A Cinderella Christmas Ball | 2024 Christmas Movies

It feels like a lot of Danica McKellar’s Christmas movies involve either a prince or dancing. Well, A Cinderella Christmas Ball has both! Though I’m not sure why they titled the movie that way. This has nothing to do with the Cinderella story at all. (After some research, it was originally titled A Royal Christmas Ball and they changed it.)

Chelsea (McKellar) owns a dance studio in Chicago. When she finds a photo that may be of her birth mother, who was also a dancer, in Havenshire, her students fly her out so she can find out more. Once in Havenshire, she gets hired to teach Phillip (Oliver Rice), the prince, how to dance a very specific variation of the waltz. However, he is very unwilling to learn. That is a lot on her plate for her short four day trip.

I think Great American Family’s theme for this year’s movies is “A couple steps below Hallmark.” The plot for A Cinderella Christmas Ball is stupid. Chelsea’s mother died in an accident when she was five years old yet she doesn’t know who her mother is. I don’t remember her ever saying that her mother gave her up for adoption before that so her mother’s identity would be information that is available to her. This movie would have been a whole lot better if she was like “I want to emotionally connect with my mother more” and just made the whole visit to Havenshire a sight-seeing vacation to maybe visit the same places her mother did. Instead, this is all about Chelsea getting information about her birth parents.

In the end, it’s fine to watch. I think the Hallmark and Lifetime movies are way more interesting than anything GAF has put out so far this year but I’m also not really their target audience.

Rating: Can I look away like Chelsea does when she’s dancing with Phillip?

BeBe Winans' We Three Kings | 2024 Christmas Movies

In past years, the Lifetime Christmas movie offerings have been awful. Somehow they have really been coming around this season. BeBe Winans' We Three Kings is another hit for the channel. I am definitely surprised.

Three years after their mother’s death, the three King sisters - Lydia (Lisa Berry), Gracie (Faith Wright), and Abigail (Bethany Brown) - have lost their connection with each other. After their father, musical legend Lincoln King (BeBe Winans), gets into a car accident on an icy road, the sisters are forced back together to deal with their grief and heal their family wounds.

This was such a touching movie. I’m overlooking the minor flaws in the script because everything else was so good. I loved the way the sisters argued, the way sisters do, and were able to look back and apologize properly for the terrible things they said. If I needed to say something bad about the movie, honestly, it would be that it wasn’t long enough. I would have liked them to spend a little more time healing the sisterly bond instead of it simply being an apology with helping out at the store. But nothing was really lost without seeing that. It just felt short, that’s all.

Rating: I would like a sequel but I’m not sure how they would do it

Deck The Walls | 2024 Christmas Movies

Next up is Hallmark’s Deck The Walls, a movie about house flippers that is so laden with product placement it made me audibly groan. It may be a little cheesy when movies make up fake companies as vendors for the characters but it is so much better than real company logos and stores being front and center.

Rose (Ashley Greene) is an interior designer that gets tasked to help her brother, Sal (Danny Pellegrino), with a charity house flip in her hometown. Contractor Brysen (Wes Brown) is also on the job. Can Brysen get “Runaway Rosie” to stop running away from her problems and face them?

For the most part, Deck The Walls is a fine movie. The acting is fine, the plot is fine, the script is fine. What is not fine is the amount of time that Home Goods takes up. (Also Nutella but that has far less screen time than Home Goods.) This movie really should have been called Deck The Walls With Home Goods. I get that movies sometimes need product placement to help with the budget. But here is how much Home Goods is in this movie:

1. Rose does a web search for “stores in solon.” (Solon being where the movie takes place.) The first result is a giant Home Goods logo. The second result is mostly covered up by Rose’s hand.

2. Rose goes into Home Goods to look around for inspiration and has a rather long conversation with associate Oliver about how she’s going to look around for inspiration and how many aisles full of stuff they have.

3. After the gang gets more money for their project, Rose goes back to Home Goods to buy more stuff. We see her walking out of the store carrying at least five Home Goods bags with the logo in full view and the giant logo on the store itself behind her.

The Nutella place is bad but not as bad. Aunt Gigi (Carolyn Hennesy) says she’s going to make Christmas cookies with Nutella. Then they cut to everyone in the kitchen smearing Nutella on cookies as the camera pans past an open jar of Nutella. ‘Tis the season to be advertising.

There are a few other instances where the characters name products but I’m not sure how much product placement it really is since they are talking about products from the late 90s-early 2000s. (Pogs, Tamagotchi...things like that.) So, yeah, the movie is watchable if you can get past all of the product placement. There are even a few cute moments between characters. I just wish they didn’t try to market stuff to us so hard.

Rating: GO AWAY HOME GOODS!

Our Little Secret | 2024 Christmas Movies

Our Little Secret is the third movie from Lindsay Lohan’s partnership with Netflix. Her Christmas movies have been doing a little bit better than her non-Christmas movies so I guess we have some hope here.

Avery (Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) have known each other forever. They were childhood friends who eventually became a couple. But when Avery took a job in England, Logan freaked out a little bit and proposed to her at her surprise going away party. Avery declined and broke up with him. Ten years later, Avery is going to spend Christmas at her boyfriend, Cameron’s (Jon Rudnitsky), family home. Little does she know that Logan is dating Cam’s sister, Cassie (Katie Baker), and will also be spending Christmas at their family home. Avery and Logan decide not to tell anyone that they know each other. How long can that be kept secret though?

On the plus side, Our Little Secret is a pretty decent movie. The plot is kinda terrible but, otherwise, I found the movie fairly enjoyable. Kristin Chenoweth is awesome as the evil Erica, mother to Cam, Cassie, and Callum. Lohan and Harding have this nice chemistry where you can see that they don’t really hate each other but they don’t want to like each other either. That can be difficult to pull off.

However, on the negative side, I don’t understand why they felt the need to keep their previous relationship secret. Even if they didn’t want to say that they dated, they could have said they were childhood friends. I can’t believe that anyone in that family would have been upset to find out that people they are dating know each other. The whole plot of the movie should have been about them trying to get Erica to accept them. Sure, part of the plot was trying to get Erica to accept Avery but there’s no reason that couldn’t have been the main plot. There are plenty of movies about trying to impress the in-laws and comedically failing. Here, the big secret feels unnecessary.

Thankfully, the terrible plot doesn’t keep the movie from being watchable. There is still enough to enjoy that you can kinda overlook the big secret. Oh, and the dog should have totally been named Cookie.

Rating: Celebrate good time. Come on!

A '90s Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

When I saw the title for A ‘90s Christmas, I thought that this might be a movie starring actors or musicians from the 1990s. It’s not. It’s a time travel movie. As someone who lived through the ‘90s, that made me a little sad.

Divorce lawyer Lucy (Eva Bourne) just got a promotion to partner. As she celebrates alone in a diner on Christmas Eve, she is asked by the waitress, Grace (Katherine Barrell), if she is happy with her life. While Lucy claims to be happy, Grace - now a rideshare driver - transports her back to her childhood home in 1999. Now Lucy has the chance to repair all of her broken relationships.

As I said, I was sad that this movie wasn’t really about the 1990s. They had the stupid references: “Ugh, how we wait so long for the internet to load?”, “I can give you a Blackberry to read your email.”, and people staring at her when she says to google something. (For reference, Google existed in 1999. It just wasn’t considered THE search engine.) Oh, and there was one song - I think it was “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None The Richer, which came out in 1998. That is about all of the ‘90s stuff the movie has. I hate it.

Sadly, there isn’t anything that could save this movie from the disappointment the title gave me. The acting was fine but nothing spectacular. The script…well, the most annoying thing about it is Grace tells Lucy multiple times that she can’t change the past. To the point that “The 12 Days Of Christmas” plays every time she does something that causes the future to change. And the change is the freaking point of the whole movie. So Lucy is trying to figure out how to get back to present day without changing anything and Grace is doing nothing to help her. WHAT IS THE POINT OF GRACE?! There are so many contradicting things going on. I hate it.

Rating: This is not a ‘90s Christmas.

Debbie Macomber's Joyful Mrs. Miracle | 2024 Christmas Movies

Back in 2021, I watched my first Mrs. Miracle Christmas movie. That was the third movie in the series, which didn’t matter much because it was a new actress (Caroline Rhea) playing the Mrs. Miracle character. This year’s Joyful Mrs. Miracle has Rachel Boston in the role. I love that this is a character that can easily switch actresses with no real consequence to her.

After the passing of their grandmother, siblings Charlotte (Pascal Lamothe-Kipnes), Benedict (Matthew James Dowden), and Henry (Max Lloyd-Jones) reunite to decide who will take over as CEO of the family company. Annie Merkle (Boston), an estate planner, arrives to help the family realize what is really important to them and to help Charlotte reconnect with her first love, Austin (Tanner Novlan).

I loved this version of Mrs. Miracle. To me, Caroline Rhea made the character a bit more goofy. The Rachel Boston version is still a little silly but in a that-person-is-too-happy kind of way. There is a scene where a couple gets engaged and Annie tries her best to contain her excitement before she yells “Oh! I’m a hugger!” and hugs the newly engaged woman so tightly. I honestly hope that Hallmark keeps Boston as Mrs. Miracle for any future movies. She really was the brightest spot of the movie for me.

Don’t get me wrong…the rest of the actors are great in their roles. Even Charlotte’s son, Cody (Logan Carriere), was decent. As a matter of fact, there is a possibility that Joyful Mrs. Miracle will be my favorite movie of the year. Other movies will have to work very hard to beat it.

Rating: I would like Mrs. Miracle to come hang out with me

Christmas Under The Lights | 2024 Christmas Movies

Alas, we are still in the Bad Movie Era. Hallmark Mystery’s Christmas Under The Lights has some cute animals but that is about it.

After her mother passes away, Emily (Heather Hemmens) returns to the family’s animal rescue ranch to help her brother, Nick (Antonio Cayonne), and his friend, Luke (Marco Grazzini), plan the annual Christmas Carnival.

This movie was so boring. I know that a lot of the movie is Emily’s journey through her grief and childhood trauma and it’s awful to say that her journey is boring. But this is a movie. There needs to be something interesting to keep me from looking down at my phone. And, to be honest, I lost interest so often that I had a difficult time telling Nick and Luke apart. I really hope that a better movie shows up soon.

Rating: At least the alpacas were cute?

Christmas By Candlelight | 2024 Christmas Movies

I try really hard to go into all of these Christmas movies with an open mind. Sure, they may be cheesy but I go into these trying to find something good. I may find one bad movie a week or so. But sadly, after watching Christmas by Candlelight, I think we may be in the beginning of a block of bad movies.

Juliet (Erin Agostino) works in the marketing department of a big health and fitness company. Her boss, Hilda (Shauna MacDonald), wants her to find a Christmas product to promote to get more people to visit the company’s website. With only two weeks until Christmas, Juliet turns to candlemaker Tom (Harmon Walsh) to help her come up with some custom Christmas candles that will knock everyone’s socks off.

To start off, the plot is very bad. I don’t think any boss would tell someone to come up with a new product to sell immediately. It doesn’t work that way. Also, why is the marketing department in charge of finding products to sell? That isn’t their job. Their job is to sell the products someone else makes. And why would the boss randomly change the contract for a vendor without telling anyone? I’m pretty sure changing a contract after someone signed it is illegal.

Matching the awfulness of the plot is the one-two punch of a bad script with bad acting. Lines that no real person would say are delivered with the woodenness of a marionette. This movie makes me want to throw every Christmas candle I find.

Rating: They left enough candles lit that they can literally burn it all down.

Sincerely, Truly Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

Well, the plot of Sincerely, Truly Christmas is not what I expected. And it’s pretty dumb. Sigh.

Christina (Paula Brancati) is an event planner for a large music streaming platform. Just before Christmas, she gets fired for insulting an up-and-coming singer that the company wanted to use for their Christmas song charity release. In order to get her job back, Christina must get Dan Copen (Howard Hoover), a Christmas one-hit-wonder who has become reclusive, to re-record his song for the charity release. It seems that the only way she can contact him is through Robert (Jake Epstein), a realtor who is having problems with his son. In addition, Christina made a badly worded wish that now forces people around her to tell her what they really want for Christmas.

I don’t really want to talk about this movie. I hate Christina. She wants to lives in some sort of la-la land where people always say exactly what they say or feel with zero consequences. She literally barges into her boss’ meeting without stopping to see if they were on a conference call or even what the meeting was about to openly say a singer is bad at singing. Please remember that she works for a music streaming service. Then she’s surprised and annoyed that she got fired. I swear Christina is a child.

The movie doesn’t get any better. It’s almost entirely Christina doing something stupid then feeling bad for herself when there are consequences. Let’s pretend this never happened.

Rating: I want this movie to be removed from my brain for Christmas.

To Have And To Holiday | 2024 Christmas Movies

Heading back over to Hallmark, we’re taking a look at To Have And To Holiday. A movie that feels like it wants to be religious but isn’t. I almost had to double check the channel on this one.

After her temporary job in a New York fashion house ends, Celeste (Madeleine Arthur) heads home for the holidays…and maybe longer. At the last minute, she decides to bring her new boyfriend, Jason (Robert Bazzocchi), with her. As the family chats over dinner, Celeste learns that the town chapel will be closing. Sadly, she admits that she always wanted to get married there. So Jason proposes to her. Unhappy with the new engagement, Celeste’s father, Pastor Mark (Eric Close), puts the couple through Marriage Bootcamp to try to break them up.

I know that we are supposed to hate Pastor Mark. He is supposed to be the bad guy. My problem is that he’s not just trying to break up his daughter’s relationship. He’s being a complete dick the whole time. Even his wife, Judith (Kate Drummond), who is also the MAYOR, calls him out on it. But it doesn’t get through his thick skull until almost the end of the movie. He literally throws little tantrums over things that he should be thankful for. He’s supposed to be a pastor. What the hell is he teaching the town during his sermons? Because it’s obviously not to be a good person.

As much as I want to pan this movie for the terrible plot, it’s actually a good enough movie. Bazzocchi is charming, Arthur is mostly adorable, and even the side characters have a bit of depth to them. I’m not sure this will make the top 10 list but there is a big possibility it will.

Rating: Just don’t beat the mailman at darts