. "If you just want to get started on the wall, I'll get started on the shelves" Lisa commands, to which Kevin starts...sweeping. Uh, Kev? I'm beginning to suspect that you're not so great at this contractor stuff.
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| Yep, totally looks like that huge beam, in making that small hole under those shelves totally could have damaged some pipes. I'm not sure you're good at your job, Kevin. It's never mentioned again so I guess it was fine. |
Then instead of working more on the place, they go shopping for the perfect tree at Kevin's dad's farm, then they decorate the tree out front and talk about Kevin's dad and their transient lifestyles and how settling down sucks so hard. They touch hands and smile all goofy. Then Michell, Thomas, Hannah and her nephew show up, and decide to help out with decorating the tree and the store. Thomas lifts his seriously too big son up to put a hat (!) on the tree ("I'm seriously too big" he says after being lifted), then runs by some new plans by Kevin, namely that he's planning on opening up a new logging thing near Evergreen. You know what makes for beautiful scenic terrain for a Christmas town? Clearcut logging.
The buyer shows up and looks over the place but decides not to purchase, dashing the hopes of the whole town. Meanwhile Kevin learns about the letter, gets very emotional, and runs out, leaving Lisa worried. Lisa makes a wish on the snow globe to come up with an idea to help sell Daisy's store. David's letter ("Wow, that snow globe works fast.") In order to spice up the town for the next buyer coming through, they decide to ramp up the Christmas Festival by making it like it used to be, back when Kevin's dead mom did it...with the bells and candles and carols.
The next day, Kevin, back from his emotional breakdown, is keen to help reinstate the old traditions but those bells will be a problem (even Nick -- who it turns out isn't *really* Santa despite the impression we were given in the previous movie -- gives Hannah's nephew a clue that it's for the flipping bells!) Kevin brings his dad in to work on this futile, maddening task once more. Lisa meanwhile comes up with an idea on how to merchandise the store...sell all the town's arts and crafts shit in there.
Complications in the Kevin/Lisa pair bonding...Oliver shows up in town, with the suggestion of bringing Polly in to look at the store. Kevin, narrow-minded small-town boy he is, gets the wrong idea about Lisa and Oliver's relationship. Lisa cotton's onto Kevin's stupidity and entices him to go skating with them. Oliver it turns out is a bronze medal figure skater (that's Hallmark code for "gay"), and Lisa outright tells Kevin he's an idiot and that Oliver is just her best friend.
Meanwhile Thomas is out skating and Allie's dad (there selling hot chocolate of course) shouts to him "Looking good, David." Thomas smiles and waves off this microaggression... but it's not okay. Meanwhile Hanna says to Michelle "I'm really glad you and my brother seem to be getting closer." She almost sells it. Michelle says, "Yeah...you sure? I mean, it's not like weird or anything for you?" Remember, I suspected that in the last movie Hannah had the hots for Michelle and Michelle is just kind of oblivious. "Why would it be weird? I've never see you this happy." That's how much Hannah loves Michelle, she cares only about her happiness. Plus if she gets with her brother, it keeps her close to her.
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| NOT DAVID! I can't tell, but Thomas may be flipping the old man off right here. |
Honestly, the shot of the skating pond with the bridge all covered in Christmas lights is probably the most beautiful establishing shot in any Hallmark movie, and that bridge looks awesome. Montage to "Jazzy Christmas music" of skating, leading to store decorating, to bells fixing, to chats in front of the fire, to a whole bunch of working and falling in love.
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| Actually, on freeze frame I can see how fake this is. |
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| But seriously, the bridge looks awesome. |
Allie comes back from wherever she was for Christmas to serve no narrative purpose except to tell Kevin that her and Ryan (from the last movie) took almost ten months to get settled together but for the right person any waiting is worth it.
Thomas and Michelle actually have a very sweet conversation in a closet (wait, is that a metaphor for Michelle?) when Polly shows up and she's is just so excited by everything. "Oh Lisa this store this store is absolutely gorgeous I love it look at these gorgeous pillows they must've been hand-done what a cute touch I lo... and look! That's beautiful those nutcrackers are all lined up and ready to go oh my goodness and you got the maple syrup, which I love, oh everything is just...it's exquisite I just love it the way you mixed the antique items with the new items, it's very smart...."
Despite her excitement, Polly doesn't buy the store. I think her cocaine problem has taken a toll on her finances, quite frankly. She actually came to offer Oliver and Lisa jobs helping her expand, over time becoming co-owners and eventually having their own store. There's something very flawed about this plan. I think she's trying to grift some money out of them to fuel her coke problem.
Kevin, not learning his lesson from earlier, jumps to conclusions about Lisa and Oliver's plans to have their own store, and decides to leave town. But Lisa and Oliver decide to buy Daisy's with Oliver taking Polly's job and Lisa staying to run the store. Lisa charges over to her Dad's farm to slap that idiot upside the head, again. As they reconcile (reconciling Kevin's stupidity, that is) Hannah's nephew David FINALLY figures out where that key goes and he and Hannah get the bells going.
Oh and that note, turned out it was Kevin's dad who wrote it, on behalf of Kevin, and finding the note, and Lisa returning his mother's Christmas traditions to town, has healed their fractured relationship. "I just wanted you to have what you asked for in the letter"
"You did. You did. You did, son. You did. You both did." I guess they did it.
And FLASHBACK(!) it turns out that Lisa and Kevin both saw each other at Polly's store years ago when she was leaving town and Kevin's dad was putting the letter in the box. Erm, ok.
The Draw:
I explained last time that I was curious about a Hallmark "sequel". But rather than "sequel" lets use some comic book parlance and call it the Evergreen Annual. Plus I wanted to see if they really did anything to follow up with Allie and Ryan (they were in Florida for Christmas at Ryan's family. In the last movie Ryan and his daughter were going to Florida, not visit family, but to go on a cruise).
The Formulae:
The perfect tree, cookie making/baking/decorating montage, heavy emphasis on traditions, the need to save an establishment, stupid jumping to conclusions and making life decisions based off those stupid conclusions, that sort of thing.
Now the Evergreen formula is to have an opening and closing narrative sequence with a storybook, and Santa narrating. As well the Evergreen formula has paintings of the town when returning from commercial, signifying a new page in the book.
And, of course, Evergreen is the PST (perfect small town).
Unformulae:
Honestly, as 90's and token gesture as it feels, giving Thomas and Michelle a romance seems progressive if only compared to almost every other Hallmark (that isn't about a romance between to African-American leads). Also the coded gay BFF, again, not at all progressive by today's standards, but by Hallmark's standards, it's almost like trying. Also really breaking the formula is all the return characters and whatnot, really giving a small town ensemble vibe to this that enriches an otherwise pedestrian Christmas romance.
Also, despite Thomas' insistence that this town really is magic, they kind of scaled back on the fantastical magic talk in this one, especially turning the possibly real Santa from the last one into just "local-old-guy-with-a-beard-Nick-who-plays-Santa" in this one.
True Calling?
It is Christmas in Evergreen, again, so that parts OK. It should more be "Letter to Santa" rather than the plural "Letters to Santa" but regardless, it does paint a somewhat more accurate portrayal of what's possibly going on here.
The Rewind:
Did Allie's dad really get the only two black dudes in town confused? And the one black dude is the other black dude's father and, like, twice the size of him? Jeeeeeezuuuuus wept!
The Regulars:
Jill Wagner is one of Hallmark's princesses. Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses this year, Christmas Cookies back in 2016 and a couple more even before that, plus four entries in Hallmark's Mystery 101 series this year. Wagner took a bit to grow on me, the opening 10 minutes were pretty rough. But I love her tough, take-charge attitude and she doesn't mince about when she's feeling emotional, she confronts those emotions head on. Kind of refreshing and modern. I liked her look coming into town, but she eventually started to look more and more Evergreen as the film progressed.
Also, Wagner is kind of a dead ringer for a younger Meredith Vieira which threw me off for almost the entire film until I figured it out (I thought at first maybe she was Lindsay Wagner's daughter and that what I was seeing in her).
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| Seriously, that's not the same person? |
Mark Declan has only been in one other non-Evergreen Hallmark, that being the 2017 non-classic Switched for Christmas with Candice Cameron-Bure. He's ok.
And then, yeah, a whole cast of characters returning from the last Evergreen, plus countless appearances in other Hallmarks. I won't get into each one, but this one is almost all familiar faces.
How does it Hallmark?
I found this to be a bit tedious and a lot ridiculous, with too much going on and all of it predictable. It would probably sit just above middle of the pack, so still better than most. The Christmas Jazz certainly stood out when compared to other Hallmarks, but it was also awful synth Jazz, so painful.
How does it movie?
Nope, it doesn't movie at all. It's like an overly extended 80's sit com episode where they try to do something bigger and less funny than they usually do. It's overly ambitious (or perhaps not really ambitious enough).
How does it snow?
I had a hard time with this one. There seemed to be a lot of real snow around. There was definitely ice for skating on which had to be real. Nobody wore scarves and I couldn't see anyone's breath so it couldn't have been too cold. Mid-spring somewhere perhaps with a lot of chipped ice for snow to add to existing unmelted ground cover, maybe? Nope, upon reinspection, a lot of batting and CGI snow, and I think that rink is just a composited shot of an indoor rink made up to look like an outdoor set.
Graig, can we be forevergreen friends?
ReplyDeleteForevergreen and evergreen, my friend!
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