So This Is Christmas Leftovers (2025) - part 1?

 

AD/BC: A Rock Opera - 2004, d Richard Ayoade - Tubi
La guerre des toques (aka The Dog Who Won The War) - 1984, d. André Melançon - Crave
Cup of Cheer - 2020, d. Jake Horowitz - Tubi
A Make or Break Christmas - 2025, d . Martin Wood  - Hallmark/W

Preamble:
Between Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV, GAF, and all the Canadian (and non-Canadian) independent production company's, I would conservatively estimate there have been over 500 original Hallmarkies produced and released in the past decade. Together Toasty and I cover, conservatively, 25 of them in any given season on this here blog and we only started in earnest in 2019. So we're at about 25% coverage rate at best, which means...well, we have a mental illness. 

To be fair (tooooo BEEEE faaaIIIIIRRRRrrr!) we're not even trying to cover them all, it was never the objective. We would have to devote pretty much all of our watching and TV viewing time for the next two or three years to catch up. Even the Deck the Hallmark crew who do year-round Hallmarkie viewing and reviewing multiple times a week are still probably only at about 70-80% completion rate.

The point I think I'm trying to make here is, there's a lot of damn Christmas movies, and more every year. Even outside of Hallmarkies there are upwards of a dozen actual non-romance-based non-TV Christmas movies released every year in all different genres. It's impossible to watch them all, and if you find some favourites, it's hard to rewatch them when you're writing a blog and dedicating yourself to watching at least a dozen new ones every year.

Each holiday season I see new movies that I would like to rewatch in subsequent year and rarely do (Holidate excluded). But the same goes for regular movie watching where I find films I absolutely love and would like to rewatch but rarely do because there's so much new stuff to consume.

I always start into Christmas movie season in November, and by December Christmas movies are pretty much all I want to watch. I'm glad Toasty and I switch off days on the Advent Calendar because while I could probably write up 24 days on my own, where would I find the energy? (I'm not sure how Toasty does 31 horror movies in October every year). And so... here's some more Xmassy things:

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Under the pretense of being a forgotten televisual special (tele-viss-you-Al spess-eee-Al) from 1978, the cleverly titled AD/BC: A Rock Opera tells the story of the nativity, but from the innkeeper's perspective...you know the one guy whose sole part is "There's no room at the inn!"

In this funk and psychedelia infused parody of hippie rock operas like Godspell and Hair, Matt Berry plays the writer and star of the rock opera (op-ear-aaahhh) Tim Wynde who introduces the special, as well as performs the lead role of "Inkeeper" (no first name).

Inkeeper is in competition with big hotel across the street run by Tony (Julian Barratt) but is also leasing the property for his in from Tony. Innkeeper is paid a visit from God (Matt Lucas) who tells him that he should expect a divine occurrence, a divine guest at his meagre in. So he cancels all reservations and kicks all the guests out (his mother-in-law included) in anticipation. His wife, Ruth (Julia Davis) is upset and decides to leave him but he throws her out an she turns to Tony for solace, which Tony is all in for.

Eventually Joseph (Richard Ayoade) turns up with (unseen, unnamed) pregnant wife, and Inkeeper tells him that he's expecting a special guest but offers up his meagre stables. A child is born, a bright star shines upon all, and they all feel the joy and rapture of the event. Tony encourages Inkeeper and Ruth to rekindle their love, offers his hand in friendship to Inkeeper, and the pair declare they will offer reasonable rates and exceptional service, not as competitors but as collaborators.

AD/BC is tremendously silly, and is completely keyed into the style of British comedy that Berry and Ayoade (co-writers of the piece) were really into at the time, which heavily, heavily relied upon pastiche and lampooning without going full parody (pair-oh-daaayy).

It is indeed a singing-and-dancing rock opera throughout, most of the dialogue is sung. Berry, whose comedic performance  I've been a fan of for a long time, always likes to infuse music into his projects (see also Snuff Box and Toast of London for example) and in his non-acting time he's a prolific (pro-liff-yick) songsmith. The only problem is I've never really attuned to his style of music, and I find it can get exceptionally same-y (he will often have the same or similar chord progressions or keep returning to specific sequences of notes) and his vocal range is quite limited. Here he once again taps into familiar tones of his own use, but also dipping into 70's era music like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival or... others (memory already failing).

But in a comedy special like this, it's less about whether I'm humming tunes afterwards than if I was laughing or chuckling throughout, and it's a sold half hour of gleefully silly, anachronistic comedy.

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Kids sometimes become obsessed or enamoured with the things that scare them or traumatize them (emphasis on the "sometimes", don't go seeking to scare or traumatize your kids) and one such scary thing for me as a youth in the 1980s was a Canadian oddity called The Peanut Butter Solution.  It's the story of a young boy who gets so scared upon entering an abandoned house that all his hair falls out. He finds the solution in a gross mixture of peanut butter, eggs and, I want to say frogs? This solution then causes his hair to grow rapidly and he's kidnapped by a weird artist who harvests his hair to make unique fine art brushes.  It's gonzo, and I've always loved it (I acquired it on blu-ray in 2017 and only wrote about it briefly in the year-end post).

What I didn't know until recently was that The Peanut Butter Solution was a part of a series of films produced by legendary Quebec producer Rock Demers under the banner "Tales for All". The series lasted some 30 years (up to 2014 before being acquired by another company which has since continued the series) Some of the titles in this are familiar to me in name only but were in as frequent rotation on the CBC as The Peanut Butter Solution, but none of them have had the same staying power... for me.

But arguably the most famous of all of these "Tales for All" is La guerre des toques (in English "The War of Toques" but popularly know as The Dog Who Stopped the War), the story of a gang of pre-teen friends and neighbours who decide on their winter break from school to pick sides and wage a snow war against one another.

On one side is take-it-too-far Luc, who calls himself the General because he has his grandfather's bugle. On the other side is the much meeker Marc (actually it's Pierre, but for some reason they changed it to Marc in the dub and even the English subtitles). Only three lads choose Marc/Pierre's side, and so they are greatly outnumbered. Luc gives his enemies a day to build their snow fort, and it turns into a thing of glory. But they are so outmanned they have no choice but to accept the assistance of the new girl in town, Sophie, and her younger sister Lucie.  

Turns out Sophie is tough as nails and also a bit of a tactical genius (well, for a 12-year-old). Luc sets his sights on her, and, she, in turn, sets her sights on him. It's clear they dig each other in that very confused pre-teen, don't know what to do kind of way. And they're so French about it.

La guerre des toques is an incredibly low-key film. We're reminded frequently that these kids are supposed to be friends and that there are rules they have to follow, but that sometimes kids can't help but get carried away in their actions. Things can get pretty rough, like when one kid drops an ice block on another kid's head, or Luc sets his troop on kidnapping Sophie in the dark, a clear violation of the rules. She runs like her life depends on it, and it's a pretty intense sequence for what is just supposed to be child's play.

If you haven't seen the film before, there's a big honking ***SPOILER*** I'm about to drop, so skip on down to the next post if you don't want to know....

There are about a dozen or so kids participating in the war (and little brothers or sisters who want in but aren't allowed) so there's a lot of little white French kids to keep track of, mainly distinguished by their unique winter garb).  But one of the major secondary characters, and sub plots, is around Marc/Pierre's dog, Cleo, a big loveable old Saint Bernard.

Cleo has been feeling depressed ever since Marc/Pierre's younger sibling came along. Cleo keeps getting scuttled outside and is lonely being away from her family so much. Eventually, because of shenanigans during the war, Cleo is forced to stay outside. Marc/Pierre builds her a dog house, but she stops eating and is just so sad. Marc/Pierre also stops taking her out with him to his wartime events.

So on the last day of winter break, the kids plan a big final battle at the castle, and Cleo breaks free of her restraints and finds her way into the mix of the battle... the tower to the castle collapses in the heat of war and ...well, it crushes Cleo, like, to death! Seriously, the kids playtime killed the dog. And then they do the admirable thing and bury it in their secret storage spot in the abandoned shed they play in. Like, what are Marc/Pierre's parents going to say (well, Marc/Pierre's dad, always off screen, probably doesn't care that much, he's the one who wanted it out of the house).

But yeah, brutal and even as an almost 50-year-old man, traumatic!  I noticed Crave had a newer version of "The Dog Who Stopped The War", a modern 2015 animated remake that uses the style of massive heads on wee bodies that seems to dominate cartoons these days. It's a decent overall production, but I didn't watch the whole thing, I scrubbed through to the end just to see if they would chicken out or not...and to my surprise they did not. It's clear they changed the nature of Luc's character in this remake, losing some of the subtler touches of the original, but still pretty brave.

I liked this movie tremendously, and I'm going to be diving heavily into "Tales For All" in 2026.

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I'm not sure what the first holiday romance parody was (probably a Saturday Night Live sketch or something) but by 2018, the year after I really started watching Hallmarkies in earnest, the "ironic watch" and drinking games had already started to crop up. It wouldn't be long after that actual movies were being made making fun of the formulae and tropes of Hallmarkies.

I've seen many of these, including A Christmas Movie Christmas, A Clüsterfünke Christmas, The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, A Hollywood Christmas, and Christmas With The Campbells (I watched the first half hour of The Christmas Classic starring Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen and Amy Smart - three very recognizable faces from TV and movies - thinking it would be a gentle parody like Christmas with the Campbells, and it's not...it's just a very bad Hallmarkie probably directed by a guy whose dad had money to burn...but I digress). I had not even heard of Cup of Cheer.

It popped up in Tubi's list of recommended viewing after watching AD/BC (see above), and the preview that started autoplaying showed a scene where the film's heroine arrives in her childhood perfect small town, to be greeted by a friendly santa-like hobo who offers her cookies from his pocket, only for her to run into her future love interest who is carrying what can only be described as a vat of hot chocolate which he then spills on her.

It's not really that funny a sequence, but I'm always curious about Hallmarkie spoofs and parodies.  This one coming from 2020 was an early adopter, a beautiful animated "Indiecan Entertainment Inc." title card declares this is very much a Canadian production which usually would make me say "uh oh" but the sheer quality of the title card had me feeling ...pride? Weird.

Cup of Cheer is a parody and a spoof, leaning hard into the maximum jokes per minute (jpm) with very little in the way of ground rules. Unlike Clüsterfünke or Christmas Movie Christmas which still tried to retain the chaste and puritanical nature of olde style Hallmarkies, this falls somewhere in between the great Zucker-Abrams-Zucker style of parody and the horrible "Not Another X Movie" non-series.  The jokes are a mix of leaning hard into Hallmarkie tropes and pushing them even further, some dexterous wordplay, some real bawdy humour, surprise cursing, and even a (*ahem*) splash of gross-out humour. 

The jpm is so high in this thing, and, frankly, the hit rate is at best 40%, which is not necessarily a passing grade, but when you're still getting a good laugh or chuckle 40% of the time, that's not actually too bad. When it comes to comedy, so much of it has to do with performance, and the relatively novice cast here are all surprisingly adept. The average Canadian Hallmarkie often only has one strong lead (occasionally two) the the supporting players a steep step down and the bit players even further down the quality slope. Here, I really couldn't find fault with any of the players throughout. 

Storm Steenson plays Mary, the big city girl who gets assigned to cover a big cover story for the big city magazine from the big city, but her assignment is in the perfect small town of Snowy Heights(ville Fallstown) which just happens to be the perfect small town she grew up in and left for the big city. Oh and she has to file the story by Christmas Eve. There she meets cute with Chris Mass (Alexander Oliver) in the aforementioned hot chocolate collision. Turns out he runs a failing hot chocolate shoppe with his brother Keith (Liam Marshall) which was bequeathed to him from his Grandmother. It's failing primarily because Chris doesn't feel right about charging his customers.  And then the big citiot with sever gastrointestinal troubles and a toxic personality, Mai Ex (Shawn Vincent), who happens to be Mary's ex, arrives and announces that he's opening a big hot chocolate chain cafe in the very spot Chris' hot chocolate shop is in... on Christmas, unless Chris can raise enough money to save the shop... but he's not willing to take charity or even work for it.

The movie is so joke dense and so joke focussed that the story and the characters get lost. I never felt too invested in the characters or their journeys and their relationships with one another were really hard to really grasp hold of. I think Chris being such a negative Nancy and such an utterly terrible businessman deserving to fail was probably a bad choice. Oliver performs him well enough that he's still somewhat likeable, but it's hard to see what Mary might be falling for (the fact that the falling in love is sort of perfunctory is probably just another joke, it's just a barrier to liking these characters though).

Brother Keith works part-time at the mall as an elf, it's set up and reiterated a couple of times before the big payoff is finding out that Keith is actually a stripper, which is news to Chris who needs his brother's advice while he's working. This results in some hilarious wordplay and really entertaining physical comedy from Marshall and Oliver as one brother is forced to lap dance the other brother in order to have their conversation. If you're looking for a gentle spoof in the same tone as an actual Hallmarkie, this isn't it, but it leans much more towards playful than mean spirited.

It's a cartoon world so the film's best running joke, about Chris and Keith's niece who gets kidnapped and nobody notices, comes across as toothless fun rather than dangerous or dark.

I had a good time with Cup of Cheer, and I didn't even mention the side-plot of Authuh (Jacob Hogan) the time-traveling prince from centuries past who very much takes a romantic shining to Chris but is primarily focused on trying to find a way back to his own time. As noted, it's definitely not perfect and it's throwing so much at the wall to see what sticks, it could prove as exhausting (or off-putting) to some as it is entertaining to others.

Also, so much actual Canadian snow for the win!

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Make or Break Holiday

The Draw: I find Hunter King sooo cute, but she's been almost only in terrible Hallmarkies and after last year's godawful football/KC Chiefs-themed Holiday Touchdown I was ready to swear off her for good. But then I found out that this season's Finding Mr. Christmas winner Craig was going to have a part in A Make or Break Holiday that made it mandatory follow-up viewing, for better or worse.

HERstory: Liv (King) and Daniel (Evan Roderick) meet at a Christmas Party held by a mutual friend (never to be seen again). They start talking about cookies and never stop talking about cookies (too much cookie talk to the point of annoyance). 

Montage for the next year showing photos of their first date and other events (who took those photos!?!). By the next Christmas they have bought a house together (seriously how the ffff* did they afford *that* house...their professions are never indicated). But all is not as perfect as the perfectly made up house of Christmas. To put it bluntly Liv has OCD and the need to appease while Daniel has ADHD and can't seem to get started on some tasks or finish other tasks (I wish this were a more literal OCD meets ADHD-coded relationship...the analogy is such Hallmarkie accidental). Daniel hasn't even gotten rid of his apartment in the city yet and they've had the house for 3 months (red flag, Liv, red flag!)  They get into a fight and the Ross-and-Rachael idea of "a break" comes up, and they're both too escalated to be rational, and they both agree to "the break" (of course Daniel still has that apartment so he's already ready for "a break" I'm sure). 

They try to call off their Christmas festivities with their respective families but Liv's afraid of disappointing her type-A parents and Daniel is guilt-tripped by his mom before he can even say anything. So they agree to put up a charade for the holidays. The whole family comes, their hotels are overbooked, so they're all staying in the house, including Daniel's grandma and sister, Kim, and Liv's parents and brother, Reid (Craig Mr. Christmas).  

Immediately Kim sniffs out that there's trouble in paradise, while Liv confesses to Reid who wants to hear none of it because he's bad at secrets. And then it's all shenanigans as the family all needles and annoy one another while Kim and Reid conspire, poorly to reunite the lovers who have clearly just made a mistake.

Oh and Daniel keeps trying to hide a gift box that is so obviously a box-within-a-box-within-a-box engagement ring. It's a literal Chechov's Box-Within-A-Box-Within-A-Box Engagement Ring...it's only a matter of when, not if it will go off. And when it does, well, that's the third-act complication I guess (even though this film starts with the complication).

The Formulae: The film opens with a Christmas baking montage as Liv makes a Nutella roll (we only see "Nutella" prominently displayed, like, a million times in that first 120 seconds. There are ugly Christmas sweaters. The house is decorated to the nines with no less than 3 Christmas trees, one of which is the catalyst to Liv and Daniel's arguement. There's a hot chocolate toast, and festive games leading to conflict (there's a bullshit Christmas obstacle course that no family ever has set up every year). Grams watches a Christmas baking show (intently). There's no less than three trips to the Christmas market. There's an outdoor christmas dinner(!?) which is interrupted by everyone getting up to dance (!?) before getting kicked out because they start taking the microphone and making speeches and Reid grabs the snow-maker-blower thing and cranks it to 10. Oh yeah, and so much goddamn cookie talk.

Unformulae: What no Christmas/Eve deadline? No caroling? No ice skating? No perfect small town? I mean they hit so many other tropes, can't fault them for the ones they missed. Oh and no red dress, just fetching silk blouses.

True Calling? "Make or break" is defined as "be the factor which decides whether (something) will succeed or fail" so yes, I guess this is a true calling. This Christmas will be the deciding factor in whether Liv and Daniel succeed or fail.

The Rewind: When Liv and Daniel split off to call their parents and tell them Christmas is off, the edit goes into a series of split screens cutting between the couple and their families in a surprisingly complicated fashion. It gets recalled later in the film as well. It's a surprising DiPalma-esque touch I really, really wasn't expecting and it's very well executed.

The Regulars: Hunter King is part of Hallmark's next wave of superstars, while Evan Roderick seems to be a desperate "we need a new, younger Andrew Walker-type". He acquits himself just fine (he's also been in a fair share of Hallmark stuff...as well as an Arrow veteran). Craig (Geoghan apparently is his last name) was obviously on Finding Mr. Christmas, and I have to say this role of the sort of put-upon younger brother who is a grown-up but still a bit immature was pretty much the perfect starter role for him. He was surprisingly enjoyable. I still can't imagine him as leading man, but he can work his way up to it I think (now). Sister Kim is played by Brittney Wilson was pretty great in this role as the pushy sister character (I was worried they were going to try and pair Maya off with Reid, but thankfully that didn't happen) and used to be in a lot more of these pre-pandemic. Daniel's flighty mom Maya is played by Jennifer Juniper-Angeli who has been in XMas Hallmarkies the past two seasons. Liv's dad is played by Days of Our Lives legend Roark Critchlow (see also this year's The Christmas Cup)...he seems to have been more of a Lifetime murder movie staple than holiday romance guy. Liv's mom, played by Marlee Walchuk is a regular on Hallmark's Chicken Sisters but otherwise doesn't have much history in Hallmarkies. And Grams, played by Linda Darlow has a few under her belt, like Hanukkah on Rye from 2022.

Oh and Jonathan Bennett makes a cameo as the restaurateur angry at Reid for grabbing the snow-maker-blower thing. He says "how'd you get that" to which Reid says "I won a contest". Zing!

How does it Hallmark? It's enjoyable enough and certainly watchable. The complication of Daniel and Liv being broken up seems almost completely unnecessary when the plot simply could have been trying to navigate dealing with each other's parents...or it could have been more poignant had they leaned into each character's neuro-atypical nature. A sharper comedic mind could have really made this just a full on "Meet The Parents"-style comedy but instead it just sits as a pretty average Hallmark movie.

How does it movie? Nope.

How Does It Snow? Rolls upon rolls of cotton batting topped off with shaved ice or soap flakes.

Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar: Day 22 - An Alpine Holiday

2025, Lucie Guest (Jingle Bell Run) -- download

Funny, it was original called An Alpine Christmas. I wonder if, after the fact, they decided to tie it to Norwegian Holiday and strip out most of the Xmas stuff... this one is definitely more "a movie that takes place around Xmas" than an Xmas movie.

Hallmarkie Fatigue is settling in and I realize I might just have to (gasp!) actually prepare for this come next year -- as in, actually research and only watch movies that scratch the itch, instead of just downloading / clicking a bunch of random ones that check some boxes. But what am I searching for? Well, either completely bonkers weird, or adherence to a particular sub-sub-genre of the Hallmarkie that checks all the PST Xmas boxes on my Bingo card. I know I said I would relax my demands on the movies and just allow them to be but... as the fatigue is settling in, I am unable.

This was not an Xmas movie. 

The Draw: Partially to give another go at "Hallmarkie in ______", as this one is set and actually shot in the French Alps... well, for the key outdoor shots where a mountain or quite Alp village was required. The rest of the interior stuff was done in Sofia, Bulgaria. But but, that was the draw.

HERstory: This is not primarily an example of the "Main Travels to PST" trope, and the romance is actually the secondary element to the movie. It is more about the reacquainting of two somewhat estranged sisters: Faith (Ashley Williams, How I Met Your Mother) and Kelly (Lacy J Mailey, Supernatural). They are drawn together near Xmas because their grandmother, who raised them, recently passed away. Faith is a free spirit, never settling down, who wants Kelly to join her in Florida for the holiday season, while Kelly is a stayed-at-home type, still in the apartment they were raised in. 

Early in the tense interactions they are interrupted by a call from a lawyer -- they are beckoned to a meeting where they find a request from their grandmother --- travel together to Mont Blanc in the French Alps, to follow the trail grandmother and her fiancé took ages ago. Its all planned and paid for, and a guide will be waiting for them when the plane leaves. They have to do before Xmas Eve.

Initially the differences between the two sisters dominates, as Faith is more than happy to run away to France at the drop of a hat, while Kelly has work work stuff. But, of course, at the last moment she recollects how much her grandmother's wishes meant to her and chases after the Uber.

In France they meet Frédéric (Julien Marlon Samani, Tiny Beautiful Things), the schmoozy self-confident guide who wastes no time hitting on Kelly. I should probably mention that there are some years between the sisters, and Kelly is the young-enough-for-romantic-entanglement sister while Faith has her already established romantic troubles -- she's been proposed to by a longtime boyfriend, but ran away instead of saying Yes. But nobody knows this yet.

Given that Xmas plays very little in this movie, I have no desire to count the beats / tropes. Let's just say the journey is fraught with sister trauma but slowly draws out the attraction between Kelly and Frédéric. The drama between the two sisters takes the front seat in the funicular ride.

Yawn.

I found it very weird to traversing a new romance while reminiscing about one that ended in a proposal. If anything, they should have jumped the shark and have Faith's BF show up on the mountain to pop her the question a second time. But no, it was more just about instilling a sense of adventure in Kelly so she would take a chance on love she just met.

In the end, the two sisters loudly air their dirty laundry prompting Frédéric a number of times, until it comes to a head and the trio makes it to the top of the mountain, to see the spot where their grandmother and grandfather began their married life together. It sets the tone, and once back down in the lovely village of Chamonix, Kelly tells Frédéric she'd love to take a chance, and Faith decides to tell her BF the Yes Word.

One year later, Faith is preggers and ... I guess Frédéric is living in NYC with Kelly? Oh, and its Xmas again, not that it mattered.

The Formulae: Xmas barely took part in this movie. But I guess the tropes exist outside of the Hallmarkie (a label I attached purely to Xmas Time Hallmark [and type] movies) so, there is "We Just Met But I Love You", there is "I Am Not Quite Sure I Want to Commit", there are Dead Parents, Frédéric was not pursuing the life he really wanted to pursue (becoming a musician), there was some Hot Chocolate to be had, but that was more related to being on the side of a ski resort mountain than anything. Are cozy fires in a snowbound shack common enough to be a trope?

Unformulae: Its more about sister re-bonding than about the romance. There is no real PST and it might start in NYC but its not really there.

True Calling? Once they changed the name to "holiday", yes.

The Rewind: No rewind, but a few pauses at the actual shots of the tourist spots sitting on the top of peaks around Mont Blanc -- they are truly incredible and give me butterflies just imagining how they were constructed. Also, a chuckle at the memory from a photographer's review of Hallmark movies, "YOU CAN'T TAKE A SELFIE WITH THAT CAMERA !" as Kelly takes tons of selfies with a high end digital SLR that does not have an appropriate lens. 

The Regulars: I was here for Ashley Williams, who is Royalty. Laci J Mailey is a staple Canadian actor but not in Hallmarkies. Samani hasn't done any, but he was in Holidate. 

How does it Hallmark? I am not sure I can properly judge the movie on being a Hallmark movie, as the sisterly drama may be a staple out there, but it is mos def not a good Hallmarkie as Xmas barely plays out at all.

How does it movie? No.

How Does It Snow? In town, it could be October, but when on the mountain side, it was proper PROPER snow, as in trudging in blowing white out conditions.

T&K's XMas Advent Calendar (2024) - Day 4: Our Little Secret

 2024, d. Stephen Herek (Critters, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) - Netflix

The Draw: I thought I might watch all the Netflix Christmas movies this year since there were only supposed to be five of them, but I heard (from the Deck the Hallmark podcast) that The Merry Gentlemen was such a stinker that I didn't bother. As I was trying to pick out a movie today, I decided I don't want to watch any of the Hallmarkies that I've heard about on the DTH pcast, because I think so much of the fun of Hallmarkies is really having no expectations for any of them. So knowing whether someone thinks one is good, bad, or just ok influences how I feel about the thing going into it (also knowing all the beats and where it goes unformulae is kind of a bummer... I need to just listen to the pcast after watching one).

HERstory: As Avery's dad (Henry Czerny) tells us over an animated intro, Avery (Lindsay Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) grew up next door to one another and were best friends and at the most ease with one another. Eventually they started dating an it looked to be a sure thing they were going to spend their entire lives together...but Avery's mom died, and Avery decided she would take a job offer in the UK, leaving after Christmas 2014. Logan drunkenly proposes to give her "a reason to stay" but it drives a wedge not only into their relationship, but their friendship, and they don't talk again.

10 years later (after a very, very weird opening credits sequence where Netflix decides what the most important moments of the past 10 years were, getting plugs in for Stranger Things and Squid Game) Avery is going to her boyfriend Cam's (Jon Rudnitsky) parent's place (upstate?) for an extended Christmas break where she's hoping to finally win over his overbearing, elitist mother, Erica (Kristin Chenoweth). At the same time Logan is going with his girlfriend Cassie (Katie Baker) to her parents place (upstate?) for an extended Christmas Vacation. Of course, it's the same family (and Erica loves Logan).

Upon encountering one another, Avery pretends not to know Logan and Logan plays along. It's kind of clear, almost immediately, that Logan is not over Avery, and probably never will be, and is basically willing to do anything for her...but not in a simpering way, but in a mindful, conscientious way. She doesn't see it, all she sees is the past she thinks she's left behind.

But the week doesn't go as planned and Avery and Logan are basically stuck spending more time together than with their partners. Various shenanigans ensue, such as Avery wearing Cam's younger brother's jacket and accidentally eating a whole bunch of weed gummies, only for them to kick in when they're at a church ceremony where Logan has gotten Avery the gig of reading the story of the Nativity as a means of helping her impress Erica. Hijinks at the pulpit ensue. Or later that night, Erica (naturally) has the munchies and mows down on a jar of cookies on the counter only to find out, the next morning, that they were for a cookie exchange Erica was hosting so Avery makes it look like Erica's beloved Yorkie has eaten them. Hijinks at the vet ensue. Or Cam's younger brother overhears Erica and Logan talking and blackmails them to keep their secret and...hijinks don't really ensue?

All the while Logan is trying to prepare a his first land development proposal in hopes of landing an opportunity that presented itself through Erica, and impress the boss who is never impressed. Avery is supposed to be helping him out, but doesn't really, much, beyond some encouragement, she's too busy with hijinks and trying to impress Erica.

Also, turns out Cam has his own best friend-turned-girlfriend who moved away and is now back and she's a doctor and tall and biracial and stunning and Avery is envious more than jealous? And Logan learns that they have hooked up. He could use this as ammo to drive a wedge in between Cam and Avery but instead warns her as a friend to be careful. She still tells him off.  There's other twists and secrets that come into play mid-way through the third act, which then all explode in one grand revelation party where it turns out everyone is either hooking up or breaking up.

Of course, Avery does a good deed (finally) for Logan and gets Erica to encourage her neighbour to read Logan's pitch, and he gets the big job...and Avery buys her dad's home off him (oh yeah, there was a whole thing about that throughout the film). At her housewarming party, Logan confesses he still loves her and she robotically responds in kind.

A year later, looks like they're happy. 

The Formulae/Unformulaw: There's the picking out a Christmas tree scene, but this is an actual Christmas tree farm. Actual location shoot! Netflix money baby!

There's a sort of that "bit of a big city girl goes back to her small town home, runs into an old boyfriend and finds a reason to stay"... but it's less about the boy, more about the physical home, weirdly enough. 

There's the tried and true formula of two exes meeting in an unusual circumstance and learning through those tribulations that they are still in love/meant to be together... but not here. Logan is still in love with Avery, but tamps it down giving her a shot at happiness with Cam, and Avery, she clearly finds comfort in connecting with Cam, but there's no sense of romance coming from her whatsoever. She's kind of self-involved and has her own agenda.

True Calling? There is a secret, and it's mostly kept between those two. Confirmed.

The Rewind: The opening sequence, after Logan's epic fail of a proposal, there's, like, this one guy in the background with the best "what the fuck was that" screw face look.

The Regulars: Ian Harding starred in 2022 Hallmarkie Ghosts of Christmas Always. Lohan, of course, starred in 2022's Netflix holiday romance Falling for Christmas (for some reason I thought Toasty had watched that one, but nope). Chenoweth was in the perennial Kent household favourite Holidate, as well as Hallmark's A Christmas Love Story. 

This film also has small parts for non Hallmarkie notables like Czerny, Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell, and Judy Reyes.

How does it Hallmark? It's a much better looking production than a Hallmark movie, because it has Netflix budget behind it. It also sounds better, with better score and music. But it's not better than a great number of Hallmarkies, because Hallmarkies are about romance, even if the romance is super obtuse and the scenario is dumb as a pail of ashes, it's still about getting two people together over the course of a movie. This movie seems to be fighting that very premise, even though that is soooo obviously the premise and where it is heading.  It's kind of maddening, to the point that we never really feel any chemistry between Lohan and Harding. They seem like good pals. There's no heat. At all.

How does it movie? Not great, Bob. Our Little Secret never commits to being a comedy. It's like it thought about it but decided it didn't want to go that route. It has moments that are comedic (almost by accident) and it has setups that seem like their primed for comedy, but the comedy never arrives. And it's not like Lohan or Harding or Chenoweth are overreaching and failing to be funny, but instead they're leaning back and not trying at all, just letting the premise lead...and they can't carry the comedy on their own.  I did have a couple little laughs, especially as everything explodes in grand fashion, but in the right performers' hands, this could have bin a big, broad, probably really dumb comedy, instead it's a pretty staid non-rom-non-com.

As well, I felt the film never properly established its dynamics. We're told, not shown, how great of friends Avery and Logan are to start with, but we never actually see it. It's already coming apart by the time we step in. It would have been nice for a real charming moment of the two of them being comfortable and in love.  Similarly, we never really see Avery and Cam, or Logan and Cassie together in any meaningful capacity that tells us they're in real serious relationships that are worth fighting for or can survive the reunion of two lovers who haven't seen each other in ten years (and possibly have unresolved issues to work through...though the movie doesn't ever spotlight that process of working it through).

How Does It Snow? A little snow, here and there. It looks like it's maybe November somewhere... it's not Wintery, but winter is coming.

KWIF: Past Lives (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film

This week:
Past Lives (2023, d. Celine Song - AmazonPrime)
Nimona (2023, d. Troy Quane, Nick Bruno - Netflix)
Plus One (2019, d. Andrew Rhymer, Jeff Chan - Netflix) 

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Between watching films like Anatomy of a Fall and Maestro, the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith series on AmazonPrime, and hearing the neighbours yelling at each other through the walls nearly every day, for, oh, the past four years, I feel like I've gotten more than my fill of intense, unhappy relationships.  It's bad for the mindset to have too much of that in one's life, even peripherally.

Celine Song's Past Lives is kind of a bittersweet tonic to such sequences of relationship animosity. It's an ode to individualism as well as to love. It's an incredibly mature, thoughtful look at relationships and shows people who are capable of self-awareness and managing their emotions.

Na Young and Hae Sung grew up together in Seoul. By the time they were twelve they were intensely competitive with one another in school, but also incredibly attached. Just as they're starting to explore feelings for each other, Na Young is ripped away as her family emigrates to Canada. No word of a lie, but their last moment with each other is one of the most beautifully composed visual metaphors in cinema, thanks to a perfectly scouted location.

Twelve years later, Na Young, now Nora (Greta Lee), is an aspiring playwright, while Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) has wrapped up mandatory military service and looks to the next phase of his life. But he's not forgotten a piece of his past, and he reaches out through a series of connections on Facebook to find Nora, who, curious herself, reaches out in return. Their connection is as immediate as if they had never left it, only the attraction is much more adult and the emotions much more understood. Alas, a half a world away, and half a day's difference makes a relationship hard to sustain... and what's more, Nora is finding it distracting from her goals, from what she wants to achieve. With no hope of Hae Sung coming to New York and no time for her to make a trip to Soeul, she presses "pause" on whatever is happening between them. And they both go about their lives.  

I think one of the more difficult things in film and television storytelling is making video calling interesting to watch, but Song here really gets so much out of how her actors behave towards the camera (and just off camera). There's so much to be said about what we see on the screen within a screen, but then there's what we see in the scene that the characters don't see of each other...physicality, gestures... and then there's the missed connections, which, somehow, are just heartbreaking.

Another 12 years pass. Nora is married to another writer,  Arthur (John Magaro), and they have, what I think can be said is a very practical partnership. When Hae Sung, recently reconnecting with Nora, comes to New York to visit, there is clearly a rekindling happening between them, a palpable attraction that hasn't gone away in the 24 years since they were last able to touch each other. What results is a Before Sunrise-esque level of engagement, talking candidly about what life has been like, and what life could have been like in different circumstances. Arthur is not ignorant of the connection they share, he's not oblivious to the cliches of storytelling where he's the odd-man-out, but at the same time, there's a reality that all three players are fully aware up. No one is upending their lives just for some idea of "love".

The way the characters engage with each other, with openness and honesty that is both given and received, is absolutely refreshing. There's no real drama in Past Lives, there's no romantic cliches of "true love conquers all", there's just a heavy concrete slab of reality at the foundation of this movie, and in Nora's character. She is a realist, and despite whatever emotions come with Hae Sung, she has so many more emotions tied elsewhere that would be uprooted to be with him.

Despite the almost wet blanket scenario and absence of high drama, it's a very romantic movie. It is a movie about love, and it's never a bad time to be in the presence of love.

But it's also a movie about what it means to feel complete, and love is only a piece of it. Why do people cheat on their partners or leave their family behind to run off with a new fling? It's often got nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with themselves...they're chasing external happiness. 

Hae Sung, for his part, can't let go of Nora because he's not found happiness with himself. He's still chasing a feeling he felt long ago in someone else, rather than trying to find that feeling inside.  

--This is the last film of the Best Picture Oscar Nominees that I had yet to see, and this is the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, I've seen all Nominees prior to the ceremony. Last week I ranked the nominees in my preferential order (not who I think will win, just my preference), and I think Past Lives would fall into that middle pack with The Holdovers, Oppenheimer, and American Fiction, where any of these four films could swap places in the 3-6 slot. But I still like Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things well above them all.--

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I like the idea of the Annupurna/Netflix feature Nimona, based on the graphic novel series by ND Stevenson, much more that I think I enjoyed Nimona.

The film starts with a bit of an overcomplicated history lesson voiceover describing how the mystical land and society was built around protecting itself from monster then jumps a thousand years in the future to find a techno-medi-evil terrain where a young street kid was taken in by the queen to be educated as part of the land's fabled knighthood, a position usually reserved for the elite families of the city. 

Ballister Boldheart is about to be knighted, bucking tradition, but during the ceremony he is framed for murdering the queen and goes on the run. He is found by Nimona, an energetic changeling who looks only for companionship from a fellow outcast. The pair have to battle both class structures and intolerance to uncover the truth of the Queen's death, as well as, perhaps, change some minds about changelings being the monsters this society has been so afraid of for generations.

Without really any fanfare, Nimona is a young adult fantasy-adventure that features queer characters as its leads.  Ballister was in a romantic relationship with Ambrosius Goldenloin, the champion knight, until Ambrosius cut his arm off when he thought Ballister murdered the Queen.  Nimona is trans-coded, and while the character is pronouned "she" throughout, Nimona kind of bucks the idea of even being gendered, or classified as any sort of form.  

I love that aspect of the film, that it so effortlessly includes these characters without ever awkwardly making a point about it, but at the same time, it's the entire subtext of the movie if you're looking for it. Unfortunately the setting of the film did absolutely nothing for me. The societal structure, the visual design, the meta-cross of fantasy and techno-future...I just didn't find it appealing. 

But the final act turned into a real emotional rollercoaster and really got me in the gut and got the tears flowing. The climax raises the stakes to a very surprising and intense level, and its resolution is a thing of absolute beauty.  I may not have been enthralled by the first two acts leading up to it, but it pays off really nicely. Riz Ahmed as Ballister and Chloe Grace Moretz both deliver really great voice performances as well. It's not a better film than Across the Spider-Verse in this year's Best Animate Picture Oscar race, not The Boy and the Heron, but it shouldn't be dismissed as so many Netflix originals often do.

Toasty's take...we agree.

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After finishing the aforementioned Mr. & Mrs. Smith series starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, this indie romcom starring Erskin and The Boys Jack Quaid popped up prominently on Netflix. I had never heard of the movie, so, as I do, I promptly took a gander at Letterboxd to see how the cinemaphiles had rated it, and they liked it, singling out Erskine as the film's key draw.

I had seen Erskine around over the years, including the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but she wasn't that prominently featured (I haven't yet watched her comedy series Pen15). So Mr. & Mrs. Smith is my first big exposure, and wow...what an impact.  I'll get to that review later this coming week.  But with the Letterboxd recommendation of more wonderful Erskine business, Plus One became a must-watch.

Erskine plays Alice, who gets into an arrangement with her buddy, Ben (Quaid) to be each other's dates to the many weddings each has to attend that summer.  They're just friends to start,  she even acts as his wingman for a time, and there's not an ounce of romantic chemistry between them at first, but the friend chemistry is wholly palpable. But you can't spend that amount of time with one another in fancy dress, loaded with alcohol, surrounding by sweeping sentiments of love, and not, perhaps, get swept up in it.

But how do they know it's real?  I came to the movie for Erskine, but Quaid is a very likeable presence and the ostensible lead of the film (it really does focus more on Ben's life and POV than Alice's). Where Alice has recently gone through a break-up at the start of the film, Ben seems kind of terminally alone. He's the last of his friends who is single by the time the summer wedding season gets into full swing, and when he looks at his twice-divorced father (Ed Begley Jr.) who just proposed to a woman half his age, Ben thinks he understands why.  So when he gets together with Alice, and, more surprisingly Alice is all-in on the relationship, it's Ben who starts to get shaken by what they have.

In a way, Plus One follows a pretty similar formula to beloved Kent household favourite Holidate,  so there was something comfortable about the structure, though the timeframe of the relationship is sort of compressed over a few summer months as opposed to a whole year. Still, changing venues, different people surrounding the characters, and the device of leading each wedding "chapter" off with the best man or bridesmaid speech (and highlighting all the different tropes of said speeches) was terrific. 

Erskine is the standout here. She's a bundle of aggressive energy, with a sincerity and vulnerability that temper the aggressiveness into charming. As she'd proven in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, she's a versatile and gifted actress, comedic or otherwise, and I expect we'll be seeing an increasing amount of her over the next couple of year. Quaid has more of his mom Meg Ryan's charm than his dad's sort of smarm, which makes him kind of perfect for a romcom lead. He's not the stereotype of the romcom lead, but he is a guy you definitely root for to get his shit together.  It's charming.

T&K's XMas (2023) Advent Calendar: Day 4 - EXmas

2023, d. Jonah Feingold -- AmazonPrime(/Freevee?)

The Draw: 

It's Robbie Amell and Leighton Meester. The stars of classic aughts sci-fi The Tomorrow People and Surface in one movie? That was enough for me to give it an ogle. 

THEIRstory: 
Ali dumped her fiancee Graham six months ago. Having lost her parents young, she grew pretty attached to his family and, at Christmas, really misses them. So when Graham tells his parents he's got to work (a Christmas deadline to finish the new video game update) they call Ali up and invite her to Christmas in his place... not telling Graham, of course.  As one might expect, Graham hastily decides to return home two days before Christmas and definitely doesn't receive the warm welcome he thought he would, quickly learning the woman who broke his heart now has dibs on his childhood bedroom with his posters of Pamela Anderson and Wolverine.

Graham learns that Ali has been talking with his sister regularly since they broke up, and his younger brother has been getting help with his college math courses from her.  Graham definitely has as sense of his place in the family hierarchy, and it's just below the Baby Jesus in the manger scene at the front of the house. (There's a whole subplot about the baby Jesus keeps being stolen from the manger, and they have to keep replacing it that doesn't really have anything to do with anything)

Graham pulls Ali aside and they bicker, with each swearing to have the other kicked out the house before Christmas day. This involves Ali setting Graham up to flood the toilet, Graham setting Ali up to disappoint his parents on game night, and Graham literally getting Ali's goat by sticking feed in her pockets and letting the goat loose at his dad's used car lot Christmas party.  

Also at the party Graham's high school rival Brady starts hitting on Ali, while Graham's getting picked up by a random hottie. Brady is the #1 sales guy at Graham's dad's lot, and is a clear point of Brady's inferiority complex with the family. They all wind up at a bar together (Graham's sister and brother in tow) and it's awkward as the exes get pretty snippy. Ali's flirting with Brady is hilariously awful (she boops him on the nose at one point... when we see Ali when she's out of her element, we really get why she gets along with Graham's parents so much, they're all kind of dorks).  

On Christmas Eve Ali's doing all the Christmas baking and Graham learns that she's now a full-time baker, having quit accounting (she's such an accountant). Graham brings up the bake-truck that he was supposed to find for her when they were together, and it's clearly a touchy topic that she wants to avoid. Christmas eve dinner winds up with Brady and party hottie in attendance, and turns out Ali made the cookies with THC butter, getting everyone stoned, and Graham's sure his straight-laced mother will be outraged, but she's into it.  After accidentally spilling that his sister and her girlfriend split up, Graham leaves dinner with the hottie to a club, only to learn that hottie want him to join her and her male roommate in a three-way... which, no judgements, just isn't for him.  Meanwhile, Brady takes Ali "someplace special" which is the car lot, and he tries to sell her a car.

Graham gets home drunk and by default goes to his room instead of the couch and wakes Ali up. They bicker, argue, make out, have sex and sleep . Waking up together on Christmas day they kind of get a real conversation in, only to be interrupted by Graham's mom who gives some nice advice about partnerships. They go to church where they try to inappropriately continue the conversation much to the disgust of other parishioners. They open presents and Brady stops by, and they all go play hockey (which Brady beat Graham out as team captain in high school). But during play, dad has a heart attack. Graham saves his life with CPR.  He realizes that he's wasted so much time trying to work and build a life for himself and Ali (that she didn't actually ask for) that he's missed out on so much family, that clearly Ali has made time for. He apologizes (quits his job when his boss calls), and the two come to amicable terms. Ali agrees to leave and Graham wishes her to find only the best guy in her life.

The next morning, Dad is home, and Ali departs for the airport. Playing a board game, Graham realizes he can't let her go and there's some "race to the airport" shenanigans that never gets the family out of the driveway. Ali has returned on her own and the couple are reunited.  A postscript has them engaged again and living in LA and hosting Christmas. Graham is working freelance, and returns to surprise Ali with that food truck. There's a 2-years later post-postscript that is funny, but far-fetched.

The Formulae:

This isn't a Hallmarkie, so it doesn't exactly fit the formula, except... it's almost the same story as Hallmark's fun An Unexpected Christmas from 2021.

Unformulae: 
Sex, drugs, production values, no "local hires" playing tertiary characters, good comedy editing and performances.  Even the "Christmas deadline" that Graham has is pretty much a non-story.

True Calling? 
I honestly can't believe there hasn't been a movie called "EXmas" before [correction: there was "Merry Ex-mas" in 2014 with Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson, and two different "Merry Ex-Mas" films since]. I can't believe Hallmark just left that title sitting on the table and went with "An Unexpected Christmas" instead. Foolish.

The Rewind: 
Very early in the film, after Graham gets exhausted with talking with his parents and basically hangs up on them, the TV starts playing an ad for a drug (so it's a parody of usual drug commercials in the US where they have to be all cagey and vague about what it's for), and Graham's screaming at the TV (the ad read saying "Tired? Stressed? Single?"): "What is this ad for? Who is this ad for? Who made this!?" and I had to rewind twice to get the name of the drug.

It's called "Alileftamane"...and it's only now that I write it down I even get the actual joke of it being close to "Ali left me" (or "Ali left a man"?). Amell's line reading is hilarious on its own, but I like it even more with the silly, relevant drug name.

The Regulars: 
Hottie Donna Benedicto (her character's name is "Jess" apparently) has been in a few non-Hallmark non-holiday Hallmarkies, and even one holiday actual Hallmark produciton. I know here from a recurring role as a DEO agent on Supergirl.

Leighton Meester's haircut is "the Danica McKellar", so that counts as a regular too.

No other Hallmarkie regulars, but I love this cast. While the script is only marginally punched up from a regular Hallmark movie, the cast delivers in a way that your typical Hallmark cast cannot, if for lack of talent, experience, or time and budget to do enough takes to get it right.

Amell is really, really great, hitting every comedic beat just right and even creating a few of his own. Meester delivers a subtle, goofy performance that your typical Hallmark actress would send into over-the-top, try-too-hard quirk.
Mom is played by Canadian comedy mainstay Kathryn Greenwood and dad is played by Michael Hitchcock, best known as one of Christopher Guest's repertory players, so there's a lot of comedy history and character acting under their belts.  
I think my favourite, though, is Veronica Slowikowska as Mindy, Graham's sister. She doesn't have a huge amount to do in this film but she makes her presence known in every scene she's in. She's like Carrie Coon in Gone Girl (the gold standard of sister side-characters in film) or Maria Bakalova in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm... just stealing focus (in a good way) every time she's on screen. She doesn't have a huge resume, and I've only seen her before on What We Do In The Shadows in a recurring role, but were this film not basically buried on Amazon she should really break out.

How does it Hallmark? 
I really did quite enjoy Hallmark's An Unexpected Christmas but that was still a Hallmark movie, with all the Hallmark-like things that ultimately drag it down to a Hallmark level. This is a movie, with real production values, good looking camera work, well timed editing, good lighting, music that doesn't sound like one guy trapped in a soundbooth with a synth keyboard for 4 hours...and on and on. In other words, it's got some money in it.

How does it movie? 
As a movie, this is oddly a level above direct-to-video, but a level below theatrical release. It's obviously a direct-to-streaming film and that seems about right. It's charming, with a very likeable cast, a lot of laughs, but I think what drops it down from being great is how forced some of the comedic scenarios seem...like the toilet flood or the ice fishing hut.  Even the stolen baby Jesus subplot is kind of go nowhere (in a Hallmark film it would be mercifully welcome irreverence...in a proper studio comedy it needs to be something a little more).  

There's "elevated horror" can we coin the term "elevated Hallmark"?

Strangest thing about this is it's a product of "Buzzfeed Studios".

I don't think this will be one I want to watch all the time (it's no Holidate, but then, nothing is), but if it's on, I wouldn't turn it off.

How Does It Snow? 
I presume this was shot in Vancouver, and it looks to be early spring or so. The snow is fake and some kind of batting or whatever, but the good stuff.  They dirty up the batting to make it look like it's snow that's melted and been around a while, and they don't hold back on the spread.  They got a good batting budget.

It does not look like Christmas in Minnesota out there (nobody is ever dressed for Minnesota winter), though. Christmas in Seattle maybe.  All the greenery we see, though, is not summertime foliage, it's evergreens. The other trees and things (if we see any) are bare or brown.  The ground is always wet looking, like the snow has been melting, which, again, gives this a very northern west-coast vibe (if not a beginning of March vibe).

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Interceptor

2022, Matthew Reilly (debut) -- Netflix

"First-time director Matthew Reilly admits he never anticipated his feature film debut 'Interceptor' to do as well as it has since its release on Netflix earlier this month."

That's because, its just a cut above an Asylum movie. Reilly, more known for being an Australian writer of middling (my guess based on the plot descriptions of a few; but who are you to talk, considering you like the Reacher series) thriller fiction, helms his first feature film bank-rolled by Chris Hemsworth and starring Hemsworth's wife, Elsa Pataky. The movie answers the question of whether an Asylum movie could possibly be decent if it had a budget -- the answer is a resounding, "No."

Capt JJ Collins (Pataky, Thor: Love and Thunder) is sent back to work on Interceptor platform number-number-letter-number, one of two west coast military installations tasked with shooting down ICBMs that come from the west side of the world, i.e. Russia (or N Korea?) !! She has been sent back there, in disgrace, for bringing about the downfall of a general who grabbed her ass and then had the assault report buried, because.... well, because military men can. At the same  time she is arriving, the other interceptor base in Alaska is attacked by unknown forces, and destroyed.

Of course, the Bad Guys are already embedded inside the platform, begging you to wonder why a critical military base would have outside cleaning staff, instead of just getting the grunts to clean the toilets. No matter, Bad Guys kill everyone on board except for Collins and her immediate co-workers, who are holed  up inside the operations centre. The Bad Guys have to get in there, destroy the equipment, so they can fire a bunch of ICBMs at the US, killing lots and lots and lots of people, because America Sux.

So, this is your typical Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris action movie plot that would probably be accused of being woke, by its core demographic, because it begins with a woman reporting sexual assault. The cast is minimal, almost nil, really with just enough henchfolk for Collins to kill. The Head Bad Guy (Luke Bracey, Holidate) is a rich douche doing this, initially because he claims the US Sux and Has to End, but we learn its all for the money. That said, I am pretty sure destroying the US in a nuclear holocaust would destabilize much of the world's economy. But no matter, this movie is not strong on the logic. 

For example, the control centre is protected by two massive steel doors that the Bad Guys will take ages to cut through. BUT there are two hatches into the control centre, one below (which opens into... air, and sea below) and one on top. At any point anyone could have shot off the lock and crawled in. Also, the whole point of the Bad Guys taking the control centre was so they could pour sulphuric acid all over the control system, disabling it from launching any interceptor missiles. BUT apparently all you have to do is plug a gaming laptop into the right port and it will do all the work the control centre was doing. And don't ask me about the guy lying in a puddle of sulphuric acid like it was green coloured goo. Like many of these movies, they really don't care about continuity or logic or the intelligence of their audience.

So , yeah,THIS was the kind of movie that surprised everyone for reaching Number 1 in so many countries. And yeah, it surprised me as well.

10 for 10(ish): So This Is Christmas Leftovers

[10 for 10... that's 10 movie-like things which we try to give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]

In this edition: Christmas things watched in December

1. Saying Yes to Christmas - 2021, d. Graeme Campbell - CityTV/Lifetime
2. Christmas By Chance - 2020, d. Andrew Cymek - Superchannel Heart & Home/Lifetime
3. Loving Christmas - 2021, d. Michelle Ouellet - Superchannel Heart & Home
4. A Very Murray Christmas - 2015, d. Sophia Coppola - Netflix
5. A Muppet Family Christmas - 1987, d. Peter Harris -  Youtube
6. Last Chance For Christmas - 2015, d. Gary Yates - Superchannel Heart & Home
7. Enchanted Christmas Cake - 2021, d. Robert Vaughn - Crave/Lifetime
8. The Christmas House 2: Deck Those Halls - 2021, d. Rich Newey - W/Hallmark
9. Under the Christmas Tree - 2021, d. Lisa Rose Snow - CTV Drama/Lifetime
10. 'Tis the Season to be Merry - 2021, d. Gary Yates - W/Hallmark 

Are you ready?
Good, 'cause I'm goin'

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[Preamble]

It's December 22 as I (start) writing this. I've watched 32 Christmas movies or specials in full, and countless false starts and final 10 minutes of others.  I listened to every episode of Deck The Hallmark so far this season (over 40 episodes, including their coverage of every Hallmark to date and just over a half-dozen each of Lifetime and Netflix movies).  I even helped program GAK's (not to be confused with GAC) Christmas episode of Exploding Head Movies (go listen) by sifting through nearly a thousand songs he sent my way.  I also read all of the "I'll Be Home For Christmas Movies" book by the Deck The Hallmark guys (co-written with my favourite movie reviewer in recent years Alonso Duralde) which covers nearly three years of their viewing of Hallmark movies from Christmases 2017 through 2019 (Toasty, I got a copy to stuff in your stocking this year too... ;P ) I'm exhausted by it all.  

I'm so ready for Christmas, and then ready for it to be over, and to start watching some good quality cinema again (thankfully we had Hawkeye, Ted Lasso, season 2 of Saved by the Bell, and rewatching Parks and Recreation to counterbalance all the questionable Christmas content).  Plans to get a Criterion Channel subscription for Christmas.

What I noticed this year -- well, since Toasty pointed it out -- was that by December I seemed to be all but avoiding Hallmark movies for the Advent Calendar unless it was something I was keenly looking forward to, like (the disappointing) Nine X of Christmas sequel, or the (pretty fun) Christmas House sequel. With the glut of watching in November, the podcast and the book, I really wanted to step back from Hallmark a little bit.  

This year's Hallmark crop seemed to be taking definite steps to get away from being too formulaic, too quick and careless.  But as I pointed out in previous years, the comfort of Hallmark is the formulae, and if they're going to abandon it, I'm not sure if it's as fun, particularly when it doesn't fit as well into our "A Toast to HallmarKent" formulae.  Sure, they might be better scripted, better acted, better directed movies, but cranking 40 of them out a year on a shoestring budget means they're just never going to be real quality movies. 

 As such there's kind of this middle-land that Hallmark is residing in now.  Hallmark is now free to do more, say more, try more.  But they also won't let go of the formulae completely.  They're casting multiculturally and sexually diverse, and presenting the holidays as a reflection of such.  They're letting the Great American Country (GAC) channel taking the puritan route, with the lily-white, chaste, sober, straight casting, and are definitely better for leaving that tired, dry-kissing whiteness behind for a niche channel to deliver.  But it was the ironic side of Hallmark that kind of made them worth watching, those sad efforts at inclusiveness, or the thrill of a kiss that wasn't just a pressing and holding of lips.  The lack of budget means there's still plenty of wtf things to point out, but the balancing of Christian middle-America "values" and the pressures of the sudden uptick of ironic viewers-turned-fans (like Toasty and myself) means they seem a little aimless in their content.   

When I watch Hallmark now, what I see is a network trying to make good movies, not making formulaic content.  In trying to make good movies on a scant budget, there's more and more bad movies, which are, like, hard-to-watch bad, not fun-to-watch bad.  But at the same time, I recognize that some of the movies released this year are actually good.  Even if they're still not cinema-quality, they can be very enjoyable, and at times impressive.  I think some of the crop this year are the best Hallmark has ever made.  I've also seen some good movies get dragged down by having to be beholden to the Hallmark formulae rather than exist on their own terms.  A couple of films really teeter on the romcom line, which Hallmark in the past never truly approached, but the comedy seems to have its edges sanded off by having to adhere to their established holiday romance tropes.

They need to figure out what it is they want to do.  Netflix takes formulaic stories, but gives them a bigger budget for better production values, and more time to shoot.  Lifetime seems to be doing the same thing they've always done, just more of it: their "big-star vehicles" that are so very much steeped in the Lifetime formulae (which is basically the Hallmark formulae only cheaper looking and kind of trashier somehow) as well as their acquisition of the off-brand made-in-Canada content.  

And there is so much made-in-Canada content.  CBC Gem has a bit of it, as does CityTV, CTV and AmazonPrime, but there's a whole new subchannel, Superchannel Heart and Home, which is loaded with these Canadian-produced pictures from over the years which vary wildly from bad to unwatchable with the occasional "that would have been ok if it had a Hallmark budget".

If you count all the players in this Holiday Romance genre, you're looking at about 100 new movies this season, which, when put against the past 5 years of these things being churned out, is a lot of repetitive content, much of it unwatchable.  These movies start to become noise and very little of it stands out in any meaningful way (the generic titles don't help at all), to the point that I have a half dozen to review here and I don't even remember what happened in some of them.  Of all the cheap holiday romances, the only one I want to watch every year is Nine Lives of Christmas, and maybe Crashing Through The Snow has joined it on the rewatch list.

I predict a recession in these within the next 2-3 years.  The polish is going to come off, the ironic joy will wane, and people like me who started watching for the wrong reason will realise that watching these all the freaking time for two months is kind of a waste of time.  If the many various players involved in these films want there to be any longevity to it, they need to seriously cut back, at least by half, next year.  Invest more per film, make less of them.  Try harder to be better.  

That said, let's tear into these:
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There were many ways that Saying Yes to Christmas could have been a standout, especially given the premise, but it only really succeeds in two: cultural representation and aesthetics.

The magical element forcing June to say "yes" to every Xmas event was more annoying than cute, and then abandoned halfway through only to become a running topic of discussion as if it wasn't anything at all...it took me out of the movie each time. It would have been much more intriguing for Rose to have lost the bet and force herself to say "yes" to things. Christmas magic rarely works for me in film unless absolutely steeped in it, or it's so subtle you almost forget it's even there. This is sort of middle-of-the-road, non-committal Xmas magic I just find stupid.

The food and drinks in this movie really looked amazing (and there was a lot of food and drinks). I loved the Japanese-American (/Japanese-Canadian) touches, not just in the food but throughout. Easily the best part, just wish these moments were in a better movie surrounding them.

Representation does matter, I wholeheartedly agree, but as a message for this film it was used like a bludgeon, not a scalpel. June is a associate editor at a big publisher who would like to publish more representative children's books but her boss always pushes back. June is constantly social media posting "representation matters" and it's pretty heavyhanded.

The main plot for June is she's coaxed by her boss to befriend newly freelance bestselling children's book author who just happens to be visiting her parents very Christmassy PST. Meanwhile she runs into her childhood best friend/crush who is having trouble convincing his dad he's capable of taking over the family brewery.  The "love story" and the magical "forced to say yes" stories are strangely secondary to these other two arcs.

The set decoration, the art for the books, the wardrobes, all looked really, really nice. The production values here generally looked above the usual Lifetime or Hallmark standard.  But, the story itself was thoroughly predictable, and kind of tedious, both of which made it hard to sit through save for a few bright spots.

The leads were not lacking charm individually but they had no romantic chemistry together. Their intimacy felt very unnatural and forced. 

There was one bright moment where Romaine Waite pops a bottle open and it makes a much louder and mistier pop than he was expecting and he breaks from his character for a second and does this absolutely fabulous ad lib, a very sultry "ooo-ooh" that I must have rewound a half dozen times just to delight in it. Some beer company needs to hire him for big bucks just to crack beers on camera and give that very same "ooo-ooh". But in that moment Waite showed such immense charisma that he didn't quite bring to just the words that came from the script. I bet he's probably a better performer when allowed to bring more of himself to a role.

 

Maybe say "no" to "Saying Yes To Christmas"

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Christmas by Chance is a stupid movie shouldn't work, like, at all, and yet I found myself completely invested even though I knew practically every beat it was going to strike before it made it. 

Lead actor Winnie Clarke plays Chance with what I call "perky aunt energy" in this movie and it's kind of amazing to watch her just turn it on.

The deal here is "famous entrepreneur", local celebrity, and "most eligible bachelor" William (Jacob Blair) is getting ready to propose to his model girlfriend, but he wants it to be just perfect.  But William's bundle of nerves assistant Ryan (Sharjil Rapool, being a lot, most of the time, but also pretty funny...I think the bow tie was just too much though) isn't up to the task, so he outsources the job to Chance who owns a suspiciously still-in-business antiques/curio shoppe.  It's a real small time shoppe, that Chance took over after her father passed away and is struggling to keep it afloat, so she leaps at the opportunity to make some money doing this side gig of arranging a wedding proposal.  In the multi-day process of doing so, Chance's positivity positively infects William, as he starts to realize he and Chance are much more on the same wavelength than he and his snooty model girlfriend.

It's not good, but it's strangely charming, and Clarke really does have infectious energy.  It should be annoying but it's not.   I liked that William, despite his riches, fame and success, is a real down-to-earth character.  I like that this film turned an actor with a cleft palate  like Blair and made him the straight up, handsome, desireable leading man, from the beginning, never once giving him any averse character traits. 

Chance's employee/best friend Becky (Celie Tsai) winds up having a nerdy B-plot romance with Ryan which is really quite adorable.  I think this would have been really great movie had their romance been the A-plot and having their bosses romance and weird proposal arrangement be the B-plot. 

Model girlfriend Leyla (Celeste Desjardins) is the typical piece-of-work, self-centered stereotype that models get portrayed as in these movies. One of these days one of these Christmas romances will have a model character as their lead who is a genuine human being and not a soulless monster.

Maybe take a chance on Christmas by Chance?

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Of all the Hallmark and Hallmark-like holiday romances I've seen this season, I can honestly say Loving Christmas is the first one I'm legitimately embarrassed at admitting I watched. It has a leaden script, acted without any enthusiasm, lacks any sense of charm, and, yes, it is direly boring. It's not even fun bad, despite this major department store having, like, four rooms, and two of them are offices, or their being hot cocoas that can be swung around like Poi Spinners without spilling a drop.

Being so obviously Canadian, it actually has real snow and visible breath and a horse drawn sleigh (not a carriage), but that's kind of the only thing it has going for it.

The plot here finds department store employee Ashley, the so called "Christmas Queen", running into the boss' estranged son Ben who has a few Christmas tricks up his own sleeve.  Ashley is up for CEO position of the department store, but with big-time business guy Ben in town, that's called into question.  But the two hit it off like gangbusters since they both love Christmas so much.  But they love Christmas differently, so they have things to learn from each other, I guess. And then Ashley overhears that Ben is getting the CEO position, but only hears part of the conversation, not understanding that it'll be a co-CEO position.  Dry kisses and Christmas for everyone.

I'm not loving Loving Christmas, like, at all.

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I've had A Very Murray Christmas in my watchlist on Netflix since it debuted in 2015.  Every year I think "I should watch that this year" and, obviously, this was the year.  

As might be expected from something starring Bill Murray, it's a simultaneously sardonic and earnest Xmas special that's pretty hep for both 1978 and 2015.  For 2021 it seems already to be of a certain vintage.  I think it 2015 it might have felt a bit underwhelming and 2016 through 2019 it may seem a bit passe.  Now it just seems like it's kind of a corny, classic special, like back in the silver age of 3-channel television when any multi-disciplined performer could host a one-off variety show.

Of course, none of those ever had someone like Sophia Coppola at the helm, and it looks like a beautiful Sophia Coppola movie, with its heavy shadows, and amber palette. 

There's a very silly framework to this that it barely even tries to hang off of, which is Bill Murray (as himself) with his live-in piano accompanist (Thunder Bay's own) Paul Schaffer hosting a live Christmas special at a downtown Manhattan hotel, only for the crowd to be snowed out and the power cut.  Honestly, it's all just pretence for songs to sung.  And songs do get sung.

What I realized in watching this is I really like watching celebrities sing, whether it's Chris Rock really emphasizing that he can't sing, Maya Rudolph belting one out (god I love Maya Rudolph), Jason Schwartzman and Rashida Jones sharing a duet, or George Clooney just popping out of some fake bushes like he's in a Muppets sketch, it's harmless fun. Actually this whole thing feels like it could just be a Muppets special.  There's also real musicians like Jenny Lewis, Miley Cyrus, David Johansen and the band Phoenix in the mix.

There's a real shaggy (shag carpet?) energy to all this (which is Murray's stock-in-trade) and it tickled me. It's not an instant classic, but I could see revisiting this every few years.  

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I've been a Muppets fan since childhood.  I don't recall if I knew about Sesame Street first or The Muppet Show or if I kind of discovered them in tandem, but I loved them both.  My love for the Muppets as a child included a Rolph puppet I adored, the "John Denver and the Muppets" Christmas album which was played every year, the Muppet Babies cartoon was a favourite Saturday morning watch (despite animated Muppets just kind of missing the point), and while I'm not sure I ever truly understood Fraggle Rock, I did watch it religiously.  I've never really left the Muppets behind, even in their waning years before Disney acquired them.  Muppets From Space is still probably my favourite Muppet movie, thought the original Muppet Movie and 2011's The Muppets are admittedly better films.

But, honestly, A Muppet Family Christmas is perfection, the best Muppets there has ever been, and it only gets better for me with each rewatch, an annual tradition for me, and me alone in my household.  It's just not Christmas yet until I give it a view.

It's not just the blending of the Muppets, the Sesame Street gang, Fraggles, and even the Muppet Babies, although that's a big part of it.  It's both a festive party and family gathering.  There are carols, starting with a big group chorus of We Need A Little Christmas (which I only just now learned is not a Muppets original but from the Broadway Show Mame, book by Jerry Herman... a recent Sufjan Stevens version, however, seems to be completely a cover of the Muppets version), and some pretty solid jokes, like the running gag of the icy patch in front of the door, or the Swedish Chef chasing the turkey around the house, only to be seriously distracted when Big Bird arrives.  

Every beat, every moment of this special is just so earnest and heartfelt and lovely and joyful and entertaining.  It's the Muppets firing on every conceivable cylinder, every character completely acting in character, even as the worlds blend as they do.  Despite Sesame Street being for younger kids and Muppets being for older kids (and Fraggles being for stoner hippies, I guess) they all fit together beautifully, the Henson team taking great effort to make sure that the sensibilities of each of their realities isn't lost in doing so.  

The finale has a brief cameo from Jim Henson himself, admiring his creations, then moving on to clean up after them.  It makes me tear up every time.  Just that beautiful man who has brought so much joy into my life and so many others... A Muppet Family Christmas, if it does anything (and it does a lot) acts as a beautiful tribute to him.

Of course, the rights to Muppets, Sesame Street and Fraggles are divided across the media landscape, so A Muppet Family Christmas only exists now on old videocassettes and on the kindly souls keeping it alive, facing copyright strikes, on youtube.   It's 48 minutes of sheer delight, my all-time favourite piece of Christmas pop culture.

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The magic of Santa and his flying reindeer is mixed with the early stages of formulaic holiday romances (and the meagre budget to match). I won't lie, Last Chance for Christmas is a weird one, and not totally unlikable.  It looks like it was shot in the early 2000s, not the mid-twenty-teens and as such feels more like those ABC Family made-for-TV movies, and not at all like a glossy Hallmark.

The story finds Santa's reindeer wrangler, John (Gabriel Hogan), discovering one of the reindeer's hooves has a fracture and therefore he needs to secure another reindeer for Christmas Eve, or else Christmas might be cancelled.  He goes to an Alaskan reindeer preserve run by Annie and her young daughter, but she assumes he's either a debt collector from the bank or working for the Scroogey Reginald Buckley who is trying to buy up her farm and transform the whole town into a big ol' resort.  Sounds kind of nice actually.

But the reindeer preserve is a sentimental family business, and, you know, sentiment trumps progress.  I mean, yeah Buckley would be doing some environmental damage and a proper environmental assessment would reveal that, but his big resort does seem like a nice thing for the community.  Anyway, Annie's not interested in whatever John is there for until her daughter takes a shining to him and she just trusts that his weirdness (like, really, you actually think you work for THE Santa) won't harm them in anyway.  Which it ultimately does, when Mrs. Clause sends her elf goons to kidnap one of Annie's reindeer.  John steals Dasher, Dancer and the crew and Santa's sleigh, on Christmas eve, to proves to Annie Santa's magic exists only for Buckley's goons to kidnap all of Santa's reindeer.  In the end everything of course works out, because Buckley's heart grows three sizes.  So everyone wins, except the town, which loses out on this great resort and all the jobs and tourism it would bring.

This really needed a bigger budget for more magic, better special effects, prettier sets and shinier props (there's no reason Santa, Mrs. Clause and all their workers should be using standard cel-phones and Dell laptops and not something far more fanciful). 

I really like Hillarie Burton's performance here.  Her exhaustion, being a single mom and struggling to make ends meet, is palpable.  That Annie kind of gives into entertaining, then falling into like with this weirdo pretending to be Santa's reindeer wrangler happens far too easily (but that's a script issue, not a performer issue).

I don't know why the title doesn't have anything to do with reindeer, as the whole movie centers around them. "Last Chance for Christmas" doesn't really ring true, especially when there seem to be three our four last chances.  Something like "One Reindeer Short of a Sleigh" or something?  You could even have Buckley saying "you're one reindeer short of a sleigh, aren't you?" to someone.

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Durance's hair never looks like this

I thought former Lois Lane Erica Durance was pretty good in the B-plot for Hallmark's Open By Christmas (the A-plot was a dog's dinner though, woof), so I was looking forward to her starring role in the off-brand-by-way-of-Lifetime The Encanted Christmas Cake, despite it's less than enticing title.  I should have taken it as a warning.

The story finds frizzy, dry-haired Gwen (Durance) having taken over her beloved Grandmother's bake shoppe in the year following her passing. One of Meemaw's signatures was a Christmas cake that wound up being featured in Oprah's O Magazine.  It was Meemaw's closely guarded secret, and the only copy of the recipe has a tear in the bottom corner missing the final, secret ingredient, only with the letters "ma" left.  It's a mystery!

Meanwhile, nice guy, frosted-tips Gavin (Robin Dunne) is a producer of a cooking show with famous, raging, egotistical Chef Dante in a very bad wig (nicely foreshadowed).  They are in town to host Gwen's grandma who they hope will reveal this Oprah-famous cake recipe on the air... only, they didn't get the message that Meemaw's dead, and Gwen's not interested.  Gavin just starts tagging along with Gwen's daily business and they start to get close (it's among the worst pretenses for getting close I've seen and its progression is not natural at all).  

Eventually Gavin and Gwen stumble on the secret ingredient (it's marzipan...you're a fucking baker and for months you've been trying to figure out an ingredient that starts with "ma" and you haven't tried marzipan yet?  Shame.  Shame!).  Then Gwen's sister-mom shows up and causes trouble, and there's a thing with the tv show, and a late stage diversion to someone Meemaw sent the recipe to that seems inserted to fill out the 90 minutes and Gavin quits his job while Chef Dante doffs his wig and goes to Boca Raton with Gwen's mom.   It's all nonsense this one.  

Tonally it's all over the place with some decent bits of comedy which should be funnier but they're shot like they're not meant to be funny.  The romantic relationship progresses unbelievably fast and never really catches fire.  The hair, makeup and lighting department all seem to have given up on really trying, I'm not sure why people look as awful as they do.  I thought maybe it was so when they give Durance her dressed-up beauty moment she comes out looking knockout gorgeous, but no, it's all a disaster. Acting-wise, everyone is fine, Durance is an likeable enough lead.  It's got little moments of charm, and humour (Paulino Nunes as Chef Dante, seems to be doing a Michael Showalter thing, if Michael Showalter can be said to have a thing), but that can't save it from being kinda boring or inane most of the time.

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One of the big surprises during last year's XMas Advent Calendar was Hallmark's The Christmas House (Toasty thought so too).  While it wasn't necessarily all that different from formulaic Hallmark, it stood out with actual comedic sensibilities, winning performances all around, and it's very flirtatious nature (sexy even), plus a little nod to LGBTQ++ representation.  So, when it comes to wading through the slog of new holiday movies, where the titles and descriptions and cast don't ever indicate quality, I knew that a sequel to The Christmas House was going to be one to watch.

Lead actor Robert Buckley is also very invested in these movies, serving as co-writer.  As such the sequel carries much the same sense of humour as last year's.  If anything it even doubles down on it.  With the romance plot out of the way, which is what these films are always supposed to be about, what's next for our "Handsome Justice" star and his family?  Well, how about Mike getting roped into a house decorating contest reality show, competing against...his brother Brandon (Johnathan Bennett)!?  

The reality show itself makes no sense, so don't think too much about the logistics of it, but it's a good set up to highlight the brothers' competitive natures and the sibling rivalry that's lived on long past them living together.  Both Mike's subplot of wanting to marry Andi (plus her ex showing up wanting to finally be a dad to Noah is handled very maturely by the script), and Brandon's sub-plot about not feeling certain about where he belongs, are both really good, meaty material for the supporting cast to dig into.  We get a lot more of Brandon and Jake's relationship (though Jake seems to have no real internal life of his own, he seems to just be there to fully support Brandon in everything) which is perhaps the most LGBTQ++ representation we've ever gotten in a mainline Hallmark.  It's a step forward for sure.

Sharon Lawrence and Treat Williams are back as Mom and Dad and they get to be a lot more playful (last year's storyline had them bordering on breaking up) and have a lot more fun.  They're very lively and give this a big shove over the line into holiday comedy territory (if only we got to see more of their decidedly odd two-person local theatre show).  You can't really even call this a holiday romcom, it's really just a straight up holiday comedy, which I think is a first for Hallmark.  They even sell it with Modern Family-style couch confessionals which play with that formula in a nicely meta way (thought it's not so explicit, we're to gather it's part of the reality show filming).

As fun as it was, there's still flaws, which, like all the good Hallmark movies, directly has to do with budget.  Continuity suffers, the big "accident" that ruin's Brandon's house decorating is basically just some lights torn down, and the TV show really needed to stunt cast its host (not that decorated Hallmark mom Teryl Rothery isn't good, but this needed a bit of goofy celebrity oomf).  There's a little bit of Christmas magic also in this one (which there wasn't really in the last one), which I can't decide if it's too subtle, or just subtle enough.

I like this family as a whole entity and could definitely watch more with them. I could actually see a multi-cam sitcom featuring this cast.  Maybe next year, rather than a 90-minute movie, how about a 6-episode 1/2-hour comedy?  Really dare to do something different Hallmark.

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Before I start my holiday romance viewing each year, I sift through the advance release list to see if anything strikes my fancy, whether it be the story, the cast or something other.  The description for Under the Christmas Tree was eye-rollingly trite:

"Marketing whiz Alma Beltran (Elise Bauman) and Christmas tree whisperer Charlie Freemont (Tattiawana Jones) cross paths when Charlie finds the perfect tree for the Maine Governor’s Holiday Celebration – right in Alma’s back yard. While they initially spar, romantic sparks soon begin to fly between the two women as the enchanting tree and some Christmas fairy dust from the town’s pâtissière extraordinaire (Ricki Lake) bring out the best in them and spark each other to take leaps of faith and fight for love and Christmas magic."

Sounds like a bog-standard holiday romance with some stupid conceit to get the leads together...wait a second, "romantic sparks soon begin to fly between the two women"?  Well now, I thought, this just differentiated itself.  My expectations were bog standard Hallmarkie with two women subbing in for the guy and the lady.  It's mercifully more than that.

I'm not a holiday romance die-hard, but I think at this point I've seen enough of them and written about them enough to consider myself an armchair expert, and I have to say that, after watching Under The Christmas Tree, it just may well be the best ever execution of the bog-standard holiday romance formulae. 

Yes, we have lesbians, and we have the traditional fading celebrity supporting cast member in Ricki Lake to make it stand out, but that's not what makes this movie special. 

A lot of the basic conventions are there, but they're mostly worked in as part of the fabric rather than just stitched on top. The family and best friend supporting cast are amazing.  Ricki Lake is really, really teriffic as the best friend/local patisserie owner who is friend to everyone, Wendy Crewson as the mom is freaking great, and - bury the lede - but Enrico Colantoni is the dad[!] and may just be the best holiday romance dad of all time.  Each of these characters do a lot more than the usual family and best friend b.s. that these movies tend to give them.  They're not just there to support the leads but also to challenge them. 

Even the job storylines for both leads had a grounded throughline that was meaningful to both the characters and in the development of their relationship, rather than just being annoying background noise.   Where the set-up should have caused tension between them, their attraction overruled, and they both were certain an amicable solution could be found.  And there's even a little bit of Christmas magic, in the form of an owl...Ahsoka approved!

The 20-minutes-to-go complication, that ol' chestnut, is no less annoying here than any other film in the genre. I wish the characters handled it better than they do, even though they still handle it somewhat maturely, which is better than most.

Bauman and Jones handily have the best chemistry of any romantic leads I've seen this year (chaste though it is, as the formulae demands), and contenders for best all-time holiday romance leads. Aline's initial meeting of Charlie and her slack-jawed stammering was a bit too much of a cartoon moment, but every subsequent second the attraction is palpable and their dynamic is just fireworks. I immensely enjoyed watching them together as their relationship progresses from jovial to flirty to romantic, but also it was great how they interacted with the other characters in a way that informed their characters. There's no sag in this one. 

The best moment of the film was the first deep, meaningful backstory conversation, and it wasn't between Alma and Charlie, but between Charlie and Alma's father, at the piano. It's such an atypical scene to have a moment between the romantic interest and the lead's parent but it is such a soulful moment, a welcoming to the family very, very early in the film. Colantoni just crushes moments like this.

I loved this.  It's charming and romantic and gay.  

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I was really hoping to end this 10-for-10 - and Christmas movie watching in general - on a high note, with the greatness of Under the Christmas Tree being the surprise, feel good conclusion to it all.  Unfortunately I was one movie short of 10.  

To the rescue comes 'Tis the Season to be Merry, one of Hallmark's final movies for the season, starring former romcom queen turned recently minted holiday romance regular Rachael Leigh Cook.  I saw the commercials advertising this over the past week or two.  It looked not so good. 

Come to find out today, though, it was written by Jen Kirkman, who is one of my favourite stand-up comedians (and Drunk History guests) and a noted unironic lover of Hallmark movies.  She's finally gotten the chance to write one, that's exciting!  Of course, there's another name attached on the writing credits, which, from my mild research implies Hallmark wanted the script to be more like a Hallmark and less like Jen Kirkman's sensibilities.

'Tis the Season... is enjoyable enough, but there are so many sequences and scenes which feel like they're supposed to have comedic overtones, but the edges are all dulled down by their Hallmarki-ness.  There are some good lines in this, and a few moments which are pretty close to being hilarious, but Hallmark doesn't do comedy very well.  Comedy requires the timing to be just perfect, and Hallmark doesn't have the time to get the comedy just perfect.  So we get some physical comedy bits from Cook which (no pun intended) fall a little flat, some line reads which don't have the right accompanying reaction, or are just not hitting the right emphasis for comedy.  

Moreover, I don't know that Hallmark's draw-from-a-hat, mix-and-match style of attributing leads to a script (hey we got a Rachel Leigh Cook and Travis Van Winkle match up this year) was the right way to go about making this one.  There's voice over work required here from Cook, and it's rough stuff.  Van Winkle looks great with his shirt off (a rare slice of beefcake from Hallmark) but his comic timing is for shit.  So much of this falling flat does have to do with budget and shooting schedule, but the leads just aren't the right fit either.  That said, Amy Groening as Cook's best friend/editor was wonderful and is due for a leading lady shot.  I kind of wish she was the lead here with the roles fiipped.  Hallmark staple Canadian dads John B. Lowe and Paul Esseimbre bring some good supporting weight, and I liked Karen Malina White as Cook's not completely hard-ass publisher (clearly there was more to that role in Kirkman's draft).

This movie is just a case in point to what Hallmark is doing.  Either shit or get off the pot Hallmark.  Either invest in doing a variety of different movies, or stick more rigidly to the formulae.  This middle-ground territory only makes the end product unsatisfying.

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I was planning to do a top 5 list or something here (just to make this post even longer) but do I do a top 5 on movies and specials that I watched this year, or a top 5 on just the new releases from this year, or a top 5 of all time?  I don't know know how to shape it so here are a bunch of lists:

Top 5 All-Time Christmas Viewings:

1. A Muppet Family Christmas
2. Community Seasons 1-3 Christmas Episodes
3. Father Ted: A Christmassy Ted
4. Holidate
5. Dash and Lily (new)

Top 5 released in 2021 Viewings:

1. Crashing Through The Snow
2. The Bitch Who Stole Christmas
3. Under The Christmas Tree
4. 8-Bit Christmas
5. The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star

Top 5 new to 2021 Actual Hallmark Viewed:

1. Crashing Through The Snow
2. 8 Gifts of Hanukkah
3. The Christmas House 2: Deck Those Halls
4. Christmas Sail
5. A Kiss Before Christmas

Top 10 fave bizHallmarkies of all time (seen so far):

1. The Nine Lives of Christmas
2. Crashing Through the Snow
3. The Princess Switch trilogy
4. Under the Christmas Tree
5. Dashing in December
6. The Christmas Club
7. On the 12th Date of Christmas
8. The Christmas House duology
9. 8 Gifts of Hanukkah
10. A Christmas Movie Christmas