(Are we really doing this again?) T&K's XMas Advent Calendar: Day 1 - Feliz NaviDAD

A Toast To Hallmarkent

Last December, countless (meaning, we didn't count them) readers of this here blog bore witness to the literal madness of Toast and myself trying to cram a bunch of churned-out-for-TV holiday "romance" fare into our eyesockets and then attempt to form some sort of formulaic review for 24 of these inherently formulaic content slot fillers.

The end result quite literally changed my brain (can't speak for Toast) in what I think was ultimately an unhealthy way.  The reality was I went into the project earnestly enjoying the escapism and ridiculousness of Hallmark movies and their ilk, only to come to the end of it with a weird appreciation for them when comparing to one another, and an sick desire to continue to consume them in that frame of mind.  It took until early January before I severed my Hallmark connection and didn't look back, nary a curious glance along the way.  

The outpouring of these damned things started, once again, right at the passing of Hallowe'en, though I think COVID impacted their production volume so the flood seems slightly less this year.  I made a silent vow to myself stay away from Hallmark directly, but then I also made a vow not to even do any of these holiday films this year, but here I am.  Starting with Lifetime's Feliz NaviDAD (2020) directed by their golden girl, Melissa Joan Hart.

The Story:
In a rural Arizona town, high school principle and widower single father David (Mario Lopez) takes a second job as a courier delivery/pickup guy - he says it's to make extra cash for his daughter's college fund, but really it's so he can escape thinking too much about the holidays.  Sophie (AnnaLynne McCord) is first chair french horn in the Phoenix symphony 3 hours away, but returns home to visit her recently widowed father and help him sell off her mother's tin toy collection.

They meet cute on her father's doorstep as he delivers a package.  I guess the intention here was that sparks would fly but really it's one of the more cringe-worthy attempts at playful repartee I've seen in a while.  It's not a badly acted scene, just terribly written.   Anyway, they meet a couple more times on the doorstep as he picks up and drops off deliveries.  When David's sister and his teenage daughter, Noel (of course), put him on a dating app it's Sophie who swiped (whatever direction it is you want to swipe to accept the date).  He's pleasantly surprised but she intones that it's just for fun so that they both can get some dating practice in.

He goes on other dates which are very silly interactions and not great, but enjoyable enough from an audience perspective.  Yet David and Sophie continue to have their practice dates and can't help but feel something more for one another...but the reality of her living in Phoenix means they can't take it further.

Meanwhile, Noel and their school music club are planning to play Feliz Navidad on bells at some holiday thing but would they woud rather be a choir group but there's some sort of competition with another school that makes no sense and Sophie becomes their music instructor for the pageant and it's all not worth caring about except that the climax of the film takes place at the pageant as if we were supposed to care about it all along and OH GOD IT'S AN ABOMINATION.  It's about 15 minutes of screentime of poorly rehearsed choreography, poor lip syncing to really shitty synthesized recording...OH THE HUMANITY.  Everyone involved should be very embarassed.  The worst part is, poor Paulina Chávez who plays Noel can actually sing and this doesn't support that skill of hers very well.  She's also a very charming young actress, Netflix should snap her up to be the lead in one of their teen romance movie series pronto.

 The Draw:
Enh, it was on. Then I got suckered into it.  At first because I was trying to figure out if I knew  AnnaLynne McCord from anything else (nope, turns out I don't) and then I found some of the movie to be equal parts fun and horrifying.

The Formulae:
Widower father. Single woman with a professional career that complicates things. Really bad actor playing parental figure (Sophie's dad...what was up with that guy?)

Unformulae:
Somehow, no real third act complication that would keep them apart...the only thing keeping them apart is the fact that she loves her orchestral job in Pheonix, and he's unwilling to uproot his daughter's life.

There are multiple times that conventionally formulaic misunderstandings happened and yet the next scene one character or the other breezes right past it with a quick explanation and everything is okay. How grown up of them.

And mercifully Sophie didn't give up her job to be with David...they're going to try a long distance thing.  The funny thing about this resolution is it's buried mid-way through the third act with a quick exchange given very little importance.  It's an ok story often poorly told. 

I liked the Arizona setting, and the Latinex flavour.

True Calling?
The title has the emphasis on "DAD" in "NaviDAD", and there's a story beat that explains Noel used to think the song was about her dad.  And the song Feliz Navidad is used multiple times for the bells the school music group is playing for the pageant before they bust into a vocal version of it, and then Noel gets a guitar for Christmas and sings it again.  You'll hate the song by the end.

The Rewind:
You don't really want to listen to any of the "singing" that happens in this, but the lip sync is so far off, and the dancing at the pageant is ...my GOD! WHY!?! Why is any of it happening.  The pageant isn't really built up to be important enough to consume the big climax of the movie, and yet that's exactly what happens. And if it is supposed to be the big climax, I had to laugh so hard at how they tried to stage the audience to make it look like it was more than 15 people in the crowd.  The pageant is so bad you don't want to watch it, and yet...if we're talking about watching bad movies for how bad they can get, this earns its stripes.  It's really, really bad.

The Regulars:
I thought Mario Lopez was a frequent Lifetimer but looks like he was only in one other - A Very Merry Toy Store with Melissa Joan Hart.  AnnaLynne was the star of the 2014 Hallmark The Christmas Parade.  Joan Hart plays one of David's dating misfires, and she's, as I said, Lifetime royalty.

How does it Hallmark?
Compared to a Hallmark, it at least acknowledges physical attraction between the characters (Sophie checks out David's butt a couple of times).  It's cheap, cheap, cheap looking like a Hallmark, particularly in the sound department.  If anything it's maybe even a little worse than the average Hallmark in production values.  I liked Joan Hart's directing, though, she has a couple cute flourishes which don't hide any of the cheapness, but seem like she's being playful behind the camera.

How does it movie?
It's time for both Lifetime and Hallmark to acknowledge that their films should only be filling a 90 minute slot and not a 2 hour slot.  The padding is brutal. That whole pageant sequence and the two different renditions of Feliz Navidad that close out the final 15 minutes are interminable.