2022, d. Alex Ranarivelo - Crave
And so I hunt, and when I hunt I preview, and often the first minute or two will tell me all I need to know. With A Hollywood Christmas, it was, first, the Warner Bros. logo up front (not used to seeing the ol' WB shield in front of Hallmarkies), and second it was the atrocious set-up leading to a reveal that made me laugh hard enough that I replayed it for Lady Kent who also couldn't help but giggle.
That was the nugget...
HERstory: Our story opens with stock footage of an aerial shot of a generic "PST". Cut to what is clearly the "busy" "streets" of a studio backlot, which then focuses on a corner shop - "Chloe's Cupcakes". Smash cut to the interior where a couple patrons are sitting and presumably enjoying a cupcake while Chloe - a pretty blonde in excessive makeup wearing an elf costume - is restocking the cupcake counter with festive looking cupcakes. Chloe is pleased with herself, as is her chihuahua, dressed in a matching elf costume, who barks and twirls on hind legs in excitement.
But then, in barges a quartet of suits. Jeb, the lead suit, is a lawyer for a real estate agency, who gives Chloe notice that she has 30 days to vacate the premises. As Chloe reacts in shock, a suit behind Jeb sneezes. Everything comes to a standstill. Jeb: "Seriously?" Chloe looks off camera, starts talking to unseen people and says perkily "That's ok. I'll just...take it back...." She makes some faces and restates the lines she had just said to Jeb. Jeb starts to restate his lines only for suit number 4 to sneeze again. "Jeb" flips out, hilariously, and "Cut" is called.
Yes, this very generically set-up Hallmarkie is just a Hallmarkie in production. We meet Jessica the director who talks to sneezing guy who turns out to be allergic to dogs. She boots him out of the scene and pulls in another blandly handsome suit standing at the craft services table. He looks surprised, but pleased as punch to be getting placed into the film.
After they get the shot, the new suit number 4 introduces himself to Jessica (Jessika Van, Paper Girls). He's Christopher (Josh Swickard, General Hospital), a new numbers guy for the TV studio there to tell Jessika that they're cancelling the Christmas movies division and focusing on true crime and "ripped from the headlines" movies (so, Lifetime...). He's there to prevent any cost overruns, which apparently the Christmas movie division was infamous for, but also it means that Jessica's three-movie deal is no longer going to be honoured and she'll be looking for new work.
Jessica's assistant, Reena (Anissa Borrego) immediately calls out that the situation resembles very much a Christmas movie. Jessica rolls her eyes and gets back to work. But work is proving more complicated as her two stars Ashley (Riley Dandy, Interceptor) and Michael (Zak Steiner, Euphoria) - who play Chloe and Jeb, respectively - are feuding since Michael posted a rude picture of Ashley on Insta. It's Christopher who steps in and helps with the first steps in smoothing out the situation (by appealing to her actor's ego and telling her that she's acting circles around him). His white knight moment.
Christopher and Jessica start spending more time together, as Christopher tries to get to know "the biz". He's a Princeton grad ("A prince?" squeals Reena), and Jessica pegs him as a guy who just gets success handed to him, but he makes efforts to show her he's not trying to be the bad guy. They eat together, he gives her a studio tour "sleighride" (in a decorated golf cart) and he inspires her with new ideas.
Jessica asks Michael to make nice with Ashley, to use his ample charms to get in her good books. It works too well and the two of them sleep together, which would be fine if Ashley didn't learn that he already has a girlfriend. But Micheal explains to Jessica that "it was his girlfriend's idea" and that "showmances don't count as cheating." Ashley remains livid, until he shows her that she has gained 400,000 new Insta followers since they started taking photos together.
Jessica meets the new network head honcho, Teresa Frost (Missi Pyle, Galaxy Quest) who informs her politely that her budget has been cut. In text to Christopher, asking about the budget cuts, he responds, "I see you've met my wife..." What the shit?!? Next time she sees him, she kicks him off set.
Jessica, suddenly doesn't have the budget she needs to finish her film. Christopher seemingly has ghosted her, but he's hiding out in the editing bay and trying to find ways of getting extras for her big finale. When confronted he explains that it was either shut production down or slash costs.
In the big climactic scene, they use the crew to fill out the backdrop and anyone with musical acumen is part of the live band playing. Jessica manages to find the way to Teresa's grinchy heart, and gets her to sing on camera, and it's all working until the snow machine doesn't kick in.
Resetting, Teresa is exhilarated and her heart grows three sizes. The Christmas magic is essential and she's reopening the Christmas movie division (no one wants to watch murder stories at Christmas). Michael's girlfriend dumped him so now he's more than happy to be with Ashley. Christopher and Jessica have a heart to heart in front of the tree and it starts to snow, like actual snow (in July). They kiss...but then she asks him about his wife, and he said autocorrect dropped the word "work" from "work wife". What a silly misunderstanding. The end.
The Formulae: It may not hit all the usual tropes like cookie baking, hot chocolate, tree shopping/decorating, etc, but it certainly follows the rhythms of a Christmas movie in both earnestness and metatextually.
The "meet cute". The big corporate guy shutting down the female lead's plucky business. The bickering leading to spending time together leading to attraction. The B-plot of side characters also falling in love. A "sleigh ride". The complication of a wife/girlfriend. etc etc. It's cliche by design.
Unformulae: The one thing that sets this apart from every other Hallmarkie that I can recall is the fact that it's shot on a studio lot. I don't think I've ever seen a Hallmarkie shot on studio sets before. It's always on location in BFNW America, or, like, Winnipeg.
Also, it's acknowledging all its tropes as they happen. At times the characters even play into the tropes expecting specific outcomes.
True Calling? It is Hollywood, but it's not Christmas. It is July. But they are shooting a Christmas movie, so truth told, it should be called "A Hollywood Christmas Movie".
The Rewind: Zak Steiner's "dude, oh..what" reaction is a fine bit of comedic acting. He flails his hand in such a specific way, and the facial reactions are just too precious. Breaking from his stern lawyer character face into total goofball..just great.
Second to that was the first "town square" scene being shot in blazing midday sunlight, the sea of cotton batting glowing a Crash Test Dummies-level of bright white. Once they call cut, Ashley and Michael immediately doff their woolen jackets to reveal that, for Ashely she's wearing a tube top under a ribbed turtleneck Dickie, and for Michael his dress shirt and tie have not only no sleeves (just cuffs) but no sides, and we can see his very fit bod, but his tacky as hell wolf-in-a-forest tattoo. It's pretty delightful.
The Regulars: Everyone on this cast looked so familiar, that I was almost certain that they were the same crew that did some other well received off-label Hallmarkie like A Christmas Movie Christmas . But nope. They're all just working actors. Swickard has starred in a two "California Christmas" films as well as "Holiday in the Vineyard", all off-label...but that's really it for this cast. The director, Rinarivelo, has made a second XMas movie for HBOMax and one for Netflix, as well as directed the aforementioned "..Vineyard" movie.
How does it Hallmark? It's good. Not great. The leads are all good looking and likeable, and the performances are all quite good (sometimes reaching into excellent) which, as we know, is not always the case.
Like a lot of the post-pandemic Hallmarkies, it's self aware, and willfully toying with the format. I think for me the least appealing part was how Reena kept calling attention to the tropes, as if it needed it. I think it would have fared better had it eased up on the meta commentary of Hallmarkies. There are some solid laughs in it and the performances are generally good. The "complication" of Teresa being Christopher's "wife" was a genuine shocker, and the fact that it's a stupid autocorrect from "work wife" made me groan in displeasure. I don't think we even saw Christopher and Teresa in the same scene so I didn't get "work wife" out of that equation at all.
How does it movie? It is a notch above Hallmarkie in production values, mostly because the backlot and the behind the scenes don't need much zhuzhing up to sell you on the setting. And the humour was much more on point than your average Hallmarkie. And yet, it's still not quite there as a movie. Were it to be a "movie movie" it would need a tighter script to really sell the romance, which I was never sold on (for Jessica and Christopher, at least, I completely bought into the vapid romance of Ashley and Michael) and need to be much funnier...far more in the way of heightened and escalating comedic set pieces. I also think a movie movie would taken more time to play into the parallels between the film-within-a-film and the behind-the-scenes romance.
We just finished watching The Franchise about the behind-the-scenes of a big-budget superhero movie franchise and this wasn't really that far off from that, except that the movie-within-a-movie seemed much more on-point here than there (hard to recreate big blockbuster movie on a TV series budget, much easier to recreate a Hallmarkie within a Hallmarkie).
And it needed more Missi Pyle. I love Missi Pyle. She doesn't even get to be particularly funny in this, and that's a travesty.
How Does It Snow? It's explicitly July in the film so there's no snow except the cotton batting on set, which was perfect....That is until the climax of the film where it snows. In L.A. In July. But we get a wink from the on-set Santa who tells us it's a bit of Christmas-in-July magic. (Also, they really could have played up the Santa-actor-is-Santa gag even more).
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