Scouting For Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

When I saw Scouting For Christmas on Hallmark’s schedule, I wondered if it was a movie about Girl Scouts. A Girl Scout-adjacent youth organization involved but I wouldn’t say the movie is about them. It actually makes me hate the title a bit.

Angela (Tamera Mowry-Housley) is a single mom working as a realtor. Her daughter, Brooklyn (Audrey Wise Alvarez), is in a scout troop that is having a posh holiday ball fundraiser. Brooklyn suggests they get her favorite bakery, owned by William (Carlo Marks), to cater the event…and also get William to escort her mom to the ball. Little do they know that Dakota (James Paladino), Angela’s ex and Brooklyn’s father, will randomly show up to throw a wrench in everything.

Ugh, for a movie that is titled for scouting, it was so boring. There was no actual scouting done in the movie. There wasn’t even any real estate agenting done! Come to think of it, I don’t think we saw any baking either! All of these people have jobs or hobbies that we don’t see them do, we’re just told they do them. And that makes for a very boring movie. No one wants to see people standing or sitting around talking in various locations. We want to see them doing things. Having fun. Being actual human people. The more I think about it, the more I dislike this movie. I’m glad it’s so early in the season.

Rating: Can we have a movie with actual scouting in it?

A Kismet Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

The first weekend of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies ends with A Kismet Christmas. Yes, I also had to look up the meaning of ‘kismet’ since they use it a million times in the movie. It means destiny or fate. I guess they can only use ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ so many times before they run out of titles. It’s just kismet, right?

Mia (Marilu Henner) bakes kismet cookies - cookies that will tell you who your true love is when you sleep with one under your pillow on Christmas Eve. One year, Mia’s granddaughter, Sarah (Sarah Ramos), sneaks a kismet cookie under her pillow. It told her that her true love was the boy next door, Travis (Carlo Marks). Unfortunately, Travis was getting married that day. Embarrassed, Sarah rips up the recipe for the cookies and leaves the town of New Britain. Years later, Sarah is a children’s book author. Her publisher runs a contest and the winner lives in New Britain. Sarah is forced to return to town and face both her grandmother and her childhood crush.

On one hand, I found A Kismet Christmas interesting. On the other hand, the slow parts were very slow. I liked the idea of magical cookies that told you who your true love is. If the movie dove deep into that, I think I would have liked it more. However, since Sarah tore up the recipe within the first 15 minutes of the movie, the cookies aren’t around a lot. Instead, we get a lot of people hemming and hawing about how there aren’t any kismet cookies and they wish there were kismet cookies so they could know FOR SURE that a certain person liked them. And since there are no cookies to be baked, Grandma Mia is fairly useless. She makes very vague statements about things and doesn’t tell Sarah any of the important news that is fairly necessary to her life. I think the movie would have been more interesting if the cookies were still around and the conflict is whether the magic in the house is leaving since Mia is planning on selling it.

Instead of the cool things, A Kismet Christmas focuses on Travis and his daughter, Jasmine (Rubi Tupper). In the beginning, Sarah was mortified about having to face Travis again after interrupting his wedding. She got over that so quickly and she spends a majority of the movie helping Jasmine with her contest-winning project or helping Travis make Jasmine happy. I understand that the writers wanted them to spend more time together to push the romance but it’s insinuated that they have always loved each other. Again, the focus should have been on the magic cookies and house. They could have easily had Travis and Jasmine try to help figure out why the house is losing its magic and how to get it back. It’s a much more interesting story.

Should you watch it? Probably not. Unfortunately, I think the boring parts outweigh the interesting parts. Which makes me sad because there was so much potential there. At least it’s only the beginning of the movie season. Maybe there will be something better soon.

Making Spirits Bright | 2021 Christmas Movies

What if Romeo & Juliet took place in modern times? And what if, during the Christmas season, the feuding families decorated houses? That is pretty much the plot of Making Spirits Bright.

The Ryan family and the Scotto family used to decorate houses for Christmas together. When Bill (Garry Chalk), and Frank (John Cassini) started fighting, the business broke up. Now their children, Grace (Taylor Cole) and Tony (Carlo Marks), are trying to get them back together in order to beat a new decorating company in the annual neighborhood competition.

At first, I thought I already watched this movie. It seemed very familiar. It wasn’t until I realized that the male lead character’s name is Tony and his sister is Maria that it clicked. Making Spirits Bright is basically Romeo & Juliet. (Tony and Maria are the lead characters in West Side Story, which is a musical version of Romeo & Juliet.) Since this is a Christmas movie, no one dies but Tony’s father, Frank, does fall off a ladder.

I actually kinda liked this one. Sure, there are a few scenes that could have been shortened or cut completely and we didn’t really need the parallel story of Grace and her friend/business partner, Sarah (Sarah Surh). But, otherwise, it was quite charming. I would have liked to have seen a little more of the Christmas displays but I think that is just me.

Is this something everyone would enjoy? I don’t think so. There are a few parts where the movie does begin to drag and it’s easy to lose interest. But if you like the feuding family storyline and want to see it with a Christmas twist, Making Spirits Bright isn’t a total waste of time.

Christmas with the Darlings | 2020 Christmas Movies

The movie is titled Christmas with the Darlings but the family’s name is actually Darlington. Did they rename the characters and forget to change the movie title? Or maybe they didn’t realize the family is Darlington and not Darling….

Jessica (Katrina Law) is the executive assistant for Charles Darlington (Steve Bacic), the CEO of the Darlington family company. With his brother Max (Carlo Marks), Charles has taken custody of his orphaned nieces (Islie Hirvonen and Madeline Hirvonen) and nephew (Anthony Bolognese). When Jessica learns that the children are to be sent to boarding school for Christmas, she offers to take care of the children at the Darlington mansion instead. Max, infamous for being irresponsible, steps up to help her.

Christmas with the Darlings is what The Christmas Aunt wanted to be. Jessica does various holiday activities with them but none of it feels cheesy or forced. Instead of making paper snowflakes, they decorate the trees outside the mansion with birdseed ornaments so the animals have something to eat. They drink a lot of hot chocolate, they work on a Christmas puzzle…it is wholesome holiday activities that all of them seem to thoroughly enjoy.

On top of that, the actors have great chemistry. Granted, the two sisters are actual sisters in real life. Beyond that, I could believe that Jessica actually wanted to spend time with the children and that she actually liked Max, even when he was being goofy. And I could feel Max’s frustration at being classified as the “irresponsible” brother when he was so much more than that.

it is still very early in the Christmas movie season but I think this may be it. This may be the best Hallmark Christmas movie this season. So, yes, go watch it. Watch it more than once if you like. Then maybe watch it again next year. I don’t think you will regret it.