Xmas Leftovers

Sometimes we only wind up catching parts of Hallmark(esque) films, either because we joined late, left early, or just had better things to watch. Sometimes we watch the whole thing but get too drunk to write big long things about them.

Here are some of those partial/impaired viewings:

Christmas Perfection (2018, Lifetime): Darcy's parents had a rocky marriage and she used to fantasize about the perfect Irish Christmas as a child.  As an adult she's got these Irish village Christmas decorations, and after a fraught Christmas dinner, she winds up in the village, her toy village come to life, where everyday is the perfect Christmas.  There's a kind of Groundhog's Day loop happening, but everyone knows that yesterday was Christmas and tomorrow is Christmas.  I stopped watching when her best friend found his way into town, the best friend whom she's been avoiding having any romantic feelings about for years.  Honestly, this should have been far more entertaining and intriguing than it wound up.  The "Irish village" was populated by mostly non-Irish actors crafting very bad accents (only the actress playing the mom had a genuine accent).  The "perfect boyfriend" character in the village seemed to model his lilt off of one very specific Colin Ferrell moment in Daredevil or something.  He delivered EVERY LINE the exact same way.  Nails on a chalkboard.  This should have been a horror movie.  It felt very insidious, and yet we were supposed to take Christmas feels away from it.  Made in 2018, looks like 2002. Bleh, turned off after 40 minutes.  No thank you.

The Christmas Train (2017, Hallmark): the one wherein Hallmark tries to make a real movie.  A writer/journalist (Dermot Mulroney) is taking the Christmas Train from New York to LA as a means of delaying his purpose of breaking up with his part-time girlfriend.  He's using the trip to craft an article, and starts connecting with the other train passengers (well, not really, Mulroney is sleepwalking through this whole damn thing).  Turns out one of his passengers is a famous director, played by a strangely committed Danny Glover, and his assistant who just happens to be Mulroney's lost love.  They rekindle their passion while engaging with the other train passengers and having romantic outings in the cities where they stopover.  Turns out someone on the train is stealing stuff, and there's some other weird things afoot. Complication, the on-again-off-again girlfriend shows up on the train anticipating a proposal! How can that be? Then when moving past Colorado, an avalanche snows the train in just out of communication with headquarters. They're going to freeze if they don't figure something.  They do. And Mulroney lets the part-time gf down easy, and promises his undying love and slow dancing to the other one.  And then we learn it's all been a big set-up that Danny Glover produced...most of it, minus the avalanche.  It's so dumb.  So dumb.  And wastes Joan Cusack something fierce.

Christmas at the Plaza (2019, Hallmark): By the time December rolled around Hallmark had been airing its new slate of movies for just over a month.  At that stage, the Deck the Hallmark (a delightful podcast where three South Carolinian goofballs cover every new Hallmark movie each season) boys had ranked Christmas at the Plaza as their tops (or near the tops) for the year.  They were effusively gushing about this thing.  Even the hater, Dan, seemed to like this one.  I had no interest until I heard the podcast episode and suddenly it became required watching.
I'm not quite sure what it was they saw in this (I mean, they said on their podcast what it was), but I certainly didn't see it, and I did not connect with this movie. At. All. Well ok, maybe just a little.
Elizabeth Henstridge (Simmons from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) makes her Hallmark debut as Jessica, a historian, specializing in Christmas decorations.  She gets commissioned by the famed New York Plaza Hotel to set up a historical retrospective Christmas display, working with Nick (Ryan Paevey), a contractor who runs a Christmas decorating service (that's got to be a solid year-round gig, no?).  Jessica locks in on the subject of the Plaza's tradition of having a unique, custom-made tree topper (or finial d'arbre, as they so poshly call it) each year.  The film gets its plusses by focusing as much, if not more on the mystery of a missing tree-topper, as it does on the wooing Nick does of Jessica.  The mystery is decent, but a little easy.  The relationship on the other hand, doesn't seem like much of a match.  It seems like nick sees wooing Jessica as a bit of a challenge, given that she's already got a erudite boyfriend who has no genuine interest in her.  For a Hallmark, this one looks good and avoids most of the usual cliches, so it's one notch above the common HM riff-raff, but I didn't feel any connection between Henstridge an Paevey at all and I didn't get the connection the story was trying to sell.  And I was distracted by Henstridge's American accent throughout (perhaps she was too).  This one's really just mediocre, you guys.
P.S. Also not enough Nelson Wong as Kenny Kwan, a bit character he's played in over a dozen movies now (including The Christmas Train and Angel of Christmas...basically anything Ron Oliver is directing). 

Merry & Bright (2019, Hallmark): Because one former Full House child star wasn't enough, we have to get...umm... the middle one who wasn't DJ or Michelle... you know, the forgettable one... anyway, her... we have to get her starring in Hallmarks now?  I guess they had to replace Aunt Becky with someone else from that show?  Blerg.  Anyway.  This one is so conventional.  Whatsherface inherited the Merry & Bright Candy Cane Company from someone in her family and is trying to turn its dwindling fates around.  The board of directors, lacking faith in their new CEO, hires a big-town corporate recovery big wig who comes to town in the form of Hallmark hunk of the decade Andrew Walker, you know, the guy who is CW superhero good looking.  There's some merry mix ups at first, and some misunderstandings and s ome stupid plan to make chocolates (making chocolate and making hard candy are not even close to being the same thing).  It's the usual PST that these things take place in, one where Christmas is celebrated to the nth degree.  Walker's business bro is the child of a chilly family and not full of the festive spirit, so while it's up to him to help turn business around, it's up to her to turn him around.  A trip to NYC provides insight into the handsome man's less than perfect life and whatshername learns to trust her instincts.  This one is utterly bad.  There's no chemistry between him and her, and the relationship/attraction never makes any sense (also, I don't want to be *that* guy, but she's just not in his league).  And mom gets some bullshit B-plot about taking care of a puppy.  This one is just ridiculously bad.  Which means it's great fun to get drunk to and make fun of.

Holiday Date (2019, Hallmark) - only caught the second half, but wasn't as downright awful as I think people were bracing for, given the pre-controvercy around the suspected anti-semitism... it's just "not great".  So I missed the set-up where Brooke is dumped before Christmas and enlists Joel to pretend to be her ex-boyfriend, Ethan.  Since I missed the set-up, I'm not entirely sure what the pressure on Brooke was to have a boyfriend/bring one home for the holidays, but regardless, any pressure or expectation in this matter is bullshit, whether it stems from her family or Brooke herself.  You don't need a man to feel fulfilled Brooke.  Anyway, where we stepped in, the family had already unveiled that "Ethan" is Jewish and, Mom (Hallmark-esque mainstay and Stargate SG-1 lead Teryl Rothery) makes a decided effort to add Hanukkah traditions to their family.  Whether it's a little over-compensating or not...well...it is.  Things get complicated when someone posts a Tweeters of "Ethan" and Brooke and real Ethan shows up.  Two Ethans! Crazy pants.  Also I guess Brooke told her family they were engaged and Mom hunted down called real Ethan's family who were very confused by the news (Mom's a real excitable go-getter).  Then the family finds out Ethan is just a very good actor named Joel, just as he's about to come clean to them... but he and Brook are now really in love or something, and Joel now loves Christmas which is all any parents want for a partner for their child, right?  Joel performs in a local Christmas pageant and steals the show... from children.  It's not great, this one, but I guess points for trying?  The fact that the family (well, Mom) adopts Hanukkah as much as Joel adopts Christmas is ... something? Hallmark is very insistent that Christmas be for everyone, and so I think that all their films, for the foreseeable future, that feature Jewish characters (see also The Christmas Club) will have them embracing Christmas.  As far as Hallmark leads go, though, Matt Cohen is really charming and one of the better male leads this year, Brittany Bristow much less so (perhaps it's because we get zero sense of who Brooke is or her motivation in the second half...she's just totally devoid of character).  Bruce Boxleitner sleepily cashes his paycheck as Brooke's dad.

Hope at Christmas (2018, Hallmark) - Joined this one halfway through to find the most banal and rote Hallmark story.  Scottie Thompson (not the Kids in the Hall one) plays Sydney... wait a minute... she's NOT named HOPE? Dropped the ball on this one Hallmark.  Anyway, where we come in we find Ray, her daughter sad that Mac, a school teacher, didn't show up for some thing he was supposed to show up to.  Sydney is pissed, but, you know, "Hallmark pissed" which means "mostly sad and self-conscious".  Mac manages to smooth things over, for it's a little known fact that Mac plays the town Santa and Ray has been feeding Santa all sorts of dirt on her mom, which Mac then uses to woo this apparently fresh-on-the-market cougar.  It's a rare case where the single parent is a single parent as a result of divorce and not a dead spouse.  Having a dead spouse makes things so much less complicated story-wise.  However, at least in the second half, the ex has zero impact on the story, except to say that Ray is maybe supposed to go to her dad's for Christmas but wants to stay in (checks notes) Hopewell (I guess *this* is the "hope" at Christmas?).  There's some bullshit about a beloved bookstore that's getting sold and turned into condos which we all know Sydney is going to buy right at the last minute, and of course she's going to choose this small-town meager life over the big city executive position she's been offered, because the subtext of Hallmark movies is that small town women who have never had a real career shouldn't feel bad about themselves, moreover big city women with big-time jobs are doing it all wrong.  Shame your neighbor, it's the American way.  And then there's that scene where a Christmas tree exploded in the book store and Mac is all out of fresh trees, so Sydney enlists child labor to build a tree out of books.  The book-tree display is actually pretty nice, but I'm not sure what kind of hate crime or act of sabotage happened to the tree earlier (they said the stand broke, but I don't buy it).  Anyway, since Sydney isn't taking the New York job and buying the bookstore, she can now be with schoolteacher/santa/tree farmer Mac, and Ray has a new daddy and old daddy can go suck lemons with Sam Page.  Oh, and special appearance from Kenny Kwan (which must mean this is a Ron Oliver joint)!

Christmas Under the Stars (2019, Hallmark) - Nick who was the boy toy poolboy from Desperate Housewives is a big time account manager at an investment firm however his gains (ferda!) haven't been good this year and he's fired, at Christmas.  He stumbles onto a Christmas Tree lot to gain sage advice and a seasonal job offer from Clarke fucking Peters (The Wire and, currently, His Dark Materials). Nick rejects it initially but reconsiders after meeting single mom Julie (an astronomy teacher, you know, like there is everywhere...they really needed to shoehorn in the "stars" connection) and her son (adopted) Matt.  Nick is supposed to be a self-centered Wall Street douche, but these HM movies rarely commit to making their leads unlikeable at the start, and as such, their big transformation into altruistic Christmas-and-family-loving people never really feels like much of a big deal.  The tree lot, which has been there for decades, is under threat from a developer, but Nick using his investment bankering know-how saves the day by finding himself a job at a socially conscious investment firm. And, in doing so, he made his dad proud of him mending their strained relationship (which only seemed strained based on misconceptions Nick had about his dad's expectations).  This one was a rare HM that was mostly focused on the dude's journey... not that that made it any better.  No, what made it better was Clarke fucking Peters. He was gold in almost every scene, in an otherwise rote, lower-middle-of-the-road Christmas romance.  I want a Hallmark film that features a seniors, mixed-race romance between Clarke Peters and the husky-voiced mom from The Christmas Club next year. Break some ground Hallmark!

Two Turtle Doves (2019, Hallmark) - This one was getting a lot of raves from Hallmark aficionados, since it "deals" with grief. Nikki DeLoach stars as Dr Sharon Hayes, a big time neurosurgeon who is looking for a research grant to make some big gains (ferda) in neuroscience.  She returns home to deal with her parents estate after their death (but it's been almost a year and she's been too busy to do anything until now), to find her mother's list of 12 Christmas traditions which she sets out to do in her honor. Her parents estate attorney and next door neighbor Michael Rady is Sam, a recent widower and single father.  His daughter becomes enamored with Dr Sharon's Christmas traditions and all three start spending time together becoming a defacto family for the holidays.  Apparently they heal their grief through the magic of Christmas but for all the lofty talk about it dealing with death and sadness, it doesn't really, except in that condensed, not-get-too-heavy-and-distract-from-Christmas kind of way. Maybe I would be more charitable if Rady played Sam with any semblance of emotion. Watching DeLoach's sweet charm but against Rady's Data-from-Star Trek impersonation was, frankly, annoying to watch. The girl playing the daughter was great, though, and her and DeLoach had chemistry for miles.  But I hate the trope if these movies where the real connection is between the adult and the kid and the romantic connection between the adult leads is underexplored or non-existent. Dr. Sharon gets her research grant, by the way and decided to stay at her parents place while working on her research so she can explore the relationship with the little wooden boy next door.

Snow (2004, ABC Family) - Nick (Tom Cavanaugh - Ed, The Flash) is the latest in his family lineage to take on the persona of Santa Claus.  There's a whole curse-turns-to-joyous-redemption backstory that Is explained mid-way through the film which I quite like (unfortunately, due to budget limitations it's a tell-don't-show situation). One of Nick's reindeer, Buddy, wanders off and gets poached and then sold to the San Ernesto zoo where Sandy (Hallmark princess Ashley Williams) works.  The poacher, Buck, is a real DB (douchebag) who wants to be Sandy's DB (Dick Boyfriend) and she has to constantly rebuff his advances ("Ew" as she likes to say).  It's totally gross pre-Me Too shit where she rebuffs him but still has to be nice about it for some reason.  Anyway, Nick winds up at the zoo looking for Buddy, immediately falls for Sandy, and starts weaseling his way into her life unintentionally. He's a total weirdo but he's sweet and friendly and polite and non-agressive. It's weird that she would find Nick attractive at all, but then again, next to Buck, he's a gold star.  There's a whole boarding house living situation that I didn't quite understand, but it was a sweet environment that brought people together in the film and made for a rather great ensemble of Canadian character actors. I won't work my way through the rest of the plot, suffice it to say that it plays out as so many family adventure/minor-fantasy movies do.  It's certainly not without it's charms, as rote as it is.  The cast is uniformly great, which elevates it from the usual cheap made-for-TV family movie fare.  It was made in 2004 but looks like it was made a decade earlier, such that the sequel, made 4 years later, looks like it was made 20 years later.  In the second film, only a year has passed, but everything looks so much better.

In Snow 2:Brain Freeze Sandy is finding life at the North Pole at Christmas less than ideal.  She's spending the holidays mostly by herself as Nick's preparations for Christmas keep him too busy to relax.  A year later is the magic in their relationship gone already? Does she regret giving up her life to be Mrs. Claus (well, Snowden, actually, is the family name)? No, she just wants Nick to take a little breather and enjoy himself at Christmas too.  Nick unfortunately has to learn list lesson the hard way, when he gets conked on the head and loses his memory in the real world with only a few days left before Christmas.  Sandy needs to learn some of Santa's magic in order to find Nick, while Nick receives help from a street urchin and an old man who seems to have some connection to him.  Buck also returns, having seen Nick on the news, and plots his revenge.  This takes a lot of big swings at trying to have grander adventure and mystery, with a whole secret society angle but it doesn't quite stick the landing.  Things happen mostly in a low-budget made-for-TV family movie kind of way which is disappointing, as there were certainly openings for some bigger things to happen.  Ashley Williams is delightful, which probably means I'm going to have to backtrack on her entry in this year's Hallmark Countdown to Christmas Holiday Hearts.

And so a few days later I found Holiday Hearts (2019, Hallmark) back on the tele, entering in at the exact same point I did in my previous viewing.  Here we have Ashley Williams and Paul Campbell who are, for some reason which I still have not discovered (since I keep missing the set-up), looking after young Lily, whose mother died (but, like, not too recently) and whose father is going in for knee surgery (which from what I've heard is typically an out-patient or next-day release, but seems to take a week or longer here).  Anyway, I'm not sure why the two of them have to co-babysit this 7-year-old leading into Christmas, but townie Peyton (Williams) and returning townie Ben (Campbell) start to develop (rekindle?) an attraction to each other and their faux domestic situation.  Peyton, meanwhile, is attempting to leave behind the dull world of accounting and tries her hand at party planning/interior decoration (eg. "the Hallmark dream job") her family business' big Christmas Gala (they run an inn, named after their family name, "Canaday".  So when they say the Canaday Christmas Gala it sounds to my Canadian ears like "Canada Day Christmas Gala...Canada Day being our fair country's birthday on July 1, nowhere near Christmas).  It doesn't go well, until it does.  Ben, meanwhile, has been lying about going to Honduras for vacation (you know that totally happening vacation spot, Honduras), and instead is actually going on a 3-year sojourn with off-brand Doctors Without Borders, "Doctor's Care International".  Anyway, of course they figure it out and share a kiss at the party.  The verdict: I don't get it.  The whole set-up, the whole execution, it doesn't make any sense.  I'm obviously missing the context of the set-up. Oh and there's that one scene where Williams is wearing a v-neck sweater backwards for some reason, probably because it was showing too much skin for Hallmark and they just made her turn it around. In the past two months I've watched so many movies with Williams and I absolutely adore her, but this one is no good.

The wife and I rang in Christmas with A Dream of Christmas, (after our traditional viewing of the Community Christmas episodes) the Hallmark where Nikki DeLoach is having doubts about her marriage and a Christmas Witch overhears and makes her wish of having never gotten married come true.  Waking up in a completely different life Penny (DeLoach) and her sister Nikki (not DeLoach) are both single, and upwardly mobile people.  Penny is called "the Barracuda" in her role as VP of Marketing at an advertising firm, because she's such a badass bitch, but the alternate reality Penny is more of a guppy than a big bad fish.  She starts to get the hang of her new boss life, but can't shake the fact that she misses her sappy photographer husband Stu (Andrew Walker).  She starts to consider a life without him and starts making moon faces with her new client Andrew (not Walker) only to learn he's a total corporate d-bag.  So for the first half of the film Penny tries to adjust to her new life (and ignore the fact that not only did she completely write out of existence her relationship, her sister's relationship, but also her niece and nephew), and the second half is all about her trying to woo Stu while dodging Andrew's gross advances/threats.  I swear Andrew wants to hunt Stu for sport.  He seems like that kind of guy.  Anyway, with ten minutes left in the picture there's a big party where Penny makes her last big play to see if Stu is into here, when we learn Stu has a fiancee (she seems nice, except that she doesn't support Stu's dreams like Penny did in her other, more miserable life, and she just wishes he would buckle down and be a corporate stooge).  Nikki tries one more time, 5 minutes later, at a Christmas tree lot on Christmas Eve, to see if Stu will fall in love with her, but no, he's too good a guy to just ditch his fiancee, and in another life they maybe would have found each other.  Great ending, except, it was all a "dream", or rather, a concussion induced hallucination that Penny was having after falling off that stool.  This should be titled Christmas in Emerg.  Oh, and also, Penny's whole angle for Andrew's company was a complete rebranding of his department store franchise, introducing the new smash hit concept of "Christmas in a Box" WITH 12 FUCKING DAYS LEFT TO GO BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!!  If it wasn't for the Christmas Witch popping up over and over again, that would be the other sign this was a big ol' fantasy.  This movie tried to do something different, but it's like an Olympic speed walker trying his hand at the 200 meter hurdles, it's just not their forte.