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:

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.
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.
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!

I kinda love when Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movies have multiple names. Granted, it can make it a little difficult to research the movie but it feels like someone is trying to hide the movie from the world. A Little Christmas Charm also goes by the name The Charm Bracelet.

Holly (Ashley Greene Khoury) is a jewelry designer working at her best friend’s vintage store. When her friend, Megan (Britt Irvin), brings in a jacket for Holly to prep for the sales floor, Holly finds a charm bracelet in the pocket. Determined to find the owner, Holly pairs up with Greg (Brendan Penny), a reporter with a local paper.

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries tends to air the movies that have a mystery attached. Returning lost items, finding lost loves…those types of things. Normally, I’m into those types of movies. Christmas Charm, however, loses its focus halfway through. Instead of giving them a good mid-movie conflict, Greg just gives up because he doesn’t think they will find the owner by the deadline for his “feel good” article. Since Holly doesn’t want to search on her own (she says “it’s more fun with Greg”), the search completely stops. It isn’t until Holly has an epiphany while looking at pictures from Megan’s baby shower that the search continues. There should have been something like - Holly loses a charm (because she keeps taking them off the damn bracelet) and they have to retrace their steps then they see something they didn’t notice last time that helps them. Giving up is dumb when the writers made Holly so determined in the beginning to find the owner.

If you aren’t a super fan of one of the actors, I would recommend that you skip A Little Christmas Charm. The Christmas Ring has a similar plot. If you need to watch a Christmas mystery, watch that one instead. It’s much better.