T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar Day 7 - Single All The Way

A Toast to HallmarKent: Single All The Way - 2021, d. Michael Mayer - Netflix

The Draw: 
I enjoyed both of the mainstream boy/boy holiday romances last year: Dashing In December, The Christmas Set-up) so I was looking forward to Netflix's entry this year.

HISstory :
Just before leaving LA for his family Christmas, social media consultant Peter breaks up with his boyfriend of 3 months after learning that he has a wife and family.  Upset with disappointing his family yet again with his lack of love, he goads his roommate/best friend Nick to join him and pretend to be his boyfriend.  

Arriving in New Hampshire before they can even begin to pull off their ruse, Peter's mom (aka "Christmas Carole") tells him of the hot gym instructor that she's set him up with.  Nick is also very encouraging of the date, and more than happy to hang out with Peter's family.

Besides XmasXarole, everyone else in the family (including Peter's sisters, nieces and nephews) think Peter should be with Nick and spend a great deal of effort to try and get the two friends realise that they have feelings for each other.

Meanwhile, the gym instructor, James, is a really nice dude and he and Peter are hitting it off.  Peter starts to feel like returning to New Hampshire and opening up a plant shop is the right move for him.  

Meanwhile Peter's aunt puts on a Christmas pageant, which Peter and Nick help out with.  It's kind of a fun train wreck.

Uh, eventually Nick admits to Peter's entertainingly aggressive nieces that he indeed love-loves Peter, and then they manage to coax the same admission out of Peter, but when Nick confronts Peter with his feelings Peter gets all neurotic and wishy-washy and Nick runs away, wounded.

It's only with talking with the kind, astute James that Peter realizes that he's being a total chickenshit when it comes to love and goes chasing after Nick for a happy ending.

(I usually spell out the events of Hallmarkie films in more specific detail, but it's because Hallmarkies tend to be so unbelievable that I want to point out all the weird shit.  This is actually a pretty good movie so there's not so much absurdity, beyond the intentionally absurd bits for comedic purposes)

The Formulae:
Typical formula find the BCG (big city girl) travels back to their PST (perfect small town) to be reminded of how much they miss home and to abandon their big city dreams for a settled down life.  So this, only BCG stands for big city gay.

In holiday romances, straight or gay, best friends can't just be friends, they have to be romantic partners too.

There's a brief Christmas tree shopping scene in order to replace Peter's mom's fake tree.

A Christmas pageant that the lead needs to help out with alongside their romantic interest in order to draw them together. 

Peter has a Christmas deadline (always a Christmas deadline) for a social media advertising campaign (for shaving cream maybe?) which Peter enlists both Nick and James as "relatable" models (because these slabs of handsome beef are so much more *real world*. I believe they even refer to Nick as an "LA 10")

The love interest seeing the lead do something with their family members (in this case Peter doing coordinated dancing to Britney Spears with his nieces) that makes them more attractive to them.

The mad race to chase down the person they love so they can tell them they love them.  This is just a typical romcom cliche.  I did like, however, that Peter didn't drive all the way to Boston and in fact caught onto the fact that their rental truck was parked down on main street.

A hell of a lot of Christmas.

Unformulae: 
Well, there is an unusually large family component to this, like Peter's two sisters, brothers-in-law and nieces and nephew all collide, and even Peter's aunt (the gays love Jennifer Coolidge both in-movie and out).  They all get quite of bit of time and space, except the brothers-in-law who nobody has time for.  The brothers-in-law don't seem to be invested in ensuring Peter and Nick romantic partnering so the script has no use for them.

James wasn't an impediment to James and Nick's ultimate romantic connection, and in fact he helped it along.  James is a good guy.

I was so happy it side-stepped so quickly the "pretend to be my boyfriend" storyline.

True Calling? 
I dunno. It's not a terrible title for a holiday romance film, but it doesn't really resonate directly with the events of the movie.  Peter's seemed to have had a string of boyfriends over the years, turning over rather rapidly, so I don't get the sense that he's ever single for very long, nevermind "all the way".  I'm very glad they didn't go with "Jingle all the gay" alliterative name though.

The Rewind: 
I can't believe that Lisa spilled burger and fries all over James at the bar (intentionally, for reasons) and that he didn't take his shirt off to go and wash it.  Tarps off boys, what are we even doing here?

Nick's smoldering "breathe out" photo. Very hot.

Peter's sister Ashleigh has her own homebrew cosmetics line called "Farm On My Face".

I'm not sure what this Christmas pageant is ("Jesus H. Christ" it's called) but it's one of the best pageants we've seen in a holiday romcom, starting with Coolidge's Glinda The Good Witch costume.  It seems awfully short though.

I felt bad for Emmett being left alone for Christmas.  Yes, he's just a dog, but still, you should be with family for Christmas...  his presence really did feel missed by Nick in this film.  I wish Peter had more affection for Emmett though. I loved the pictures of Emmett in the pool.

The Regulars: 
There's Barry Bostwick (who we just saw in the non-Hallmark 2019 Santa Girl), but he's in Lifetimes' 2019 Christmas on the River (aka Christmas in Louisiana), and Hallmark's 2019 A Christmas Miracle.  So he was all in on Christmas in 2019.  He also starred in 2018's Slay Belles which I believe Toasty bailed on reviewing last year (not to be confused with Lifetimes' Christmas murder anthology Slay Bells)

Luke McFarlane is one of Hallmark's top guys (no pun intended). I mean he's in two other Hallmarks this year alone (Christmas In My Heart,  and the hockey-themed non-Christmas Taking A Shot At Love) and 2018's Sense, Senibility and Snowmen

Given how often they shoot Hallmarkies in Canada, I'm surprised that Schitt's Creek's Jennifer Robinson isn't in more of them.  She did the 2016 Hallmark Valentine Ever After and non-HM Holiday Joy.

How does it Hallmark? 
Well, it's not a Hallmark, but it uses all the standard tropes, but with a real movie budget and some real quality actors, so a notch above.  It's not better than the absolute best Hallmarks, but if it were a Hallmark it would be a definite all-time top 10.

How does it movie? 

It's a movie, so that's good.  Is it a great movie?  Not really. It's funny and fun at times, but there's also a lot of jokes that drop like lead balloons. 
There are a lot of reactions on Letterboxd about how kind of heteronormative views of relationships are applied in this film which doesn't appropriately represent the gay community.  Being a straight guy, I can't really agree or disagree, but I did feel quite uncomfortable on behalf of the guys with the level of pressure that the family was applying to Nick and Peter...basically up until the moment Nick actually admits to his feelings, I was just agitated by the family's aggressiveness that the guys basically just eyerolled away.