The Picture of Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

We are a little over halfway through November and The Picture Of Christmas is the 34th Christmas movie I have watched this season. At this point last year, I had only watched 17 movies. No wonder this year feels insane!

Ember (Chelsea Hobbs) is a graphic designer in New York. She returns to Willow Hill in order to sell her late grandmother’s Christmas tree farm. While there, she finds her old storybook illustrations, rekindling her love for illustrating instead of just graphic design.

There seem to be a lot of inherited farms in this year’s Christmas movies. I would love to know why the ladies are always so surprised to find out their grandparents hired people to help them on the farm. Since these grandparents all die, I assume they are older people. Do they really think one or two elderly people can run an entire farm by themselves? Even if a grandparent didn’t tell me about their hired help, I would assume there was some sort of hired help. Especially if the farm is an actual working farm with an actual working business like a Christmas tree farm!

The Picture Of Christmas is a fine movie. There is nothing particularly stand-out about it. Ember’s drawing are nice. Emily (Mila Jones), the daughter of love-interest Brandon (Giles Panton), is adorable. She’s probably the best part of the entire movie. Otherwise, everything is bland. Ember tells Brandon that she’s selling the farm and potential buys come to see the place. Brandon wants to buy the farm but doesn’t want to tell Ember. It’s the same stupid conflict that could be solved if everyone was just honest with each other.

If you have nothing else to watch on television, The Picture Of Christmas would be all right to turn on and tune out to. If you are looking for something engaging, you won’t find it here. I would say to watch it for Emily and ignore all of the adults. They are boring anyway.

Merry Liddle Christmas Baby | 2021 Christmas Movies

In 2019, we had a Merry Liddle Christmas. Last year, we had a Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding. This year, we’re having a Merry Liddle Christmas Baby. This is a very active Christmas family!

Jacquie (Kelly Rowland) and Tyler (Thomas Cadrot) got married, had their honeymoon, and bought a new house. Now they are expecting a baby! The rest of the Liddle family is back to celebrate the soon-to-be new member of the family and, of course, Christmas. Nothing can go wrong this time, right?

The first movie in the series was terrible. Somehow, they managed to make the characters more likeable and turn everything around for the second movie. Thankfully, they keep the family love going for the third installment. As usual, the carefully laid plans all get messed up but the family comes together to fix the problems. I’m glad they ditched the bratty kids and selfish sisters. The Liddle family is better when they are looking out for each other instead of themselves.

If you enjoyed Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding, you will enjoy Merry Liddle Christmas Baby. I’m glad that this series with an almost entirely black cast has found its footing. There is a setup for a fourth movie and I’m actually looking forward to it. As long as they don’t go back to the first movie, I will gladly continue to watch the series.

A Glenbrooke Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

As we’re closing in on the end of Christmas movie season, I begin to wonder if these Hallmark movies are making me go insane. I have watched more Christmas movies this year than I have in any previous year. And the movies seem to keep getting blander as I go on.

Jessica (Autumn Reeser) is an heiress who goes to her deceased mother’s hometown of Glenbrooke for the holidays. She literally runs into a fireman, Kyle (Antonio Cupo), who she falls in love with.

There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense in A Glenbrooke Christmas. Jessica is supposed to be a fairly famous heiress. Her face is on the cover of magazines. Yet she thinks she can hide by only using her first and middle names while she’s in town. She’s surprised when someone looks her up on Google and finds out who she is without using her last name. I’m surprised that no one recognizes her face without even knowing her name!

When Jessica first meets Kyle, he walks in front of her car then blames her for hitting him. And he doesn’t get less ridiculous as the movie goes on. He makes a fuss about how rich people are different from everyone else and he couldn’t possibly love a rich person. Then he gets mad when Jessica doesn’t tell him who she really is. He is the definition of gaslighting.

The big “problem” in the movie is that the church bell needs some electronic thing fixed so it can ring on Christmas. It will cost $10,000. Jessica doesn’t want to pay for it so she suggests a fundraiser to the locals. Ruthie (Latonya Williams), who runs the community center, turns down the idea because everyone in the town has already donated to their charities. One - how does she know that no one in town would donate and Two - this bell is made out to be the Most Important Thing in town. Why wouldn’t the townspeople donate towards fixing it? It’s all a little frustrating.

I’m also a little annoyed that this is on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel. While this does fall under the movie category, it definitely isn’t a mystery. I would like it a lot more if that channel stuck to the stories with actual mysteries to solve.

To be honest, A Glenbrooke Christmas isn’t worth your time. There are much better movies out there. Go watch one of those instead.

Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding | 2020 Christmas Movies

Sometimes a sequel is better than the original movie. That almost never happens in Christmas movies. Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding is the exception.

There are only 2 days left until Jacquie (Kelly Rowland) and Tyler (Thomas Cadrot) have their perfect Christmas Eve wedding. When Jacquie’s family shows up, things go awry.

Last year, we saw Jacquie and Tyler meet in Merry Liddle Christmas. And that movie was terrible. Jacquie was too much of a control freak and her entire family is like a chaos tornado that ruins everything they touch. Somehow, they family has tamed their wild ways. Since the movie needs some form of unbridled chaos, we are instead given Garrett, the wedding planner who refuses to speak to anyone besides Jacquie and quits abruptly after her family talks to him a whole three times. (Yes, that part annoyed me to no end.)

Of course, once the infuriating wedding planner quits, the Liddle family jumps to work trying to get Jacquie’s dream wedding ready in two days. While there are still catastrophic accidents that occur, there aren’t nearly as many of them. That makes Wedding much more bearable than the original.

It’s also nice that Jacquie isn’t as ridiculously controlling as she was previously. I don’t know if that is because she’s been spending time with Tyler’s kids or if she had some sort of epiphany. She is still a little weird - she wants an entirely white wedding on Christmas Eve with these atrociously ugly decorations and she apparently tries to feed children goat’s cheese with vegetables. But she isn’t throwing tantrums when things get ruined. She just kinda shrugs it off disappointingly.

The best part of this movie? You don’t need to watch the first one to understand this one. There’s a “Previously in Jacquie’s life” opening and the family members still all call each other by their relationship: “Hey Sis!,” “I love you, bro,” etc. (Let me say that I have a younger sister and I don’t think I have ever said anything like “Hi, Sis!” to her.)

Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding is definitely on my watch list. There are some adorable moments that made me smile. And that doesn’t happen a lot in Lifetime movies!