2021, d. R.C. Newey
The Draw:
Around this time of year for the past few years I've been getting sucked into the Deck The Hallmark podcast, where three dudes from North Carolina rate, review and describe every Hallmark Christmas movie that comes out. They're a really fun listen, and it's a great idea, and I'm super jealous Toasty and I didn't think of it first. I usually manage to dedicatedly follow for a week or two before I fall off and only listen to the episodes that review the Hallmarkies I've seen.
Anyway, this year I've been listening since the second last week of October(!) and I've already heard them discuss 8 new Hallmark movies and 1 Netflix film. One Hallmarkie that comes up often is this movie, Crashing Through The Snow, which the curmudgeon of the group (Dan, who despises Hallmark movies) holds up as one of the best Hallmark movies, not just from this year, but ever.
So, without knowing anything but the title, I decided to watch it, and wow, what a fucking amazing surprise!
The credits continue to roll as Acker's mom character, Maggie, tries to implore her tween-aged daughter, Mia, to sing-talk along with her, which she eventually does, but not before taking time out first to have a discussion about the potential for ear piercings. It's a really cute scene. The final cast credit popped up, and it was Kristian Bruun, which may not be a name a lot of people get excited about, but he played Donnie in Orphan Black (as well as Fitch in Ready or Not) and is a regular guest on another podcast I routinely listen to, Comedy Bang Bang. Bruun has great comedic presence and timing, but without undermining the drama. Teaming him up with Acker for a Hallmarkie seemed like a can't-lose proposal. I immediately stopped the movie, and ran to my wife stating that we're watching this one together.
The Formulae:
So, Maggie is a single mom (check) of two girls, however her ex-husband, Jesk...I mean Jeff (Bruun), is still very much in the picture as a part of their lives. Maggie is off with Mia to see her other daughter Sophie perform in a Winter Concert. JeskJeff shows up a little late (I mean, before the concert starts, but too late to get a better seat up front) with his girlfriend Kate (Brooke Nevin), who Maggie describes as "a walking Instagram post". Mia is so excited to see them she runs and gives Kate a hug decides to sit at the back with them.
Maggie laments with a friend that her girls are going away to Kate's family's place in Aspen for Christmas, and that she will be alone. After the concert, Kate calls Maggie over excitedly and Maggie trips over a box (she's clumsy, not a Hallmarkie trope, just a plain ol' romcom trope). Afterward Jeff and the kids talk all sorts of shit about Maggie's clumsiness, the embarrassment palpable on Acker's face, Maggie losing all sorts of face in front of the ex's new GF. Oh, and Kate got Sophie flowers for her performance. Kate tries hard. Too hard. To the point that when she realizes Maggie has never been away from the kids for Christmas, that even after the divorce, that Jeff still spends time with them as a family on Christmas day every year, Kate invites Maggie to Colorado to join them for Christmas.
At this point everyone -- Jeff, Maggie, the entire audience watching -- is thinking this is a bad, bad idea, but Kate not only sells it, she implores it, and when the girls overhear and plead, Maggie can't say no. (Absurd scenario to force big city girl into small Christmassy town, check).
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| "Aspen" by way of Calgary second unit |
10 days later Maggie and the girls land in Aspen (*cough*Winnepeg*cough) and are met by Hector Shetty -- who, were he not a Steve Buscemi-type, might be the romantic interest for Maggie, but no -- he manages the Reynold's family's Aspen estate, which is the first clue to Maggie that she's in for a very different Christmas. Upon arriving, Jeff asks Maggie for one of her pep-talks, because he has had trouble connecting with Kate's dad, but also notes the awkwarness of the situation of Maggie being there, in one of a couple of great scenes that highlight the still chummy relationship between the two of them.
Very quickly Maggie feels the awkwarness, as well as a bit of resentment. Her Christmas traditions, like hanging her traditional stockings or decorating the tree, don't have an immediate place in this expertly decorated manor. Maggie brought stockings and ornaments with her, but the frou-frou riche decorations are hard to compete with. Mia also invites Kate in on a family tradition that gives Maggie the sense of being replaced, as does Kate's packed-to-the-gills agenda for the kids that kind of leaves Maggie feeling sort of inferior and unexciting. (A pep talk form her friend back in Austin reminds her "You don't have to compete, you're the mom! You are Christmas!"
After a relaxing sauna, Maggie busts into an a-capella rendition of "Christmas Wrapping" dancing and singing into a candy cane, when up the stairs and into the room walk Mr. Slick-Back handsome. He makes a rather immediate pass at Maggie (two of them, actually) which does not go over very well with her (or the audience) and we're already into the contentious meet-cute (check). Turns out he's Sam (Warren Christie), Kate's brother (not even step-brother, which already makes this weird), and she notes he's "super-charming, and handsome, and an amazing chef", but there's also a hint of resentment in her chipper voice. "Not everyone shows up at the last minute and expects the world to revolve around him." If it wasn't already awkward enough being at your ex-husband's girlfriend's family's house and all the connotations that implies, you become the impetus for new family drama... moof, double awkward, Mags.
Once Sam learns about Maggie's graphic design business, he hires her to helm him with his pitch deck for the new restaurant he wants to open up. He convinces her by saying he can help her win Christmas against Kate. Later she learns the restaurant he wants to open is in a historic hotel that used to belong to his family, and in seeing both his sentimentality, his passion, his talent and his charm, she (and we, the audience) definitely soften on this guy. As well, the whole idea of "winning Christmas", Maggie eventually realizes, is a foolish idea. But when she sees Kate and Jeff reading the girls their traditional bedtime story and they're all in matching pyjamas, she seeks out Sam and agrees to his terms to help her "win Christmas".
Maggie brings Jeff in on her idea of letting Mia get her ears pierced for Christmas, but doesn't tell him her plan. The next morning Mia comes back from an outing with Jeff and Kate ...with her ears pierced! Maggie had this whole big plan, hero-of-Christmas-type-shit and Jeff and Kate just stole all the glory. This means war. But first drinking...lots of drinking.
There's skiing (where Maggie doesn't know how to ski and falls and hurts her wrist - half-check), and a skating relay race (where Maggie doesn't know how to skate - another half-check).
But some of the war leads Sam and Maggie taking one or both of the girls out for cocoa or on a helicopter ride to cut down a Christmas tree to decorate with Maggie's ornaments, which interrupts Kate's plans and upsets her a lot, and leads to Jeff giving Maggie an earful, and Kate and Sam having a heart-to-heart. There is a cookie-baking-ish sequence (check) where Sam, Maggie and Sophie make gingerbread house from scratch... but it's not a montage! And nobody throws flower at each other.
Maggie and Sam need to print something off so they sneak Maggie into Sam's dad's office (I don't know why they don't just ask, but I guess it's because Sam is keeping his restaurant idea secret from him), but while there Maggie knocks some stuff off the desk and finds a dossier on Jeff. This is such a weird "Scooby-doo" moment that's about the most contrived thing the film does (next to Jeff having a business meeting on Christmas Eve). But this leads to the revelation that Jeff is planning to propose to Kate at dinner on Christmas Eve.
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| Snowy, steamy, sexy |
Maggie doesn't want to be there for that dinner, so she books out, under the pretense of having a "spa day" but Sam sees through her rouse (he called the hotel and talked to some friends trying to upgrade her package - Sam is well connected we learn). So Sam bails on his business meeting to keep Maggie company (why not just bring her along to the meeting pitch if she just wants to get away?). But Sam has a guy who gets them access to town's natural hot springs, and, well, it's bathing suit time with flasked mulled cider and...wetness, and steam and snow. It's literally the is steamiest as a Hallmark has ever gotten. But their romantic rendezvous is interrupted (check) by an emergency phone call... Mia has run away (well, she got Hector Shetty to drive her) to find her mom at the hotel spa (where she isn't quite at).
Sam's dad has some "real talk" with Sam, noting how he seems to really like Maggie, but also that Kate is joining her family, and that dating, then maybe breaking up with Sam would make all that very complex. It's real talk, and Sam runs away, leaving Maggie hanging for their sexy sequel rendezvous and missing Christmas morning.
Christmas Day is a family frenzy, the highlight is Kate giving Maggie a locket with the girls' pictures in them (and later Sam comments that their mother had one just like that). It's both a sentimental gift for Maggie and Kate. Kate then asks Maggie if she has her blessing to join the family, and it's perhaps the sweetest moment of the movie.
Sam turns up for dinner, at the bottom of the stairs (the classic romantic trope of the woman descending the staircase - half check). Turns out he was crashing the hotel owner's Christmas and pitching them the restaurant (last-minute, brazen Christmas day pitch, check). But he returned to let Maggie know that in spite of the complications it presents, he likes her, likes her a lot. He wants to see her again, can he see her again? They kiss while sexy soul Christmas music plays ("Dreaming of a Christmas With You" by the Teskey Brothers). The film ends with Sam giving his sister the gift of their mother's toffee, the recipe Kate noted she could never get correct. Sam really is a thoughtful guy, not so far off from his sister.
Unformulae:
Well, firstly, before we even see the first frame of film, we hear the open guitar lick of "Christmas Wrapping" playing over the Hallmark logo, and I recognized it instantly. Hallmark so rarely ever splurges for paying royalies on real world songs. And then they make it such an integral part of the opening scene that establishes both Maggie's cool-nerd-mom cred and also a pretty crucial plot point for later in the movie. That opening scene is the most real movie-like opening sequence I've ever seen in a Hallmark. The dynamic between Acker and young Summer Howell here is great.
We don't see any of Sophie's concert, which is typically an easy way for Hallmark to shove in a whole bunch of saccharine Christmas content. Hell, most Hallmarks lead in to the Christmas pageant as the climax for the film. Not here.
The mom meeting the "new girlfriend" is rarely ever something that happens in a Hallmark, as usually the ex-husband is dead or out of the picture completely. On the rare time where there is a "new girlfriend" we usually are set up to hate them, and we're kind of set up to do so here, but this movie gives us a couple of scenes with Kate and Jeff, Kate and her brother, and Kate and Maggie which show to us she's a really good person with a kind, considerate heart and a lot of sweetness, and that all she really wants is to connect with Maggie and be welcomed into her family (at one point she asks Jeff "Why can't I get Maggie to laugh like that?"). While Maggie feels like an outsider at Kate's house, Kate feels like an outsider whenever she's around Jeff and the girls.
Usually the "small, Christmassy town" is some made up place. Aspen is very much a real place.
Maggie and Jeff make a joke referencing Gremlins at Kate and Kate is oblivious. A pop culture reference (later the Gilmore Girls are referenced). Hallmarkies don't generally do pop culture references. This is great! It also serves the purpose of establishing that Jeff and Kate don't have the same taste in movies, but Maggie and Jeff do. There's almost an insinuation here that Jeff and Maggie might be better suited for each other than Jeff and Kate. This is hit again when, at dinner, Sam asks "where'd you two meet" and Maggie and Jeff go into their cute story, after which Sam clarifies he meant Jeff and Kate.... Oof. Is a rekindled romance in the offing, especially if Kate's the monster we typically expect out of "the ex's new GF"? No. But that's what makes this so much smarter than the average Hallmarkie, how it toys with conventions of both Hallmark and romcoms, and does something very different. Also, once Jeff lets Kate take Mia to get her ears pierced, the scene where Maggie and Jeff argue is a stark reminder of why they are not together anymore. Friends, but incompatible.
Usually the egotistical jerk love interest who is revealed to have depth of character and emotion doesn't also have much of an exterior life. This film gives Sam a meaningful relationship with his sister and swiftly sets up the difficult relationship that he has with his father (just the one line delivery from dad, "where's your sense of hospitality, son"? is both truth, but very judgemental dad shit.)
There are so many adult conversations in this film. The discussions that Maggie and Jeff have over the kids, or their own insecurities, or Kate, all seem like real discussions people who are friends would have. Sam and Kate have a real brother-sister "support me" conversation. Sam and his dad have a difficult discussion that further describes their relationship and Sam's dad's perceptions of him. Kate and Jeff actually talk with each other like true partners in life. Sam has a good chat with Mia after she runs away following Jeff's proposal to Kate (he can relate). Sam and Jeff even have a nice chat afterward and Sam makes him some food. Kate and her stepmom have a good chat about the difficulties and delicateness of becoming a stepmom. Eventually Kate and Maggie even have a beautiful moment of letting the tension and competition between them go. All of these conversations make logical sense, they have a grounding in real world thoughts with emotional intelligence. These conversations help diffuse drama and tension, something which the Hallmarkies almost always avoid. Hallmarkies tend to treat their adults like high school kids who don't talk about anything and everything festers and manufactures drama for no reason. But not here. It's really quite incredible. Maggie and Sam's conversations, however, seem very much like Hallmarkie conversations, only kind of like next level.
These conversations work on many levels, advancing character, relationships and story, each conversation has an impact on what happens next leading to the next scene and the next. For instance Sam's conversation with Kate lead him to wondering why the old family decorations are still stored away, then he takes Kate and the kids on an helicopter trip to chop down a new tree for Kate's room. A romantic gesture, yes, but at its heart, Sam empathizes with the traditions that Maggie and the kids might be missing being away from home. But then this leads to the girls missing a schedule engagement with Kate, and Jeff standing up to Maggie on Kate's behalf which leads to... etc. There is considerable flow to this movie, not just a bunch of stilted off-the-rack Hallmark moments cobbled together, but real momentum and purpose.
The skating relay is the only montage in the movie, but it's used for many purposes, not the usual, chaste, falling for each other, sequence. Here it helps develop Kate's insecurities even further, it shows Jeff and Kate's dad working together and having fun, it shows Sam being really really good with the girls, as well as supporting the clumsy Maggie the whole way. PLUS, it shows almost everyone on skates. So often there are body doubles on skates and weird close-ups... but not here. (And, of course, Maggie and Jeff being from Austin wouldn't be great skaters, and they're not).
There's some actually wonderful direction taking place here... like this sequence which emphasizes both the attraction between Sam and Maggie, but also the very firm bond that Maggie and Jeff have. It's nice blocking and editing leading to engaging storytelling.
Drinking...more than just hot chocolate. Maggie, so enraged about Kate having taken Mia out to get her ears pierced starts fiercy downing flute of champagne (or white wine) until Sam stops her. People never drink with intent in Hallmarkies. This is fabulous!
Sam and Maggie's time at the hot springs is, literally, the sexiest Hallmark has ever gotten. People don't wear anything but layers of clothes or full-body pyjamas in these things, and occasionally there's a nice dress that shows off some back and maybe the littlest bit of decolletage. But here, there's skin...all very tastefully done, and mood, and lighting and snow and steam and it's both romantic and hot hot hot. It's really nicely done, and again, well directed and composed. But the fact that they later imply that Sam and Maggie had an appointment to smash on Christmas Eve is ...well, wow. That's Netflix holiday movie territory, something Hallmark never approaches. The lame pressing of lips is about as "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" as Hallmark usually gets, so this is leaps and bounds.
In the end, Sam professes his like for Maggie, and Maggie has had a very mature conversation with Jeff about it already, so they're all good to start dating. They're not beginning a whole new life together, just dating. Long distance. We don't even know if Sam's pitch will be successful. He might just have to go back to being a chef in Japan. Who knows. Wait, I want to know. I want a sequel. Where it's leading to Kate and Jeff's wedding, but Sam and Maggie split up earlier in the year because his pitch wasn't successful and that he did have to go back to Japan. But they will see each other at the wedding, where Sam is acting as head chef. Sam confesses to Kate he's not over her, she thinks they need to just be chill for the sake of the family. Sam, undeterred, is looking at wooing Maggie all over again, but really with everything he has, has a plan to open up a restaurant in Austin but needs to create a pitch to obtain his father's backing. Maggie turns up with a date! to the wedding (though we eventually learn he's just af friend for moral support). Sam enlists Maggie to help him on his pitch, to try and rekindle some of that fire, without tipping his hand about the whole Austin thing. The pitch falls through with his father, especially after a heart-to-heart, because his dad thinks Sam being in debt to him this way wouldn't be good for their new relationship. But he takes the pitch himself other rich guests at the wedding. Oh, I have so many ideas...
True Calling?
It's a cutesy, punny titled. I got the "Crashing" part, in that both Maggie and Sam are crashing Christmas, I don't like the title.
The Rewind: (That "see it again" moment...this can just be a screencap maybe)
When Kate's stepmom asks Maggie about her graphic design business Jeff really talks her up, and eager Kate joins in stating: "You should see the adorable poster she designed for Sophie's school concert".
Yes, you should... here it is:
SHE SPELLED "ELEMENTARY" WRONG!
(This is obviously the fault of the graphic design department and the CHEAPNESS of Hallmark to not recommission the poster with the correct spelling. You thought we wouldn't notice... someone *always" notices...especially when it's spelled correctly RIGHT BESIDE IT!)
Also, Maggie's powerpoint presentation which she designed for Sam looks more like a magazine layout spread, and not a powerpoint. There's too much text and information there. It's not good.
The long shot of the hot springs gives away the lie...that's a hotel swimming pool, not a hot spring.
Um, Kate, that bird (duck) don't look big enough to feed 8 people.
The Regulars:
Warren Christie is new to the holiday movie scene, first appearning in last year's Candice Cameron-Bure Hallmark vehicle If Only I Had Christmas. He was also recently seen playing Hush in CW's Batwoman.
As noted, Acker was in A Nutcracker Christmas and of course the non-Hallmark Dear Santa.
Brooke Niven is a regular, having appeared in 2018's Jingle Around the Clock, 2017's The Christmas Cure, 2016's Journey Back to Christmas, and 2015's On the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Her very first X-mas starring role was the non-Hallmark 2004's A Very Cool Christmas with George Hamilton and Donna Mills.
Bruun appeared in the 2019 Canadian non-HM anthology An Assortment of Christmas Tales in No Particular Order and the 2016 non-HM Christmas Cupcakes.
John B. Lowe is a Christmas dad (or just as likely, Santa) through and through, having appeared in Christmas at the Plaza, Two Turtle Doves, 2017's Christmas Connection, 2016's A Dream of Christmas and many more.
Jan Skene who played the stepmom is also a recent regular, appearing in On the 12th Date of Christmas, Two Turtle Doves, Christmas Connection, and a couple more in the past few years.
How does it Hallmark?
It's so outside the norm for a Hallmark, it feels like it would be more at home on Netflix, where they're allowed to be a little steamier. At the same time, it develops characters and relationships better than most romcoms do. It very well may be my favourite Hallmark movie ever. Yes, I believe it even tops The Nine Lives of Christmas, The Christmas House, and The Christmas Club (this year's Christmas Sail would round out my that top 5 Hallmark list)
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| how big must that green screen have been? |
How does it movie?
This could be a legit movie...IF, they put more budget into making Maggie's "graphic design" look like something a genuine professional would put together, if they stunt casted Kate and Sam's dad and stepmom with bigger name actors, if they punch up the physical comedy bits (but there are some real, genuine laughs here, also rare for a Hallmark), and maybe use more cinematic lenses, lighting and cinematography (and polish up the godawful photoshop) then you would have a real movie. They're 95% of the way there, which is like 35% closer than most any other Hallmark ever gets to feeling like a real movie. Seriously, this one's pretty great.
Dave Mercel watch:
Yep, my buddy Dave Mercel did Foley Recording on this one:
The fact that Dave did the foley on this one makes it even better.
ReplyDeleteOMG this post is huge !!
ReplyDeleteBecause it's SO different, and SO much better than the usual Hallmark, it deserved the copious amount of attention I gave to it for three people to read it.
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