T&K's XMas (2024) Advent Calendar - Day 10: The Road To Christmas

 2006, d. Mark Jean - CHCH

The Draw: When I started watching Hallmarkies, it was the "wtf" nature of randomly joining a Hallmarkie in progress and trying to suss out what was happening based on the formulaic nature of the genre that kept me coming back to watching them. It was a fun exercise in pretty mindless stupidity. It was genuinely enjoying things that were legitimately because of the things that made them so awful (call it irony or not, enjoyment is enjoyment).  That fun was what prompted Toasty and I to start this annual tradition.  But my burnout on Hallmarkies, especially last year, was a result of getting too invested, of paying attention to too much discourse and, maybe, taking it too seriously.  There is art in Hallmarkies, relatively speaking, but let's not kid ourselves here, it's 98.5% disposable trash and part of the adventure comes from finding a diamond (let's not get carried away here... a smooth, pretty rock at best) amidst the stones.

Anyway, in reducing our cable package (we still have a cable package, what are we, 70?) we wound up losing the W Network which is the official Canadian broadcaster of Hallmark Channel programming. As such I can't just put on a Hallmark in the background, I now have to search the local Toronto broadcast channels for off-brand Canadian Hallmarkies, and that's where I came across this one pre-Hallmark Channel (it's a Lifetime one...maybe... it was at least released by Lifetime on DVD, but it appears it was on Hallmark on demand at one point) Hallmarkie starring Erin Grey (Dirty Dancing) and Clark Gregg (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). It was already 17 minutes into the movie, and I was seeing lots of Toronto street scenes from 2006 (Bay and Dundas area). I'm always up for Toronto-in-disguise.

HERstory: Tom (Gregg) is a widower teacher who is travelling with his pre-teen (but actually 20-years-old!) daughter Hilly (Megan Park, The Secret Life of the American Teenager), and their dog Toby from Chicago to Vale to visit his mother for the holidays. Tom enjoys the scenic view an drives the back roads. The very Southern Ontario-in-mid-March-looking back roads.

Claire is a fashion photographer recently engaged to an Italian media mogul, caught up in whirlwind wedding planning. But she had a last-minute shoot to run off to, only for it to be cancelled, and now she's trying to get back to Aspen to help with the wedding plans only for everything to go awry.

Claire is of the entitled white lady persuasion who wants everything her way. She wears a white wool jacket for Christ sake, if that doesn't scream entitlement... this is a lady who never expects to get any shit on her.  But now she's stuck trying to find rides from middle America back home to the mountains, and having to suck up her pretentiousness as much as she possibly can (which isn't possible). This is the old-school Hallmarkie, where an asshole/bitch/diva/jerk needs to learn a lesson over the holidays on how to be a better person. Sometimes it's ghosts, and sometimes it's just the kindness of strangers that helps them through. 

As she makes her travails, she keeps catching the attention of Hilly, as they seem to be on the same route. Where I came into the picture, minute 17 or so, Claire had just gotten off the bus (at Bay Street Terminal, RIP) -- well, fell off the bus, actually-- and given a Dollarama plastic bag by the drunkard she was sitting beside to cover her hair from the rain. She accepts a ride from a nice immigrant man, but is taken to the back of a big cube van covered in camo netting. The van door opens up and two "yokel"-looking men (or, rather, two Canadian comedians/character actors playing yokels) sit within, and I can't help but shout "STRANGER DANGER!" She gets in the van and it's just an awful time for her, both in trying to relate to these guys who just look at her utterly befuddled, and then they start smoking.

At one point Hilly catches sight of Claire through the tiny peep window in the back of the van, and it's a total "dad, we need to call for help, that woman is in serious trouble moment"...but that doesn't happen. Instead the yokels, tired of her complaining and insults, toss her luggage out the back of the van at a gas station. Hilly begs her dad to give her a ride since they're practically going to the same place. Claire, at her wits end, pleads with full blown tears, and Tom just seems completely pissed off at this prissy lady.

On the road seemingly minutes, the truck catches a flat. Claire and Tom bicker pretty much non-stop. Tom is outright hostile towards Claire, and we never really understand why. At one point she asks if she knows him from somewhere, and his "No, we've never met" reply seems to indicate otherwise, and that maybe there's something personal to his hostility. (Now, we nerds know Clark Gregg as a pretty clean-cut, put-together Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. from Iron Man and The Avengers but here he's in many layers of flannel and with 3-day stubble, looking like he came off a bender, even though I'm sure he did not. Claire calls him "Grizzly Adams" a couple of times, a reference I'm actually only familiar with from Clerks but I get the "lumberjack" intonation.)

Tire fixed, they do a pit stop at a roadside "Hubcap Museum" (ooh, pathetic) and a short while later they stop at a restaurant/hotel. While Hilly is walking the dog, Claire and Tom get coffee from the restaurant, which is operated by Corner Gas' Lorne Cardinal, who brings the only real levity and proper comedic timing to this movie as he walks Claire sarcastically through his nonexistent cafe menu. Hilly runs in and says Toby got away chasing after a rabbit and they rush out (well, Claire is coaxed out) to look for him. They criss cross the same open wheat field terrain over and over before Claire falls in a ditch. They have to share the only available hotel room for the night. Claire makes friends with Hilly. Tom's still pretty much an ass towards her.  She spends a long time in the bathroom talking to fiancee Lorenzo who, we learn, has a secret lover who is in the shower whilst they are on the call.  (All this time, every character cocks an askew eye at Claire about her fiancee, firmly in the racist belief all Italians are untrustworthy "latin lovers", and it seems so pleased with itself when this turns out to be true.)

The next morning they wake up to Toby scratching at the door. Hilly gets up and Tom and Claire wake up face to face (though in separate beds) and look each other dead in the eyes and smile a very unearned smile of warm familiarity before they both bolt up like they're in the "they're not pillows" scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Back on the road, the truck breaks down again with a bad spark plug which, it seems, Tom has a replacement for, so it's obviously not the first time.  He accidentally knocks the hood on his head (which, given the weight of a 1990's-era Ford hood should be concussion worthy) and as Claire tries to help he elbows her in the face (accidentally), drawing blood. He gives her his gross handkerchief to hold against her lip...infection inbound! They laugh.

On the road again, they pick up great Canadian character actor Tantoo Cardinal (Killers of the Flower Moon, Marvel's Echo) and give her a lift. She comments on how much Hilly and Claire look alike (they don't) and how much Tom and Claire seem to be in love (they don't... methinks this character needs to have her eyes checked).  After dropping her off, and shrugging off her silly notions of them being a nice family unit, they have another argument about cell phone reception, as Claire finds bars, but they soon pass. She has Tom acquiesce and drive in reverse to get reception, only for him to put the truck in the ditch.  It's stuck.

They have to walk the next "10 miles" of the early spring Southern Ontario countryside to Tom's mother's place. "Grandma" (veteran Canadian character actor Barbara Gordon, Cube 2: Hypercube) welcomes Claire into her home for the evening and while Tom is getting the truck out the ditch with his local friend, Claire explores the property with her camera, going into the barn where Tom's old art pieces (metal is his medium) are stored. He stopped working after his wife died, and the two connect over art (Claire even acknowledges she'd seen the pieces at a show). Dinner goes well, both Hilly and Claire are vegetarians, like mother and daugher! More meat for Dad and Grandma! Claire also bonds with Hilly over observing a picture of her dead mom, as one does.

Claire, being a vegetarian, goes to get a midnight snack because dinner without meat aint enough to fill you up... and there's Tom, who had plenty of meat, drinking an empty cup of nothing. They talk and have a week heart-to-heart about something. Claire kisses Tom on the cheek which leads to the heaviest kissing I've seen in a holiday romance ever (except, given how unearned this connection has been, it wasn't hot at all, just more confusing... and you just know Tom's perpetual 3-day stubble is giving her the worst stubble burn... you can see the redness all over her face when they stop kissing). They both apologize profusely. For Tom, it's like he jizzed in his pants (sorry, been listening to a lot of The Lonely Island lately) and for Claire it's like she found out that the man she just made out with is the "Roadside Strangler" or something. She just runs to her room and crumbles into a sobbing heap. 

The next awkward day Tom and Hilly drive Claire to Lorenzo's big ugly Southern Ontario "megahome" in "Colorado". Coming inside Claire finds Lorenzo in bed with Michele, their wedding planner...who's a dude. Lady Kent and I high-fived triumphantly as Lady Kent had called it from that earlier scene. Up until this moment, she had been cursing the awfulness of this film... but then I asked "worth it?" and she said "worth it".

The film, to its credit, has Hilly explain to her dad that she's known about gay people since some kid came out in Grade 5. Tom says "isn't that a little young to be coming out of the closet?" She rolls her eyes and correctly tells him "what does age have to do with anything, you are what you are" (paraphrased) and he smiles at his brilliant daughter "Yeah, I guess that's right."

Claire is upset, but stays to talk things through with Lorenzo who explains that he loves Claire, but loves dick more and just couldn't admit it to himself until now. Tom and Hilly return to Grandma's where Tom starts working on his metal art for the first time in a decade. And next day they have a Christmas with Grandma with what looks like way too many presents for 3 people. Claire shows up and it's like she's immediately part of the family, and it's all so very unearned. 

Also, shouldn't Claire be spending time with all her friends and family and other loved ones who arrived for the wedding that was scheduled for the day before? Or did I miss that Lorenzo had called it off whilst getting it on?

The Formulae: This is the classic holiday road trip crossed with the classic holiday hate-you-at-first-sight romance. Total cliche mashup.  
The Canada-passing-as-America is one of my favourite formulaes, because it gives me so much pleasure to look out for Canadiana in these "American" streets and countrysides.
Of course, we've also got the single dad, and the kid bonds with the lady as a mother figure before the romance starts to blossom, as if that's the trigger for attraction.  I could see if the dynamic doesn't work it being a turn off, but the start of the attraction always wigs me out.  Oh, it's so hot seeing you get along with my kid... ick?

Unformulae: As noted, it used to be common for the store of a holiday romance to be unlikeable and maybe even unsympathetic, requiring the movie to put them through some hurdles to learn to b a better human being and to find a nice partner who makes them better.  But somewhere along the way, Hallmark learned that holiday romances were more wish fulfillment and/or lifestyle justifications for rural American housewives and wanted the female leads to be likeable and relatable so the audience could follow them along the journey to being a middle American housewife. So this is a throwback to the before-times.

Usually the female lead has an untrustworthy, unlikeable boyfriend (the Dick BF, as we dub them here), and the Dick BF in Hallmarkies is usually just that, a dick. I don't know that I've seen a Hallmarkie where the reason he's kind of an uncaring dick is because he's hiding the fact that he's in the closet, and we most definitely haven't seen a scene where the main characters have walked in on their Dick BF in bed with another man. It was a landmark moment in Hallmarkie representation.  And to come out of it rather queer positive was even more surprising. Shall we call him the BF-who-likes-dick?

True Calling? It's stupid and generic and I hate titles like this. It tells you nothing of the story. Are they on a road? Sure, at least one, I guess.  Is it Christmas time? I suppose. [Not to be confused with Hallmark's Road To Christmas, from 2018, starring Jessy Schram and Chad Michael Murray]

The Rewind: Oh there were a few. In Canada-spotting the Dollarama bag as a head scarf was great. The moment where Hilly spies Claire thought he yokel van portal window. Claire falling in the ditch, classic. And of course the shower scene to try and parse out just who's in that shower, but it was the fact that it was so purposefully unclear that led her to believe Lorenzo was having a gay affair. 
"Oh, Michele and I are...going over the schedule...for the wedding."
"In bed?"
"...Is more comfortable..."

The Regulars: Neither Gregg nor Grey (who were married at the time, divorcing in 2020!) have done Hallmarkies since this, but Megan Park has been in a bunch of Hallmarkie's over the years.  Same with Barbara Gordon, as recently as last week's That 90's Christmas.

How does it Hallmark? It's bad. I longed for Hallmark-level production values and even Hallmark's stupid plinky stock music. This was real bad.

The kiss, though, was super, duper... like, uncomfortably passionate kissing... to find out Gregg and Grey were married made so much more sense. Two actors who barely know each other are never going to get a kiss like that on screen.  But it's weird how little chemistry this married couple had on screen (that's maybe unfair... it wasn't their chemistry in question, but the characters).

And the Christmas was so unchristmassy. We also hate a Christmas wedding plot. What kind of monster has their wedding on Christmas or Christmas Eve?

How does it movie? It's bad. I kept saying to Lady Kent, over and over, how terrible the director was at framing the actors. It felt like a Canadian TV series from the early 1980's, given its production values, but it was a 2006 TV movie? It made my brain hurt to look at it.

It didn't seem like either Gregg or Grey were happy to be there, and they went on to still be married for nearly 15 years, so it's not like it was already on the rocks or anything. 

And it's shot so poorly, but director Mark Jean had been working in TV for over 15 years already  and and went on to direct an all-timer Hallmarkie in The Nine Lives of Christmas. I have no idea why this was so compositionally ugly.

How Does It Snow? Real snow alert! There was real snow all over the place. Not much, given that it was thawing season in Southern Ontario when they shot this, but there was real gross looking, sloppy ground snow. A few bits of batting to pad out certain areas, and they got a snow maker in for when it needed it to look like it was snowing at the end (getting too used to seeing Hallmark's digital snowing technology).