12 Days of Giving (A Very Hallmark Christmas Day Five)

Cut straight to the chase, it's

12 DAYS OF GIVING

In Which - A man wins $50k and gives a bunch of it away, re-igniting the world's sense of Christmas Cheer and helping him understand He Never Actually Loved His Fiancee and He Should Get With This Single Mom He Meets Instead. 

I kept wanting to call the main guy Riley for some reason. No his actual name is Baxter. And he is a really mediocre photographer who likes taking pictures of branches, well, no wonder you can't sell any photos at your gallery showing, Baxter, your pictures kinda suck! But you have a good heart, and this is evident when you win a sweepstakes drawing and take the $50k cash payout instead of the new Corvette and then start secretly giving it away to people to make their Christmases awesome. What a nice dude!

However geez you have a toxic relationship with your fiance who just wants mo' money for like...fancy dresses and a big honeymoon and a nicer wedding and I mean I guess those are good things to do with money but she just gives me really weird vibes. Why are you with he-ohhh wait I bet you won't be for long! (I'm getting better at predicting these things!)

Riley/Baxter does start creepily taking pictures of people he gives away his money too and that seems a little strange, but he's a photographer so I guess that's okay?

Hey in just 5 movies we have our second movie where the Main Guy is going to Fall In Love with the Single Mom because Her Son is Really Into Hockey and the Main Guy Can Help With That. This is the trope I didn't see coming, but here we go. 

Also a trope is characters talking about the "the big concert/event/play coming up!" and then it's at the end of the movie and it's just the tiniest little room with about 8 people in this room for this Big Christmas Event, look, I get it, movie extras are expensive when you're on that Hallmark Movie Budget, it just makes me chuckle. 

Baxter definitely engages in some light emotional cheating with Single Mom for a couple days before admitting oh yeah wait I'm actually engaged to someone else (cue Act 2-3 romantic confusion) but all is saved in the end as the Single Mom's Son pulls childlike shenanigans to get them back together again. Nice and simple to have Baxter's fiancee break up with him because he's giving too much money away to strangers, that was convenient and he didn't even have to play the "Hey I have a Single Mom Side Chick I'm Trynna Get With" card. 

Nothing fancy, nothing special, I give it 6 Polaroid Pictures out of 10. 

Christmas In Vermont (A Very Hallmark Christmas Day Four)

Watched this one at my parents house and didn't really take many notes so it'll be a short recap of

CHRISTMAS IN VERMONT 

In Which - A no-nonsense Business Executive Girl travels to Vermont from NYC to shut down a failing clothing store, only to fall for both the Guy who runs the business AND soft and cozy cashmere!

Mom always wants to watch some Hallmark movies at Christmas. I have to choose them carefully so both she and Dad are entertained. This was an easy pick because it was set in Vermont (for Mom) and had Chevy Chase and Howard Hesseman in supporting roles!

Chevy Chase plays the NYC boss of the Main Girl who sends her on the Shutdown Mission up to Vermont. He has a half dozen scenes, and holy crap I've never seen a more phoned in performance. It's rare that you can tell that an actor is just reading cue cards positioned just off-camera, but I would be absolute money that was the case here. Chevy couldn't care less about anything happening in his scenes. Hilarious. 

An absolute delight, though, is Howard Hesseman (known to my family as the crazy DJ Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati, a TV show from the late 70s I watched re-runs of growing up. He's the Wise Old Man in this plot and really carries a lot of humble charm. 

The Business Executive Girl is a little scary, not gonna lie, also she looks about six foot three in heels and towers over everyone else in scene. She has her cold dead heart warmed by the joy and hospitality of this small Vermont Town (filmed in upstate New York of course) and eventually connives to come up with a new product that saves the business in time for Christmas and falls in love with the guy who runs it blah blah blah you know how it ends. 

The Business Owner guy had a real nice-guy charm to him (not in a bad way). 

It's okay, didn't change my life, I'll give it 6 Soft Cashmere Christmas Sweaters out of 10. 

Angels and Ornaments (A Very Hallmark Christmas Day Three)

Today we have

ANGELS AND ORNAMENTS

In Which - A Mysterious (Angel?) Character must help two music-store co-workers find love before the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve!

One good thing about Hallmark movies - they know they have an 84-87 minute runtime and there's not a MOMENT to spare. From the very get-go we have a quirky character who lays out in pretty plain speak that He Is An Angel and He's Here On A Mission From God (or at least, "The Man Upstairs"). Leaning into the predictive nature of these stories actually help them feel a little more honest, they ain't trying to fool you, they know what they are!

The Main Girl in this one looks so familiar and I have to IMDB her to realize she played one of the adult characters on Glee. She didn't sing on Glee. She sings here. Take that as you will. 

Harold the Angel is just the right amount of Quirky and Charming as he befriends and then plays matchmaker for the Main Girl and Guy. It takes me the entire movie to figure out who he reminds me of, then I finally put it together, he's a perfect blend of Tobey Maguire and Adam Sandler, but somehow his earnest-oddball-man routine really works!

Carey did call it thought because in Act Two Harold the Angel is just a hardcore Creepy Stalker watching the main characters Discover Themselves and Their Love for Each Other through a series of peering-through-window montages. 

Set in a music store and with the finale based around an original piece of music being sung at a Christmas Concert - honestly Hallmark should lean into doing musicals or musical-esque stories more often. You can cover a multitude of cheesy love story sins with a little tear-jerker music to play on the ol' heartstrings. 

Best Quotes:

"You know I saw him in Macy's the other day flirting with one of those perfume spraying...harlots!"

"Cliches are important when forming a narrative - they tap into the universality of mankind!"

The Peacock App crashed during the middle of the final heartfelt monologue. Bad Form, Peacock. 

This was nice, the music definitely bumped it up a few notches for me. 8 Christmas Carols out of 10. 

Lucky Christmas (A Very Hallmark Christmas Day Two)

I'm already falling off the pace as I had to watch this movie split over two days. And this blog is a few days late. Christmas will be enjoyed at it's own pace this year I just hope I don't get to Christmas Eve and have to spend 9 hours watching Hallmark movies that day because look they have a certain charm - but ONLY a certain charm. 

Anyway today it's

LUCKY CHRISTMAS

In Which - A single mother's winning lottery ticket is nowhere to be found after her car is stolen - she must try to find it back (and possibly fall in love with the thief!) before the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve!

The setup of this one really made me question wow, how are they going to justify the Mom falling for such a Bad Boy who would steal her car? But it's all mostly a comedy of non-malicious errors - her car is "borrowed" by the comic relief friend of the Main Guy when his truck is impounded, and by the time they try to return it it's been reported as stolen with the lottery ticket inside! Talk about a CRISIS!

- The First Act of this movie didn't really draw me in. Unique setup aside, nothing was really compelling in terms of the characters and the pacing was a little draggy

- Also in trying to paint the characters as flawed and desperate though well-meaning people, the writing makes them mostly come off as jerks through the first half of the movie. 

- Single Mom is a wannabe chef with big dreams of owning a cafe - also her 12 year old son Max sounds like he's going through auto-tune puberty - maybe his voice changed halfway through filming and they had to digitally synthesize his voice. It's kind of in the audio uncanney valley. 

- There is a certain charm in Hallmark movies of the actors struggling to remember and delivery their awkwardly written lines, which makes their performances (sometimes) come across as natural and realistic. 

- Act Two gets much better. The Main Dude is trying to find a way to return the lottery ticket secretly to the Single Mom, and he sets up meet cutes and some flirty flirt that turns into some genuine feelings on both sides. He bonds over hockey with Max as well! Further proof these movies are all shot in Canada. 

- It's nice when supporting characters get right to the point and tell main characters they are being stupid / have trust issues / are making terrible decisions. I like that economy of writing. 

- The Main Dude works for his brother in construction but also secretly has an architecture degree and wants to build stuff with recycled materials and green energy? That's cool but also why does he launch a website with his designs that looks T E R R I B L E? Don't you tell me you're suddenly getting "lots of hits and even some orders!" on that janky-ass website. I refuse to believe it. 

- Everything falls apart at just over an hour in when the Single Mom realizes the Main Dude was the one who (accidentally?) stole her car. It feels pretty justifiable. Honesty is the best policy kids!

- But, in a matter of 20 minutes, he finds a way to win back her heart through methods such as helping Single Mom's son with the local derby car race, doing some free design work for her someday-cafe, and...installing an incredibly gaudy light display on her landlord's front lawn? Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess. 

Best Quotes

Single Mom: "Don't buy lottery tickets...they'll break your heart." 

Convenience Store Owner: "She's right - buy Double A batteries instead! We're having a Super Sale!"

"It's Christmas. Get over it! Go find him!"

"I love you too, Holly"

"Are you sure you're not just saying that because I won the lottery, Mike?"

Mike: "Nervous Laughter"

*End of Movie*

I give this one 5 out of 10 Lottery Tickets. 

Christmas In The Rockies (A Very Hallmark Christmas Day One)

Ha ha! You thought I'd forgotten all about this blog! 

I never forgot, I just stopped caring. 

But I like symmetry, and bookends, and when the thought of a movie project to end the year in December popped into my head, it seemed a fine way to go out to complement the James Bond movie project we did in January. So here we are, watching 12 Hallmark (or Hallmark-esque) Christmas movies in the 12 days leading up to Christmas. All these selections will be movies I have not seen before, and I go into them with an open heart and mind, prepared to be warmed and filled by holiday cheer, terrible acting, and more establishing scenic shots than you can throw a snowball at. 

Today's Entry - CHRISTMAS IN THE ROCKIES

In Which - A young woman must enter a lumberjack competition in order to save her injured father's failing sawmill business while competing against (and falling in love with!) the new-to-town paramedic who saved her father's life!

It took me a good chunk of this movie to recalibrate my brain into Hallmark Movie mode. This is a skill I've developed over the last few years watching a couple every year at my mother's insistence, and mostly involves lowering your expectations into the basement in order to widen the threshold of your heart to be filled with joy at this highly questionable artistic endeavor. But look, it's off to a strong start with 30 seconds of stock footage of the Rocky Mountains covered in snow!

I'm still figuring out the format of how I want to talk about these movies. For now, I'm just going to detail out the bullet points my brain jotted down as I watched the movie

- We are introduced to the main character's dog 2 minutes into the movie - Bear, a Husky - and he is criminally underused for the rest of the movie, only showing up in one mid-story montage scene. Come on Hallmark! I want more dogs!

- We meet a character that I think is the father figure but no wait it's actually the grandfather. A kindly only mildly-crazed looking white haired old man, who says - direct quote - "I'm an old man, so what I say must be true!" in his opening scene. I like Grandpa Sam energy. He tells it like it is

- Our main character Katie Jolly (yes, her actual name) narrowly avoids taking a prestigious job with a law firm in New York because her MeanGirl almost-boss apparently wants to save the planet (environmental law?) but doesn't want to save Katie's almost job offer for a few days while Katie works through a family emergency. Honestly, Katie, you dodged a bullet there. Don't work for employers like that!

- Katie's actual dad looks like he's only 10 years older than her, a stoic small business owner named GORDON JOLLY. You can't make this up. He also gives me a vibe that is a cross between my childhood neighbour Mr. Whitney and Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer. Huh. 

- We go 23 minutes before we hit our first montage and it's a training montage as Katie prepares for the lumberjack contest that will close out the movie. 

- Why is the audio mixing so terrible? There are scenes where I can't hear the dialogue for the loud background music. Early theory - Hallmark movies are edited where the addition and relative volume of music is tied to the terrible writing or cringe-inducing level of the scene being played out. 

- The runtime on this movie is 87 minutes - we go 48 minutes before we get our first "Miss-Kiss", as I've newly dubbed them - the moment when the love couple alllllmost kiss but then are interrupted by a convenient plot device. This time it's a buzzing cell phone. I estimate this will happen in 7/12 of the movies I watch this season. 

- At 51 minutes we get our classic Rom Com movie device in which a simple misunderstanding develops that could just be resolved by BASIC COMMUNICATION. Come on people. However - remarkably, and refreshingly - only 12 minutes later (which granted, is several scenes) - the two main characters actually do simply talk it out over dinner and the simple misunderstanding is quickly and easily resolved. This was honestly so simply and well done I was astonished and almost applauded. 

- Speaking of gut reaction, I counted four times in this movie where I simply guffawed at something that happened or was said, it was so silly. I didn't write down what those moments were, though. 

- At 84 minutes in, we finally see our characters kiss, and 90 seconds later there is an accepted marriage proposal. We gotta wrap things up fast in this movie and bring it in under runtime and budget, folks

- Grandpa Sam alarmingly disappeared from the final act of the movie, and I didn't realize it til after, and I was NOT HAPPY with this. He was a main supporting character throughout and then he just...disappears in the last 20 minutes of the movie?? What the heck? #JUSTICEFORGRANDPASAM

- Best Quotes, Provided Context-Free

"I can't bring my mom back, or fix my dad's leg...but I can swing an axe!"

"I am sweating in places I have never sweated before!"

"No...it was a medium bonk"

End of the Day, it was cheesy, it was silly, and I kinda loved it. I don't know how to rate these movies yet. It's a relative scale. But I'm giving this one 8 out of 10 Pine Trees.