T&K's XMas (2022) Advent Calendar Day 7: Three Wise Men and a Baby

 A Toast to HallmarKent

2022, d. Terry Ingram - Hallmark

The Draw: Three of Hallmark's superstar hunks coming together in a holiday riff on a classic comedy setup.  Even if I'm intentionally trying to not be that into Hallmark this year, this was a must-watch.

HISstory: There's no female lead in this one (what!?! Unprecedented![maybe]) so already it's a sweeping deviation.  We're 20 seconds in and Andrew Walker's got his shirt off and he's vainly pumping himself up in the mirror (Dirk Diggler-style).  Once dressed he's wearing a fire department T-shirt, so he's a fireman.  He also lives at home with his mom (Margaret Collins).  The living sitch is temporary, as he renos his home...for the past 10 months, (which his colleagues try to make sound like it's a very long time, but it isn't that outrageous, I've seen home renos in Toronto last over 2 years).  Mom wants him and his brothers to help with decorate up the place for Christmas, but for some reason Andrew dodges the request. At work (the "Spruce Grove Fire Dept Hall"... is this same building from Nine Lives of Christmas maybe at a different angle?  Or is blue siding typical firehall signifier now) the firepersons (as there's a woman on the crew) return from the third false alarm at the beauty salon this month, always when "Mr. January" Andrew is on duty.

Over at Funnen Games (nice logo, good pun) there's a Corporate Christmas party happening (at 9am), and Tyler Hines is just not into it (his festive garb is a blinking reindeer pin hidden under his sweater).  He dated one of his coworkers (Ali Liebert), and they seem to have a good rapport, but obviously it didn't work out.  This chatter here is not quite Mythic Quest, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was inspired by it. Tyler's boss winds up firing him because he's not a team player (being grumpy about Christmas seemed to be the last straw). As Tyler tries to publicly announce his quitting/firing to rally support, someone shouts "Nobody likes you".  Tyler retreats to video gaming at home and talking to 12 year olds online (not creepily, thankfully).  He lives in his mom's basement ("that's temporary").  Having dinner with mom, she mentions to him about decorating the place with his brothers, and coments "funny how busy everyone gets when I mention Christmas".

Paul Campbell is a pet psychiatrist and author (Prime Mates For Life), his motormouth redhead client (Fiona Vroom) kinda has the hots for him and misconstrues everything he says as a pass.  Later he's training a corgi who doesn't want to be trained (I can relate!).  He's approached by a group of walkers from the animal shelter who want him to do a talk to help boost adoption, but the very idea triggers his social anxiety. (Love the detail of him picking up his corgi and being covered in dog hair.) Later, while Tyler and mom are having dinner, Paul rings the doorbell and comes in bearing dessert. Tyler: "Quick question. Why do you come in the front door like you don't live in the back yard?"  So yeah, the brothers all live at home, at least right now, but they don't get along.  Mom wants just one more Christmas with everyone together under the one roof, doing all the traditions they used to: decorating the tree, making coookies, etc.  

Andrew's doing real show-off yoga at the fire hall when there's a knock at the door.  When he goes downstairs he find a baby, with a bag of supplies and a note for Andrew that the mom need him to take care of the baby for a few days and they'll be back for him at Christmas.  When he goes home, Mom is kind of ecstatic to have a baby. Unfortunately mom's sister has just had an accident and is in the hospital and needs to leave, leaving three men with a baby (gasp, that's never happened before).

Andrew has a work thing (kids charity), and Paul has a client visit (with the redhead again), so Tyler is defacto caregiver...and it does not go well.  Paul takes over, with a plan to bake cookies (with a baby?) and yeah, that doesn't go well either.  They clean the baby up and the brother's bicker brotherly.  Tyler wonders how someone abandons a child on Christmas, to which Paul responds, "Dad would know...oh right, we don't talk about that in this family".

Paul and Tyler are out buying more supplies as a department store, and they run into Ali, Tyler's ex from work, where he has to explain the baby, and gets an earful about how much he let down the rest of the team at work in his firing/quitting. Mom and her concussed sister talk about the baby, the boys, and how the brothers had kind of closed off from each other after their dad left.

Andrew returns from work, and is critical about Paul and Tyler's rearing skills, and they're happy to leave the baby with him.  The next morning, Andrew is doing great, as is the baby, and they get on with their day.  Paul's annoying redhead client reveals another side of herself.  Andrew's reno guy seeds the idea of his place being fit for a family.  Tyler's meeting with a friend reveals that he's virtually unhireable ("you're a wrecking ball").  Andrew accidentally switches the baby at the store.  The police solve the problem, and Andrew's perfect record is sullied.  

The brothers go out together to the Christmas square with the baby and decide to go skating (!), where Tyler runs into Ali, again, and they flirt some more.  The brothers rent elf costumes to take a picture with the baby and Santa (cue comedic slow-mo walk).  They get along for the day and kind of actually enjoy each other's company.  Their limited "dad" time with baby Thomas has put into perspective how great their mom is, and they decide to give her the Christmas she was wanting... starting with a new tree (sigh, Christmas tree shopping like 2 days before Christmas). Then they find out from their high school bully who lives across the street (and is still a dick, as played by Matt Hamilton) that there's a grand prize to the home decorating contest the local TV station puts on, and they seek out to win the cruise for mom.  As they plan, Ali shows up to return something and they enlist her help.  And then Paul's redhead client arrives with a casserole.  Dinner and decorating the tree lead to the boys doing their silly "Dance of the Sugar Plum" fairy dance which is all kinds of silly and awesome (as my wife said, "I love hot men doing a goofy dance.")

At the firehouse, the dead chief's son turns up and Andrew and him bond over the pain of having no father. When he returns home, the brother's have a blow out as Andrew talks about being the father figure for his brothers after a snippy remark from Tyler.  But they come back together when Paul thinks the baby has an emergency (just a rash). They hash out their tearful appreciation for each other and how their father's abandonment affected each of them.  And then they get to work on their Christmas display/Nativity performance... which is a bust...but they earn the respect of their bully which I guess is a small victory... and mom made it back in time for Christmas...and then baby Thomas's mom returns...

It's a tearful goodbye to baby Thomas, but a wonderful Christmas for the brothers and Mom.  A year later, Tyler and Ali are together again and he's gainfully employed, Paul and the redhead are together and he's doing a little better with his anxiety.  The bully across the way is now a friend and hangs out at Christmas.  And baby Thomas and the mom are friends of the family now (I'm assuming that Andrew isn't together with the mom...but that may be incorrect).

The Formulae: The movie opens like stock Hallmark: unimpressive title card, Generic Christmas Song and generic establishing shots (Seattle, a very Christmasy suburb, and a house with no decoration).  There's the Christmas tree shopping scene, where the brothers argue over what is the best type of Christmas tree (a conversation that has been had in Hallmark movies 500 times by now).  There's cookie baking and hot chocolate, skating, and of course and "stakes" in the form of a really no-stakes competition.

Unformulae: I just remembered that this isn't the first time we've had a Hallmarkie where there's not a female lead... The Christmas House was another one... but they're rare.  Hallmark is like (straight) porn... it's all about the women, the guy is just a vessel...but you want them to be good looking.. so it's weird when the guys are the showcase, but these boys earned it.  This was a flat-out comedy, really in the vein of 80's situational comedies, obviously riffing on Three Men and a Baby (and even having a little homage in the baby bottle tossing scene towards the end where they're just on a roll in this "three dads" mode).  It has romantic sub-plots but the focus is truly on the brothers and their relationship to one another. I liked each of these three characters, their personalities were very defined and very consistently played.  Plus, it's really, really funny.  There's some great lines of dialogue, and some tremendous physical comedy.  We're not used to this out of Hallmark, like, at all.

True Calling? The title is great.  Perfect.  It recalls both the classic film and injects Christmas into it. It's all you need.

The Rewind: There were a lot of great jokes in the first 20 minutes that I stopped and rewound, but perhaps the best moment is Tyler and Paul, after a long exhausting day with the baby, laying into Andrew for coming home so late.  It's kind of a cliched joke, but Tyler's physicality in the scene, doing squats with the baby and holding Paul's hand, was just hilarious.  As was their Sugar Plum Fairy dance.

The Regulars: Everyone! It's an all-star affair.  Even the bit parts seem to be stacked with Hallmark regulars.  Walker, Hines and Campbell are Hallmark A-list. Love interests Ali Liebert and Fiona Vroom, as well as bully Matt Hamilton and Thomas' mom Nicole Major all have Hallmark history and holiday romances in their past.  And co-writer, and Hallmark legend, Kimberley Sustad (Nine Lives of Christmas) makes a cameo, but she also co-wrote the film with Cambell.  Only Mom Margaret Colin doesn't have a Hallmark past, but she was stunt-casted because she was in the original 3 Men and a Baby.

How does it Hallmark? As a Hallmark movie it does a good job at hitting a lot of the tropes while doing something very different with them, even pushing them way to the background so that they're almost negligent (hot cocoa wasn't a big deal and led to a cute cheers with a baby bottle).  It's a flat-out comedy which is not what we expect at all from a Hallmark, and quite frankly this feels like way, way above the standards of the channel's usual far.

How does it movie? Given it's "Hallmark All-Stars" cast, I could see this being a theatrical release.  It doesn't have the production values, but it overcomes whatever budget limitations with a classic Hollywood comedy script and incredible performances from all players who seem to know there's something special about this one.  There's none of that "been there, done that" sleepwalking happening here.  By Hollywood comedy standards, it's pretty middle-of-the-road fare, but that's miles above your typical pre-2020s Hallmarkie that tried to be funny.

How Does It Snow? I had to go back and look.  The big Christmas lights showdown/nativity scene is mostly cotton batting with digital snowfall, with maybe a bit of manufactured snow happening.  It looks fine if you're not paying attention (and I wasn't).