T&K's Xmas Advent Calendar: Day 9

Desperately Seeking Santa (2011, Amazon Prime, produced for ABC Spark)

The Story:
Jennifer (Laura Vandervoort) is the PR manager for the South Boston shopping mall (which, through clever deduction my wife pegged as Woodbine Shopping Mall in Toronto's east west end).  She has established relationships/friendships with many of the retailers, granting her preferential treatment at places like the coffee cart outside where she skips the long line every morning.

The mall is having tough times, but then again the whole physical retail industry is having a tough time.  Her boss at corporate notes that purchases are down against online sales at all their properties, and that some of their indoor shopping establishments are going to have to shut down in the new year. With 35% of their annual sales happening in the 6 weeks leading to Christmas, he incentivizes his mall PR staff by dangling a new role, VP of Marketing and Promotions ("overseeing all their malls in the northeast") to whomever can raise their sales percentages the most leading into Christmas.

Jennifer crafts a "sex sells" plan and runs a "Sexy Santa" contest to find their Sexy Santa for the holiday season.  She has to let the old Santa go after 18 years on the job.  She lets him know that corporate has a layoff package for him (you know, I don't think part-time seasonal employees are given packages if they're "laid off"... it's a very strange sequence meant to show that Jennifer is tough but also not entirely dispassionate.  My wife pointed out that maybe they should keep him around as traditional Santa for the kids...but I digress).

After a barbed encounter with a Southie who doesn't like her cutting the coffee lineup, she hosts the first round of the competition and guess who happens to show up?  That same Southie.  His name is David Moretti (Nick Zano).  He has a dead mom who loved Christmas, and a live dad who makes pizza pies.  He's also studying to become a paramedic and maybe a doctor one day, and also he's trying to help save his dad's pizza pie place from the condo developers who are going to tear it down.

He's not a meathead, or delusional, like the other entrants so, despite Jennifer's initial impression and reluctance, he wins round 2 of the contest and becomes sexy Santa. He quickly becomes a media darling (helping save a woman who had a heart attack only raises the stakes) and attendance at the mall is booming.  Jennifer's mall has the greatest gains, and she lands the big promotion, but her boss says he's still closing down the mall.  All her friends are going to be losing their livelihoods, or at least have to relocate.  Also, when David finds out that Jennifer's corporate is backing the condo that's tearing down his pop's pizza pie place, he's pissed.

It turns out Jennifer's douchecanoe boyfriend has been working backdoor deals with a local politician to make sure the condo tearing down Moretti's is going through, that the Christmas Eve appeal to city counsel is cancelled.  Jennifer quits her job, blackmails her boss into no longer backing the condos with threats of exposing his complicity in bribery and corruption, and races back to the now protected pizza pie place to make amends with David.  A happy ending.

Except for all of Jennifer's friends at the mall who will be losing their livelihoods by the end of January.  And Jennifer is out of work, and surely not getting that reference letter. Other than that....

The Draw:
Last winter, I caught the Hallmark movie Winter's Dream, which paired up Superman (Dean Cain) with Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Kristy Swanson).  If I'm going to watch two post-middle aged superheroes hook up in a cheesy romance, then of course I'm going to watch two other superheroes - namely Smallville's Supergirl and DC's Legends of Tomorrow's Steel hook up.  Of course I am.  Also, Nick Zano made for great boyfriend material on both Cougar Town and Happy Endings...I quite like the guy (and clearly someone at ABC was making a big push for him around 2010).

The Formulae:
So, Jennifer's mom, who wasn't much into Christmas, is dead, so is David's mom (but she loved Christmas).  We got two dead moms, people.

Jennifer has to save the mall, which is at risk of getting shut down.  David's pop's pizza pie place is also probably getting shut down.  We have two places that need saving, people!

Jennifer's trying for that next phase in her career, and David is working hard for the next phase in his.  They both get a chance to prove themselves, people!  (Although Jennifer is the only one who needs to have a cliched crisis of conscience in this play).

By the end of the film, David is reminded by his pops, his ball-bustin' brother and his pregnant sister that even if they lose the family business, it doesn't mean they lose family, and that's what Christmas is about.  Jennifer realizes that the people at the mall are her family, and that family should be more important than business.  Double family learnin'!  They say "family" so often at the end of the film I thought Vin Diesel was going to bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

There's the late-in-the-third-act betrayal, where David storms out on Jennifer because he thinks she was lying to him about her knowledge of her company being behind the condo developer.  This is such a common "no time to explain, I'm outta here" trope in these films.

Unformulae: 
If this breaks the Hallmark formula at all it does so in one place - sex.  They mention sex, they have a lot of hunky topless men scenes, it acknowledges sex is a real thing in the real world (like, David's sister is pregnant! How'd that baby get in there?)
Zano is clearly beefy underneath his Sexy Santa gear but beyond his pec cleavage we don't really get a good look at his man candy...but there's a lot of other guys taking their tops off at the start.

Oh, also David and Jennifer's kissing isn't the chaste, puckered-lips-pressing kind like in the Hallmark land, there's lips separating and passionate, bodies-pressed-against-each-other embracing.  Turns out watching two really attractive people fake make out is kinda nice.

Right, yes, and there's some semi-authentic dance and pop songs going on here.  I mean, they're not like big mega-hits or anything but they're also not the same bullshit Christmas carols and one-guy-with-Garage-Band bedroom composed scores we're used to.  This world feels a little lived in that way.

Oh, and actual gay supporting characters (the Jeremys).  They don't have a lot to do, but they're there and they play a minor role (and even have their own mini-romance story going on), so that was cool to see.


True Calling?
Does the title represent the film?  Not a great example of the title being on point, but also not the worst.  I mean, yes Jennifer really does, desperately, need that Sexy Santa for her own career advancement, but at the same time, I think the "seeking" part of the title intones more of a chase throughout the movie than happens.  Obviously a reference on "Desperately Seeking Susan" but other than the title, it's not at all connected to the Madonna film

The Rewind: 
 Nick Zano falls in and out of a really bad Boston accent, and he acts better without it.  He never convincingly screams "South Boston"... except in this moment when he give the lawyer his prize money check to file the appeal (I need to learn how to make moving gifs to get the full effect here):

"You get that check, bro?"
Is that Nick Zano...or a Whalberg brother?

The Regulars:
Canadian talent plus CW star-power, not a lot of Hallmark regulars here.  But Vandervoort has a Lifetime movie, Finding Mrs. Claus and an Up TV movie Coffee Shop both under her belt.

Zano's pedigree is mostly playing boyfriends on bigger series.

The rest of this cast, however, was pretty great.  Jennifer's douchy boyfriend was suitably douchy, her dick boss suitably dickish, the Jeremys were delightful, the TV host seemed like a real TV host, Jennifer's best friend/assistant Marissa had a Kat Dennings-like charm, ditzy dancer Brittany does delightful gushing.... Over on David's side, the Italian pizza pops was oh so Italian but also a great pops, the bro brother was very loveably bro, while the supportive, loving sister was so supportive and loving.  This was some pretty great peripheral casting.

How does it Hallmark?
It's one notch above standard Hallmark fare.  It wades deeply into all the tropes that these films have, but it's also got a great circle of talent in the roles who actively commit to a good performance.  Nick Zano's charm goes a long way here as well... better than 99% of the leads in films of this type.  He even has to learn some dance moves for  his Sexy Santa performance and he works it...not great dancing (more like Dancing With The Stars kind of dancing), but he does work it.  It's got charm.

How does it movie?
Nobody is mistaking this for a real film.  It's an above average entry in its TV-Xmas-Romcom genre but not much beyond that.