Mistletoe & Menorahs | 2019 Advent Day 10

If you will recall, I banned the Marvista (or Mar Vista or MarVista) production company from last year’s Christmas movie list. Because they make terrible movies that have multiple names. When I turned on Mistletoe & Menorahs, I was greeted with the dreaded Marvista logo. I actually shuddered. But I made it through the movie…..let’s talk about it.

Christy (Kelley Jakle) is a toy company executive trying to land a new client. When she gets invited to the client’s holiday party, she is excited because she is all about Christmas. Her co-worker, Samantha (Cory Lee), quickly tells her that the client is Jewish! Samantha sets Christy up with her son’s history teacher, Jonathan (Jake Epstein), who will teach her all about Hanukkah. Meanwhile, Jonathan needs to learn about Christmas in order to impress his girlfriend’s father.

As Marvista movies go, this one was not terrible. It does have an alternate name, of course. A Merry Holiday. Mistletoe & Menorahs is a better title.

Also, this is the second time this season we have seen Jake Epstein as the male lead. He also was the writer/nanny in A Storybook Christmas. While it’s weird to see actors appear in more than one Christmas movie per season, I don’t mind it. Jake is a very charming leading man. (I bet that Marvista filmed this movie years ago and only released it now. That tends to be the way they work.)

The movie itself is pretty good, for the most part. My main problem is that Jonathan teaches Christy all about the history of Hanukkah while Christy only teaches him about the surface of Christmas. She teaches him about decorating trees and wrapping presents but nothing about the story behind Christmas. Maybe that is how the writers kept the story from getting too preachy. It just seemed a little odd.

Well, should you watch this? Yes. This isn’t a great movie. There are definitely some flaws. But it was entertaining and I think I might try to find other movies starring Jake Epstein. He is quite charming.

A Christmas Love Story | 2019 Advent Day 9

I thought it would happen earlier in the month but, alas, my work schedule has finally gotten the best of me. The 2019 Christmas movie advent calendar will continue. However, some of the reviews will be late. I apologize for the inconsistency. Let’s just jump into the next movie.

Broadway darling Kristin Chenoweth stars as Katherine, a former Broadway star turned youth choir director. While preparing for their annual Christmas concert, a teenaged boy, Danny (Kevin Quinn), with a beautiful voice joins the choir, unbeknownst to his father, Greg (Scott Wolf). In addition to convincing Greg to letting Danny join the choir, Katherine also has to write the big original song that will be the finale of the show.

A Christmas Love Story was fun, for the most part. I loved the singing. Though I’m pretty positive the children’s choir was not voiced by a children’s choir. They sounded very….adult. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was just kinda there. There was an adoption story shoved into the plot, which was supposed to be the big twist, I guess? Maybe someone should tell them that you can, in fact, have a Christmas movie without some big twist ending. Because I actually enjoyed the movie up until that part.

Sadly, I don’t have much else to say about it. So, should you watch this? If you’re a fan of Kristin Chenoweth, sure. She does have a very nice singing voice. But don’t be too upset if you come out of it disappointed.

A Storybook Christmas | 2019 Advent Day 8

I’m not exactly sure why this movie it called A Storybook Christmas. The book aspect of it has very little to do with the actual plot. Let me show you what I’m talking about.

Celeste (Ali Liebert), a party planner, has a job with a difficult client, who keeps changing her mind about the theme for her holiday party. Finally, the client settles on Storybook Christmas. The plan is to invite some children’s book writers and have them sign autographs during the party. Except there is one writer the client demands to have, but he is a bit of a recluse. Meanwhile, Celeste is having trouble keeping up with her work duties and giving the perfect Christmas to her niece. So she hires a live-in nanny. The only one available at this time of year is a man. Celeste hires him, hoping it will all work out.

Oh, this movie. it’s not bad as much as it is more difficult than necessary. There are meaningless characters, like Celeste’s fiance, Brandon (Bradley Hamilton). He is a total drip who doesn’t care about anything except himself. And Celeste is OK with this up until the end of the movie. So many of these movies have terrible boyfriends that the women need to break up with. I would rather have every single leading lady be single at first then have them in awful relationships that they can’t let go of.

Then there is this client. I believe it is a publishing company but I’m not entirely sure about that. Anyway, the woman in charge (I’m not completely sure of her name…maybe Hanna?) literally changes her mind about her party’s theme at the last minute. Instead of telling her it’s not possible to redo the entire party theme, Celeste lets the woman walk all over her….again, until the end of the movie. I get that business owners have to make their clients happy. But they also have to set realistic expectations so they aren’t taking advantage of their niceness.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a terrible movie. Taylor (Jake Epstein), the nanny, is a perfectly nice man and he is amazing to Celeste’s niece, Finley (Habree Larratt). I fully expected the big twist halfway through the movie but that is OK. It’s a Christmas movie, not rocket science. I just wish it had a little more to push it over into ‘good movie’ territory.

Should you watch A Storybook Christmas? If you want to. There are worst ways to spend your time.

You Light Up My Christmas | 2019 Advent Day 7

It’s only the seventh day of this Christmas movie advent challenge and we have actually found a network movie that is not only decent but is actually charming! What?!

Real estate agent Emma (Kim Fields) comes back to her hometown to sell her childhood home. The town, which happens to be built around her family’s Christmas light factory, seems to have lost its Christmas spirit. Emma decides to bring the old holiday traditions back, resulting in her falling in love with the town all over again.

I think the main reason I found You Light Up My Christmas charming is that it didn’t center around a romantic relationship. It almost completely focused on Emma revisiting places she used to hang out as a child/teenager and realizing how much the town needed her family. Since the town was built around her family’s factory and she is the last living member of that family, it’s up to her to bring celebrations back. Sure, she reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, Ben (Adrian Holmes), but that relationship is really an afterthought in the plot.

On a nostalgic note, this movie also gathered together a bunch of the actresses from the 80s television show, The Facts of Life. Besides Kim Fields, we got to see Lisa Welchel and Mindy Cohn in minor roles. Oh, and a very small cameo from Nancy McKeon. It was a cute nod to the generation that currently watches these cheesy movies.

Should you watch it? Absolutely. I hope that Lifetime adds this to their annual Christmas movie lineup. I would definitely watch this every year.

Christmas Town | 2019 Advent Day 6

Every year, there is a Candace Cameron Bure Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel. This year’s gift is Christmas Town.

Hallmark’s favorite actress plays Lauren Gabriel, a teacher from Boston who gets a permanent position in Springfield. Before heading out on the train, she breaks up with her boyfriend because he wants to focus on his career instead of starting a family. On the way to Springfield, the train gets stopped at Grandon Falls due to a problem with the tracks. The passengers are forced to spend the evening in the small town. This stop proves to be a fateful stop for Lauren.

Usually, movies with Bure in them are very heavily Christian themed. Surprisingly, Christmas Town doesn’t try to shove God down your throat. Yes, there are some religious references but it’s all contained as people praying to God for something or saying it’s God’s plan type of things.

Instead of focusing on the religion, the movie focuses on foster children and charity. Travis (Tim Rozon), the romantic interest, has a foster child, Dylan (Jesse Filkow), who spends most of the movie giving his things away to the kids from a nearby town that basically burned down. Lauren, a former foster child herself, gets a donation drive started (in conjunction with The Salvation Army, of course) to help Dylan stop giving away everything he owns. (The adults don’t get mad at Dylan for giving away his coat every day. You would think someone would point out that coats are expensive and maybe he shouldn’t do that every single day.)

For the most part, Christmas Town isn’t terrible. I think my main problem is how quickly the plot goes. This would have been better as a miniseries instead of one movie. Within a few days, Lauren falls in love with the town, gets a new teaching job in Grandon Falls, decides to adopt Dylan, and falls in love with Travis. While Lauren, at one point, Lauren had said she was planning on staying a few weeks, everything seems to take place within a week. This should have taken place over a few months, especially with the adoption angle.

But should you watch it? Yes. Christmas Town is one of Bure’s better Christmas movies. It has some flaws but nothing that makes it unwatchable. On the contrary, it’s actually kinda sweet. Almost the perfect Christmas movie…for the Hallmark Channel, anyway.

Merry Liddle Christmas | 2019 Advent Day 5

Before I even start this review, I want to say how much I hate that this is the promotional picture for Merry Liddle Christmas. This has very little to do with the actual story of the movie. Let’s just get into this.

Jacquie (Kelly Rowland) is a successful tech entrepreneur, who is selling her business. In order to nab a new position that she wants, she invites her entire family to celebrate Christmas at her house so that a film crew can make a video of their happy celebrations. Hilarity ensues.

This whole movie barely makes sense. It would have been perfectly fine as a sort of National Lampoon-ish type of thing. Instead of trying to make it funny, almost all of the characters are selfish and unbearable. Jacquie gets mad when anyone messes up her house or her to-the-minute plans. There’s her younger sister’s untrained dog, neither of the kids are particularly well behaved (well, the infant is well behaved!) and no one steps in to correct their behavior, the family matriarch is unwilling to change any of their past traditions to accommodate new ones….pretty much everything that can go wrong does. It’s kind of annoying, to be honest.

Oh, and the romance! That gets jammed in because Jacquie’s niece asks where her “real family” is. Yes, the child actually says that she needs a husband and kids to have a real family. And the kid’s dad, who is sitting right next to her when these words leave her mouth, does nothing to tell her that Jacquie doesn’t need a husband or kids. She has a family. An ungrateful one that destroys her house.

Should you watch this? No. Absolutely not. Go watch Christmas Vacation instead.

Christmas In Rome | 2019 Advent Day 4

I think maybe the trend this year isn’t a trope, it’s a title. Everything will be called “Christmas in” Something or Somewhere. This time, the ‘somewhere’ is Rome.

Lacey Chabert plays Angela, an American tour guide who loves Rome probably more than she loves herself. Shortly after getting fired, she meets American businessman Oliver (Sam Page) who knows nothing about Rome but needs to close a business deal in a few days. He hires Angela to be his personal guide to Italian culture.

Even though Christmas in Rome is set in Rome, the city itself barely makes an appearance. Considering that Angela is supposed to be a tour guide for the city and she doesn’t shut up about how much she loves it, we only get a sweeping tourist view of the city, the inside of Angela’s favorite bakery, and the inside of the business that Oliver’s company is trying to buy. But I guess people aren’t watching the movie for views of Rome. They are watching for the romance.

Sadly, the romance is also a let down. Angela and Oliver supposedly only spend three days together. In that time, they form a great friendship. Of course, that means that they are suddenly in love. When Oliver proclaims his love to Angela, her face shows exactly what I was feeling. “Um, what?” For some reason, though, she tells him the problem is that they live 5,000 miles apart. (She lives in Rome, he lives in New York.) No, dear. The problem is that you two aren’t actually in love. But Angela lets her friend bully her into starting a relationship with this man. I wonder what will happen when they decide that they only love each other platonically. Not all male-female relationships have to be romantic.

So, should you watch Christmas in Rome? I mean, you can if you want to. It is on the better side of Christmas movies. But it could be better.

Staging Christmas | 2019 Advent Day 3

Last year, I decided that the Lifetime channel’s Christmas movies were worse than Hallmark’s. Basing my entire opinion on the two movies I have seen so far, this year might be different.

Staging Christmas stars Soleil Moon Frye and George Stults. (OK, Jaleel White also has top billing, for some reason, but his character is completely unnecessary.) Frye plays Lori, an interior designer who stages homes for sale. According to her, homes with Christmas decor between October and the end of December sell the best so she excels at decorating houses for Christmas. When her company’s annual Christmas party is left without a venue, Lori volunteers to find a new location - and hopefully nab a promotion in the process. Meanwhile, Everett (Stults), who owns the local coffee franchise, asks Lori to decorate his house for Christmas in order to cheer up his daughter, Maddie (Mia Clark). It turns out that they haven’t really celebrated Christmas his Everett’s wife and Maddie’s mother passed away. Luckily, Everett’s house is a perfect venue for the company holiday party. Can Lori pull off the perfect company party and help bring Christmas back to a grieving family?

I don’t think we’ve ever had a Christmas movie plot that required so much explanation. Especially considering that there weren’t really any obstacles to overcome. No one was trying to destroy Lori’s plans for the party or trying to win Everett’s affections or anything particularly bad. Everyone was nice and no one was left wanting. Usually this is where I would say that this leaves the movie with no conflict, making it boring. However, there was a conflict. It just wasn’t the main point of the movie.

The main conflicts come from the promotion that Lori wants, that would force her to move to New York, and Everett’s sister wanting to expand the company while cutting costs. Neither of these ever feel like the end of the world. Lori won’t get fired if the party is a failure. The coffee company would be perfectly fine if they didn’t open another branch. Instead, the movie could focus more on Lori, Everett, and Maddie and how they would all fit into each other’s lives.

Fortunately, it’s the cast that saves Staging Christmas from boredom. Soleil Moon Frye succeeds in bringing life to a dull script. And the chemistry that she has with George Stults is a nice change of pace. In most of these movies, you wonder why the leading couple is even together. This time around, they seem to actually like each other. I think the only thing I might have changed was Jaleel White’s role. If his name is going to appear before the title credit, at least give him something to do.

Should you watch Staging Christmas? Sure. If anything, it’s nice to see Punky Brewster again.

Christmas In Evergreen: Tidings Of Joy | 2019 Advent Day 2

It’s always interesting when I accidentally watch a movie that is part of a series. There are all of these weird references that I know I’m supposed to get…but I don’t. This is the case in Christmas In Evergreen: Tidings Of Joy. Apparently, this is the third movie in the series. Reading each movie’s “About” page on the Hallmark Channel website tells me that each movie basically revolves around the town of Evergreen, Vermont, and its residents. I’m not about to watch the other two movies so we’ll just have to believe the website.

In this iteration, a writer named Katie (Maggie Lawson) travels to Evergreen for vacation. During her train ride, she meets Ben (Paul Greene), who runs the town library. Soon, Katie learns that the entire town is searching for a rumored time capsule that they should be opening this year. And, even though Katie is on vacation, her mother keeps harassing her for a magazine cover story.

I know what you are thinking and I agree. There isn’t anything to this plot. Usually there is some sort of conflict that needs to be solved. The leading lady has to save a family business that is about to close. Or she’s trying to avoid falling in love with the leading man. Or she’s trying to become a better person. Or something! This plot is basically “Boring white lady comes to boring white town and has slight holiday fun, making her fall in love with boring white man.” Katie isn’t looking for love or to change her life or do anything beyond take a break from work. Ben isn’t cynical or trying to force his romantic tendencies on her. He’s just nice and boring.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t give me a whole lot to review. There are some side stories about some of the Evergreen residents falling in love but even those are boring. Heck, the whole time capsule thing, which should have been the main ‘conflict,’ was boring. I really don’t understand what the point of the movie was. Maybe the other two were really good and Hallmark is trying to milk the franchise.

Should you watch this? No. Should you turn it on in the background while you do chores? I mean you can but there is some terrible caroling in there that might interrupt you. Unless you are vacuuming. This is a good vacuum movie. Lots of pretty people with no substance. I hope this isn’t setting the stage for the rest of this year’s Hallmark movies.

Last Christmas | 2019 Advent Day 1

Normally, I give myself a set of rules for the annual movie advent calendar. They usually include something like “Initial airing must occur on or after December 1.” A lot of the networks nowadays like showing Christmas movies in October and I’m not down with that. So I try to limit my Christmas viewing to, you know, the actual Christmas season. Last Christmas breaks that rule since the movie came out in theaters on November 8. We’ll just pretend it came out this weekend, agreed?

The movie stars Emilia Clarke as Kate, a selfish party girl that can’t get her life together. One day, she meets the mysterious Tom (played by Henry Golding). She begins to fall in love with him, which begins her quest to fix her terrible ways.

So, yeah, without giving away any spoilers, that is pretty much the plot of the movie. You can’t expect anything too deep with a movie based on a Christmas song. Yes, this is based on Wham’s “Last Christmas.” And now that song is stuck in your head. You’re welcome.

Both my husband and I have low opinions on Christmas movies so we weren’t expecting a lot when we entered the theater. I did expect the showing to have a low turnout since the movie has been out for almost a month. Surprisingly, quite a few people were there. The fact that the closest theater still showing it only had one time for it might have helped.

As for the movie itself, my husband and I agreed that the movie wasn’t awful. None of the actors were bad. I think our favorite was Michelle Yeoh as “Santa.” The plot was boring but that was kinda expected. I think my only real issue with the movie was that both Kate and her sister, Marta, had very British accents despite the fact that their entire family was from Yugoslavia. (Yes, the movie even shoehorned in some Brexit references.)

For some references, in the United States, Last Christmas came in fourth in the box office its opening weekend. Considering I only recognized the title of one of the movies that placed higher (Doctor Sleep, Midway, and Playing with Fire), I would consider that a win for a holiday themed romcom. Do I recommend you see it? Not really. But I suppose there could be worst ways to spend your time.