T&K's Xmas (2020) Advent Calendar: Day 19 - Never Kiss A Man In A Christmas Sweater

 A Toast to Hallmarkent:

(2020, d. Allan Harmon - Hallmark)

The Story:
Going to try it a little different today, and give the broad strokes rather than the play-by-play.

Maggie (Ashley Williams, Hallmark goddess) is a teacher, but school's done for Christmas break so she and Ellen, her 11 year-old daughter, (Kayden Magnuson, Skyscraper, Power Rangers) are volunteering at the youth center at her local military base.  Those kids have one or both parents deployed so the youth center keeps them busy with crafts and stuff.  It's very gingerbread themed this year because there was a huge donation of gingerbread house kits.  It's relevant.

Not quite THE exact sweater in
question, but the same idea

While walking through a park to the base one day (maybe they weren't walking to the base but just walking, however the editing intones they went from the park to the base...the editing also infers that this is the same day as the last day of school but it's not), Maggie and Ellen see a man leaning against playground equipment looking at his phone, his jacket open revealing an ugly elf christmas sweater (see image).  There's also a kid on playground equipment.  The girls make fun of the ugly sweater and then the kid has a fall.  The dude, Lucas (Niall Matter, The Predator, various Hallmarks), is kind of laissez-faire about the whole thing and makes some very well-delivered but poorly written jokes about the whole situation.  He's kind of weirdly gruff but in a goofy way.

The next day (though again, editing makes it seem like it's the same day) Maggie is picking up a tree for the youth center.  The tree lot guy says she has to wait for help to get the tree to the truck... it's not that big a tree and Maggie carries it just fine.  However, in the process she clotheslines a jogger who just happens to be ugly sweater guy.  Somehow that fall BROKE HIS WRIST! Like, shattered it.  It needed surgery! PINS WERE PUT IN!  Honestly.... a jogger running into the tree as Maggie was carrying it should have KNOCKED THE TREE OUT OF HER HANDS, not knocked him over. 

Anyway, Maggie, super chatty, excessively nice and sweet, and super compassionate, takes him to the hospital where SHE'S ALLOWED TO STAY IN HIS ROOM (which isn't a "room" per se, but an area of some set where they put up curtains and added a hospital bed and monitors to give the appearance of a hospital scene (that weren't no hospital).  Who lets a stranger stay in his room, maybe she's a psycho there to finish the job... comeon!  The kid who fell off the thing turns out to be his nephew, as his brother and sister stop by, also to say that the doctor said he can't leave until his post-surgery consult on the 26th.  Aw, he's going to miss his big skiing alone in Aspen trip.  Lucas is a little grouchy, according to his family.  And for some reason he can't stay with them.

Maggie stops by the next day (I realize now, I'm going straight into play-by-play mode again, sigh) with a poinsettia and they go for a walk out to the courtyard.  Okay, it's Hallmark.  They so rarely shoot these things in actual winter, but it looked not warm out in that courtyard (no breath seen though, perhaps set decorated to look more wintery?) and he's just out there in his hospital garb.  That can't be pleasant.  He's humoring Maggie, but we're not really sure why.  It's evident he finds her a little annoying already, but I think he's perhaps a little lonely despite being around his family and his best friend showing up all the time.  Like now... in that "hospital" courtyard where Cameron (Matthew MacCaull, DC's Legends of Tomorrow) turns up to basically say his home life with two young twins is a nightmare but he can come stay with him since all the hotels are apparently booked.  Since that sounds awful we get to the crux of the movie where Maggie, the woman who has basically insinuated herself into his life and maimed him something fierce, offers up her "guest house".  She's on a teacher's salary and her home has a guest house.

Here's the thing...well, a few things about Maggie.  She is divorced, but it was amicable and she's still friendly with her ex and even friendly with his new wife.  She's a painter in her spare time but hasn't really had time to do it too much.  She always wanted to paint in Paris, but has never gone.  This is the first year Ellen is spending Christmas with her dad and Maggie's first year alone.  She's not really sure what she's going to do with herself, but she's thinking she'll paint (she won't paint). She talks a mile a minute and has an infectious smile.  She hovers on that borderline of being annoying but never goes past it. As my wife said, she's aggressively friendly, like a Bernese Mountain Dog.  Who doesn't love a Bernese Mountain Dog?   Also, I'm assuming Maggie's ex has some money and is paying alimony to keep Maggie and Ellen in that gorgeous house.  It's not a mansion but it's a lot.

So, with nowhere else to turn, Lucas takes up the guest house.  Ellen digs his dry wit and laconic personality.  He just wants to be left alone.  We learn he's on sabbatical from a big time architectural firm in NYC, where he designed skyscrapers (he must be loaded, but he looks casual about it).  He worked too hard and burned out, but his boss wants him back as quickly as possible in the new year.  Lucas isn't sure what he wants out of life, which is Hallmark-speak for he wants a Perfect Small Town home and to be a stepdad.  He also broke up with his fiancee earlier in the year because he was a workaholic.  It's hard to picture the Lucas we see as a workaholic, but we have to remember he's probably on an intense regimen of painkillers which are subduing him pretty nicely.

So yeah, he asks to be left alone, which Maggie does for about 10 minutes and then she is in his face (apologetically, but still very up in his business) basically ALL THE TIME.  I'll get to it later about what this movie could have done different, but Maggie's harassment essentially gets Lucas to the youth center where his architecture skills are turned to building a life-sized gingerbread house with the kids.  

There's a fun moment when they arrive at the youth center where Lucas asks Maggie "Is that the tree?" pointing around the room to the various trees until he lands on the one that took him down.  Legit funny, and the moment we first see Lucas' charm.

Maggie and Lucas do all sorts of stuff together and actually become friends.  They redecorate her Christmas tree (because it was decorated the way her ex liked it, not the way she always wanted it), they go to his brother's ugly Christmas sweater party (where everyone is drinking eggnog like people actually like eggnog), and they take a carriage ride where it gets real romantic like and they smush lips.  That carriage ride was getting really steamy as they leaned in to each other, but the kiss was soooooooooooooo tepid.  They should have been crawling on top of each other with the tension that was building and instead it's just ...*smush*, *hold for 20 seconds*, *smile*, *snuggle*.  Santa the carriage driver seemed to enjoy it though.  

So things are going well, they're getting along great.  They're talking to the General of the base who is being very accommodating with their hearts-in-the-right-place-but-the-script-is-too-dumb ideas to surprise the kids with a video conference (which is not actually interactive but instead just a video) of their parents having made gingerbread houses that reflect traditional homes in the places where they are stationed.  And the life-size gingerbread house does look pretty cool.  The big Christmas children's center party is going great, Ellen and her dad and stepmom even show up.  But then Maggie hears Lucas talking to Cameron about buying a plane ticket and going back to New York.  Maggie is crushed and gives Lucas the cold shoulder.

The next day, he gets a clean bill of health and takes off, not before giving Maggie and Ellen presents and he receives his.   They both look at each other with that look of "we should really talk but we're stubbornly not going to and we're both going to feel confused and miserable and, well, bye forever I guess" that these stupid late third-act Hallmark movie complications always do.

Maggie and Ellen celebrate Boxing Day-as-Christmas (because Ellen was at her Dad's place for Xmas, remember) and open up Lucas' gift.  It's his ugly Christmas elf sweater... and two plane tickets to Paris!  Remember when I said he was a skyscraper architect?  Yeah, the guy's got money.  She calls him but he's not answering the phone. Why? Who knows.  The movie doesn't explain that part.

Meanwhile Cameron is driving Lucas to the airport.  Cameron has been Lucas' best friend for a decade and the best present he's ever gotten was a watch...once! Lucas opens up the gift from Maggie and it's that book he told her about earlier in the movie which I didn't tell you about because it's too much to explain.  Anyway, it means a LOT to Lucas, so he tells Cameron to stop the car.

Lucas: "Stop the car!"
Cameron: "Oh, we're going back?"
Lucas: "Yeah, we're going back"
Cameron: "Oh baby!"

I love both Cameron's enthusiasm and his investment (the royal "we").

So Lucas shows up at Maggie's door, she's wearing his sweater, and she thinks he got her message.  No, he went there on his own initiative like the good guy we've learned he can be.  He's grown so much in the...six days since he let his nephew fall off playground equipment while he noodled on his phone.  Anyway, she asks him to join her in Paris, they have a leaping hug, and they go inside to live their lives together forever... except Lucas comes back outside to retrieve his luggage from the porch.

 The Draw:
Ashley Williams.  She's fun, energetic, charismatic, attractive and can be very funny. She was my MVP of the 2019 Advent Calendar. 

The Formulae:
Single mom.  Single guy recently broken up from a bad relationship, escaping a busy work life, looking for something more.  There's a snowball fight, but on a much bigger scale then the usual lazy couple-tossing-fistfuls-of-chipped-ice-at-each other.  Not a grand scale, just bigger.  Everyone only drinks hot chocolate, cider or eggnog, all of the non-alcoholic variety.  Sigh.  Hallmark's big into "supporting the troops" so that's a big side plot here, and it's sweet if a little confusing in its purpose.

Unformulae:
Ex-husband is still her friend?!? Even the new wife is friendly?!?  There's best friend characters who aren't paired up at the end (Maggie's friend, Alyssa [Lisa MacFadden] from the child care center I didn't mention before because she's just there to remind Maggie about how attractive men are and how lonely Maggie is] because they're both married to other people we don't see.  Also, Lucas is good with kids, but he's kind of a shitty uncle...he doesn't really want to spend much time with his own family.  What's going on there I wonder?  

I tend to avoid the military Hallmarks, but they seem to keep seeping into them more and more, so I'm not sure what the troop tropes are.  But a lady General?  Hallmark seemed very proud of themselves for that one.

True Calling?
What? No.  It's a great title for a really silly comedy, but this movie doesn't capitalize on it AT ALL.  Maggie and Lucas are very playful and the leads find a good dynamic with each other, but the whole idea of "never kiss a man in a Christmas sweater" is in reference to an adage Maggie makes up and Alyssa tells her that she just made it up.  This would be a much better movie if, say, the whole movie took place at the ugly Christmas sweater party and Maggie was dodging the advances of many a sweatered man.  Just one idea that plays off this title much better than this one did.  

The Rewind:
Had to check out Lucas getting clotheslined by tree, if only to see if there was any way he could have broken his wrist.  Cameron's "Oh baby".  I really wish instead of the deeper military plot there was a B-plot where Cameron and Alyssa were hooking up.

The Regulars:
Both leads, Ashley Williams and Niall Matter, are effectively Hallmark royalty by now...even if they've not played princes or princesses.
Lisa MacFadden is early in her Hallmark career, but she's very attractive, charming, and is going to be leading one of these things soon enough now that Hallmark is actually doing BIPOC-centered movies.
This seemed like a test run to see how Matthew MacCaull was going to get along with a Hallmark crew, and he did great in a very, very nothing role.  He's going to be leading man next year, I guarantee it.
Brendan Zub (Lucas' brother) has been lead in a bunch of Hallmarks and Lifetimes...I seem to recall a French accent for one of them.

How does it Hallmark?
It had potential to be so much more than bog standard Hallmark but it forgot to check the box, thus it's a mere notch or two above average.  The cast is uniformly good, but the script doesn't really sell it.  It should definitely be much funnier and sillier than it is, but Hallmark doesn't seem to ever want to do a full-on silly movie.  They want to keep safe in their comfort zone, and they finally seem amenable to letting LGBTQIAA2S and BIPOC actors into their comfort zone, but that's about as far as they want to push it.  A little trading on tropes for mild comedic effect, but certainly nothing approaching a full-stop comedy.

How does it movie?
Are you kidding me?  There's the bones here for a solid cinema quality comedy but that would entail Hallmark actually wanting to admit that their characters are really flawed people, have the two leads dislike each other a fair bit for a fair amount of run time, and REALLY INVEST in a script that knows how to be funny.  So many lines of dialogue in this movie just feel written, like nobody spoke them out loud before shooting them.  No adjustments made to accommodate how clunky they are.  Williams and Matter manage to sell their not-so-witty repartee as *almost* witty repartee, but that's acting, doing the best with what they are given.