T&K's XMas (2023) Advent Calendar: Day 8 - The Santa Summit

And just when I thought I was back into Hallmarkies, I may be out again. This one kind of broke me. Not because it's so bad, but because it had the potential to be so good. I mean, a lot of the Hallmarkie critical consensus is that it's pretty great. It's not. It's just different, but different doesn't always equal good.  I mean, I guess if you're, say, me from 2020 consuming 40+ Hallmarkies in less than 2 months, something like this might seem extraordinary with legit jokes and creative ideas. I guess I just expect formulaicness out of Hallmarkies and they get rated on a sliding scale in how they perform within the formula. But to jump off the sliding scale onto a completely different scale, I don't even know how to process that.  I guess that's what comes below...processing...

2023, d. Jeff Beesley - Hallmark

The Draw:
*Somebody* said this was the best Hallmark movie of the season, and perhaps one of the best ever. I'll be the judge of that.

HERstory: 
Jordan is an upbeat art teacher at a local high school who is still trying to get over a break-up months after the fact. Ava is a math teacher and uber nerd, and is in love with uber nerd teacher Ben. Stella is a former music teacher forced by budget cuts into being an english teacher, and is an unadventurous curmudgeon. Jordan wants to hit up the Santa Summit - an all-day Santa-costumed pub crawl - and wants her two teacher chums to come too. Ben is going to the Santa Summit, so Amy is in. Stella takes a lot more convincing.

Heading into the first stop on the Summit, Jordan drops her purse, and when she goes out to retrieve it, she connects with Liam, a new-to-town carpenter who's started working with his brother. They immediately vibe, but, as they head inside to get a drink, they get separated and spend the rest of the night looking for one another, her with her unique artisinal purse, and he with his pine tree tattoo on his wrist.

Santas meet-cute...and a very temporary tattoo

With Ava is on the prowl for Ben and Jordan on the hunt for her mystery Santa, Stella is left alone a lot and she keeps encountering a jovial Santa with a peculiar accent named Freddie, who seems keen to get the grumpy woman to enjoy herself. Whenever these three women get together, it's mainly to talk about boys. I'm not sure there's a single scene with the three of them where a guy is not brought up.

They go from pub to pub having (presumably non-alcoholic) drinks and cookies, at one point taking a rickshaw and receiving some sage advice from its driver dressed as a reindeer. They Liam and his brother just keep missing Jordan and friends, sometimes brushing right past one another.

Freddie convinces Stella to sing at Christmas Karaoke, and she comes out of her shell and her funk. Amy meets up with Ben at the silent disco and confesses her love with Lord of the Rings references which are reciprocated with more Lord of the Rings references. Jordan starts freaking out late in the evening after seeing her ex with his new girlfriend and about having not found her tree-tattooed Santa, but runs into the reindeer rickshaw driver who listens to her very long diatribe and then offers some really great advice about living in the moment with her real friends who are hard to find and not some mutual attraction - which aren't that rare - that she's spending all this time and emotional energy on. It's a sincerely good "snap out of it moment" that every Hallmarkie should have but none ever seem to. Everyone usually just enables the leads in these things.  She decides he's right and goes into the silent disco (it's dancing with headphones on) and dances... by herself? instead of with her friends? What gives Jordan?

Then at the gingerbread house competition, Liam has built a house based off Jordan's purse and left her a note to meet him at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, where they meet, and their sparks return, they kiss, and then it tuns out Freddie is a local rock star...kinda.

The Formulae:
This one steps quite outside the usual cliched plots of a Hallmark. There's no Christmas tree shopping or cookie baking, but there are plenty of cookies, and cocoas and ciders, and a lot of Santas.

Unformulae:
Holy cow, so many extras, almost all in Santa costumes. It's unusual to see such dense crowds in Hallmarkies (outside of opening stock footage establishing shots). We're definitely seeing the same Santas in the backgrounds repeatedly, but given that the Summit is a pub crawl it makes sense.  Holy crap, we see actual breath lingering in the air!  I enjoyed the background misadventures of the guy in the inflatable Christmas Tree costume (but unless there are multiple guys in inflatable Christmas Tree costumes, there are some definite continuity flaws with that one).

True Calling? 
There is definitely a Santa Summit happening.

The Rewind:
Yes, the silent disco was being programmed by DJ Ginger Jeff and the Fresh Pine. And yes, they were playing Cher (the new autotune atrocity "DJ Play a Christmas Song") in between air horns.

And I had to look at Liam's image search for "boston art teacher" (is this the only time it's mentioned they're in Boston? Why does NOBODY have a Boston accent? I'm even more disappointed by this Hallmarkie now). Also, I note that Jordan comes up as THE FIRST IMAGE? Really. (And he thinks "there's something about her eyes" but doesn't bother to look up anymore info on that search result.

The black leather glove makes this shot look very sinister

The Regulars:
Jordan: Hunter King. You might remember her from A Royal Corgi Christmas, her first and most unfortunate entry into the Hallmark stable. She's ok here but there's literally no character. At least Ava and Stella have a thing but Jordan's thing is just rambling very openly to strangers but they don't consistently make that her thing.
Ava: Amy Groening. You might remember her from 'Tis The Season. She was great in that. She's good here, having a lot of fun with her cloak, but she needed to be more deep-cut nerdier, not just an LOTR
Stella: Stephanie Sy. She has appeared in many many Hallmarks and Hallmarkies, in small roles and in fourth billed roles (which I presume were POC best friend roles but cannot confirm outright). She's also in Violent Night. She's fantastic here, absolutely nailing being funny-surly, and she's an incredible singer. I hate the moment of "self awareness" she has about her surliness (comically surly people are never that self aware about their surliness) and that she sings Jingle Bells as her big showstopper and not something more impressive.
Liam: Benjamin Hollingsworth. Has appeared in many Hallmarkies, holiday and non, but none that I have seen (like, I'm not watching A Godwink Christmas:Meant For Love, like, ever). As a Hallmark lead, I didn't really care for him, but then he also wasn't given much to work with.
Dasher (the rickshaw reindeer): Erik Athavale. He's been in many of these, including one of my all-time favourite Hallmarks, Crashing Through The Snow.  He's a total "pep talk" ringer in these things. 
Also a quick shout out to Winnipeg actor Rodrigo Belfuss, who comes in with his odd accent, winning smile and totally charms the pants off of not just Stella, but everyone watching.

How does it Hallmark? 
Let me preface this by saying that this is not a good Hallmark movie, and that's because it doesn't fit in with the usual Hallmark claptrap. It aspires to be something more.  It succeeds in differentiating itself from other Hallmarkies, but in doing so I found it was let down by the necessities of being a Hallmark production.  This needed more pub-crawl debauchery, or at least a sense of progressive inebriation, it needed more comedy, more highjinks and less puritanism. It's better conceptually than most Hallmarkies, and even in execution it tries harder, but it doesn't have the budget to be as grand as it should be, or do those rough takes over again that it needs (or license those songs that talented singers could sing), and so it somehow comes off worse than even an average Hallmarkie. But with some better jokes from time to time.

Stella: "Look, I'm not trying to offend you, I just really want to spend the day with my friends...the three of us. The Three Musketeers! There's no fourth Musketeer."
Freddie: "There absolutely is a fourth Musketeer. The whole book is about the guy who becomes the fourth Musketeer. I thought you were an English teacher."

But this exchange, which is performed very well and is quite amusing, just highlights the problems I have with this story. It wants to be a movie about the friendship between these women, it says that's what these women want too, but they're constantly either focusing on men, or being interrupted by them.

How does it movie? 
This one *should* be a movie. As I said above, the concept is pretty rock solid, and they make good use of Winnipeg as its unnamed smaller city, and the premise could lend itself very nicely to the "one crazy night" mould.  It just doesn't have what it needs to get there.  I'm not even talking about the performers.  We need more out of the lead romantic couple, as I didn't give a crap about them, or really care about their connection. 

Who knew Winnipeg could look so much like a studio backlot?

When the rickshaw reindeer gives the inspiring pep talk about making one's self happy instead of looking for it in others, it's a great moment. But I really would have liked that moment to resonate as the big climax of the film, instead of definitively having the lead couple meet back up. I am being very hard on this Hallmark production because I can see the potential in it, but it just didn't reach it for me.

How Does It Snow? 
It's definitely cold, but still cotton batting on the streets and window ledges.