'Twas The Text Before Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

I wasn’t sure what to expect from ‘Twas The Text Before Christmas. Would it be a take on ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas? What would that look like in a Christmas romance movie? Let’s take a look…

Addie (Merritt Patterson) is a New York City chiropractor. When her father, Bruce (Rob Stewart), goes to Australia to spend Christmas with her brother, Addie is left alone. She receives an accidental text from Maybel (Jayne Eastwood) intended for Maybel’s granddaughter, Paige. Addie and Maybel start talking and, when Maybel finds out that Addie will be alone for Christmas, the older woman invites her to spend the holiday with her family. With no other plans, Addie agrees.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t a terrible movie. It is a little annoying that it only takes place over three consecutive Christmases so we don’t get to see what anyone is doing during the rest of the year. It would have been nice to see Addie spend some time with her father since he goes to visit her brother every year - even though they are supposed to switch off spending Christmas with him. We see them have one dinner every year, which is when he tells her that he’s leaving again. From what we see, Maybel is a better parental figure to Addie than her own father.

The characters are rather two-dimensional so don’t go into this thinking you’re going to get anything deep out of it. The only time we see any of Addie’s other boyfriends is through her phone - one via social media and the other via phone calls. I know this is supposed to be about the Christmases that Addie and Maybel spend together. It just would have been nice to get to know them better as people.

Rating: I’m ready for the sequel where they spend every Easter together

Baking All The Way | 2022 Christmas Movies

I don’t think I will ever understand the Christmas movies where someone is looking for The Perfect Recipe for something. Food is subjective. What you think is Perfect might be Complete Trash to someone else. There is no The Perfect Recipe.

Julia (Cory Lee) is a celebrity pastry chef looking for the perfect gingerbread recipe for her newest cookbook. When she asks for submissions from the public, she gets a basket of cookies from a Wisconsin bakery owned by Kris (Yannick Bisson). His bakery isn’t doing so well financially so Julia offers to help him increase his sales in exchange for his gingerbread recipe.

There isn’t a lot to say about Baking All The Way. It is a fairly typical bakery movie, except that we don’t get to see any actual baking happening. We see them brainstorm some gingerbread-themed treats for their 12 Treats Of Christmas special but we never see them making any of them. (Well, we see him rolling out some dough. That’s it.) It would have been nice to see some actual baking happening in the bakery, even if it was a montage of screwing around in the kitchen.

Otherwise, Baking All The Way is a fine movie. There’s little to no chemistry between Lee and Bisson. They seem more like colleagues so the romance at the end is a little jarring. I would rate it as another movie to turn on while you do something else. But maybe you could get some recipe ideas despite not seeing any actual baking. That might be a plus.

Inn Love By Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

This is the second real estate based Christmas movie this year. And both of them are from Lifetime. The Christmas Listing was about real estate agents fighting over who will sell an inn. Inn Love By Christmas is about two people fighting over who is going to buy an inn. If only they were the in the same universe….

Mandy (Jonna Walsh) works for a hotel that is looking to purchase an inn in her hometown. Lucas (Jesse Hutch), a friendly rival from high school, is also looking to purchase the inn. Who will win?

Inn Love By Christmas is another one of those movies that doesn’t clearly state what is going on. We know that Mandy works for a hotel in Miami. When we see her in the opening, the hotel looks awfully corporate but she claims later that it is a family-owned hotel. I don’t think she was supposed to be exaggerating but it seems like it. In addition, I don’t think they actually said what Lucas does. He talks about cooking and having a new plan for the restaurant at the inn but I don’t think he said anything about running a restaurant or anything. How is he even qualified to run an inn?

There is also this problem that Many and Lucas get along the entire time. The only “villain” in the movie is Ashley (Kelly Van der Burg), who I think was the mean girl in high school. And she is still just a mean girl. She says mean things at inappropriate times. Other than that, there are no consequences. It doesn’t seem to matter whether Mandy or Lucas buys the inn. Mandy isn’t going to lose her job or anything. Lucas only seems to want it so he can cook. It makes no sense.

I can’t possibly recommend watching this. While there isn’t anything particularly bad about it, there definitely isn’t anything good either. Movies should at least have a defined plot. A little depth never hurt anybody.

The Santa Squad | 2020 Christmas Movies

A lot of Christmas movies have the word ‘Christmas’ somewhere in the title. I appreciate that this one goes with Santa instead. Though, apparently, it’s also known as Santa’s Squad. But it’s only one person. There’s no squad; there’s just one person.

Allie (Rebecca Dalton) is an unemployed teacher. Her friend, Tony (Chris Sandiford), shows her a job listing for The Santa Squad, hired Christmas helpers. Allie’s first Santa Squad assignment is the Church household, where a wealthy widower lives with his two daughters.

The Santa Squad was an adorable movie. It gave me a little bit of The Parent Trap or The Sound of Music (without the songs) type of vibe. There’s two daughters of a wealthy single man, an awful girlfriend who kinda hates the kids, and a new woman who befriends the children. OK, that last part isn’t very Parent Trap but it does have similar vibes.

I quite enjoyed the movie, for the most part. My only gripe is that Rose (Hattie Kragten), the older daughter, is given the ‘quirky trait’ of rattling off little known facts about animals or bugs. While that could be really cute, it fell a little flat for me. Some of the interjections fit into the scene well but some of them felt forced. It would have been nice if her facts fit the conversations better.

With that said, the rest of the movie was enjoyable. Gordon (Aaron Ashmore), the father of the family, and Allie had great chemistry together. Even Paniz Zade was pretty perfect as the stuck-up girlfriend Kimmee. Sometimes it can be difficult to find a good bad guy.

So, should you watch The Santa Squad? Yes! Lifetime has only had a handful of good movies this year. And this is one of them.

Heart of the Holidays | 2020 Christmas Movies

I think maybe I need to figure out some sort of BAD ranking. Like, boring is a 1 but an awful script is 8 or something. It might make it easier to decide just how bad a movie is.

Sam (Vanessa Lengies) finally got the job she wanted. On her first day, she finds out that her boyfriend, Will’s (René Escobar Jr), company bought her new company and fired a lot of the staff. Feeling weird that he saved her job, Sam immediately quits and goes back to her hometown, where she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, Noah (Corey Sevier).

Heart of the Holidays is a mess. At the beginning of the movie, Sam is a whiz at planning things. I didn’t even realize that she worked in the financial industry because she was so busy planning things. (I think she was supposed to be convincing the guy replacing her to work for the company? I’m not really sure what she was doing.) But when she moves home, she is terrible at everything…except planning a pop-up food bank on Christmas Eve. I think that the writers wanted her to be a “hometown girl finds that community is important” character or something. That doesn’t really come through. She talks about how she wanted to work with charities but then she became a stockbroker? Her character makes no sense.

The plot isn’t all that different. It wants to be “big city girl returns to small hometown to find she still loves her hunky ex-boyfriend.” While that does happen, it goes about it the wrong way. The writers tried to throw in another woman, Marina (Tina Jung), to tempt Noah away….but at no point does it feel like those two would ever be a couple. It feels like this was written by high schoolers.

Seriously, Hallmark. Step up your game. No one should watch this movie. As a matter of fact, can I unwatch it?