Leah's Perfect Gift | 2024 Christmas Movies

It has been a long time since a movie made me angry. Leah’s Perfect Gift made me so angry that I almost didn’t finish the movie. As a matter of fact, I had to stop watching it halfway through and take a break. This may be a long rant.

Leah (Emily Arlook) is a Jewish woman who is so excited to experience her first Christmas with her boyfriend, Graham’s (Evan Roderick), family. Much to her dismay, everything she does seems to upset Graham’s mother, Barbara (Barbara Niven). Is there any way Christmas can be saved?

Uuuuuggghhhh. I know this was supposed to be a “bad mother-in-law” type of movie. But Barbara isn’t Leah’s mother-in-law and, more importantly, this is the first time they are meeting. Barbara is so mean and vile to Leah and neither Graham nor his sister, Maddie (Sidney Quesnelle), stood up for Leah. They both basically shrug and say “Yep, Mom is like that!” And we’re talking STUPID stuff like “Mom doesn’t like it when people rip wrapping paper.” So absolutely everyone around her has to carefully pull apart the tape to open every single present. At no point does anyone say “Hey, she’s just excited to celebrate Christmas for the first time. Let’s give her a little leeway to our insane traditions.”

The worst part of all of this is Leah is still so gracious and amazing toward everyone, no matter how awful they are to her. At the end, Barbara is having some sort of mental breakdown in a coat closet and it’s LEAH that goes in to comfort her. If I was Leah, I would tell that woman to eat rocks and I would definitely not accept her lame apology. Barbara does not deserve forgiveness.

I really wanted this to be Hallmark’s one cool Hanukkah movie this year. I seriously hope that this is not it. Because, even though we got a kickass Hanukkah party in the beginning - where Leah’s parents ACCEPTED Graham and taught him some of their traditions - this was not a Hanukkah movie. Do better, Hallmark.

Rating: Burn it down with a menorah

Sealed With A List | 2023 Christmas Movies

Sealed With A List is another Hallmark movie that I couldn’t tell what it was about from the commercials. They really are bad at trying to convey the plot in a 30 second clip. Well, let’s see what we got.

Carley (Katie Findlay) has settled into a life that she isn’t very happy with. She makes a pact with her best friend, Jamie (Kelcey Mawema), that she will change her life in the next year. However, next December rolls around and she has done nothing. On a whim, she gets fired from her job - thanks to taking the blame for a problem caused by her inept boss, Wyatt (Evan Roderick). That is when she makes a list of things she wants to accomplish by the end of the year. And she makes Wyatt help her achieve them.

I thought this was a rather cute movie. Instead of focusing on a blossoming romance, the story focused on trying to make both Carley and Wyatt better people. Carley needed to get out of her comfort zone and Wyatt needed to stop relying on his father’s money to do everything for him. Sealed With A List could have easily gone the wrong way but I think Findlay’s portrayal of Carley was just what the movie needed. She was able to pull off competent yet shy but still outgoing when the situation needed. She was easily my favorite part of the whole thing.

Rating: I don’t run but that Christmas 5K looked like fun

A Tale Of Two Christmases | 2022 Christmas Movies

Hallmark has decided to give us two Christmas romance movies in one! Though in A Tale Of Two Christmases, it’s one woman and two men. This could get messy.

Emma (Katherine Barrell) is an architect living in Chicago. She has to decide whether to go home to Vermont to celebrate Christmas with her family and childhood friend, Drew (Chandler Massey), or stay in Chicago to spend it with her crush, Max (Evan Roderick). Thanks to some Christmas magic from Santa, Emma gets split into two separate Emmas to explore both possibilities.

I have to admit that this sounds like a very interesting plot. We get to see Emma experience both choices but Emma herself doesn’t know it’s happening. So instead of like a split personality type thing, it’s simply two completely separate stories featuring the same female lead with two different male leads. What could have been interesting just turned dull.

Since this is Hallmark, they are obviously going to pick one of the men over the other. There’s no way they would let both of them be The One. The result is that Max is kind of a self-centered rich douchebag while Drew fawns over everything Emma does. It would have been cooler if both men were on the same level and Emma’s big decision was to stay with her corporate job or move home to work with her father. That is a much more interesting story.

Sadly, twice the romance doesn’t mean a better movie. While I wouldn’t recommend watching A Tale Of Two Christmases, I do have to say that Massey is pretty fun as Drew. I guess if you want to sit through it, he would be as good a reason as any to do it.