Christmas Under The Lights | 2024 Christmas Movies

Alas, we are still in the Bad Movie Era. Hallmark Mystery’s Christmas Under The Lights has some cute animals but that is about it.

After her mother passes away, Emily (Heather Hemmens) returns to the family’s animal rescue ranch to help her brother, Nick (Antonio Cayonne), and his friend, Luke (Marco Grazzini), plan the annual Christmas Carnival.

This movie was so boring. I know that a lot of the movie is Emily’s journey through her grief and childhood trauma and it’s awful to say that her journey is boring. But this is a movie. There needs to be something interesting to keep me from looking down at my phone. And, to be honest, I lost interest so often that I had a difficult time telling Nick and Luke apart. I really hope that a better movie shows up soon.

Rating: At least the alpacas were cute?

Betty's Bad Luck In Love (2024)

Hallmark is pulling their weight with the February romance movies. Be warned - while I have Betty’s Bad Luck In Love right now, Hallmark is doing a “Loveuary” thing featuring movies about Jane Austen. There will be 4 movies, one each week. But let’s see what Betty is up to first.

Because Betty (Laci J. Mailey) chose to talk to the cute boy at school, a rival girl cursed her with bad luck in love for the rest of her life. As an adult, every time Betty gets close to a guy, she immediately shuts down the relationship, fearing the worst will happen to him. Can she find a way to break the curse and find love?

I’m not going to lie. Betty’s Bad Luck In Love is kinda terrible. Our title character spends almost the entire movie freaking out at every little thing her current beau, Alex (Marco Grazzini), does then complains to her best friend, Mya (Meghan Heffern), about it. Keep in mind that these are all adults. Alex plays rugby in his free time. Betty literally goes to one of his scrimmage games and storms into the field to stop the game so he doesn’t get hurt. And somehow Alex forgives her atrocious behavior. Even if you are worried about a loved one getting hurt, that is part of life. Especially when we’re talking about adults that can make their own decisions. Does she think that Alex doesn’t know the risks of playing a game like rugby?

Then there’s her relationship with Mya. Mya is getting married to Raul (Daylin Willis). As Mya plans the wedding (with very little help from her best friend, by the way), she is running into snags. Her florist can’t get the flowers she wants, the reception venue she booked is double booked, her soon-to-be mother-in-law demands Mya invites her friends to the wedding. All things that can be very big problems. Betty helps a little with the flower issue (by looking up flowers on her phone) but kinda shrugs off the other problems with an “Oh, I’m sorry” then goes back to complaining about her love life. She really is an awful friend.

I was hoping that this was going to be more entertaining. Instead, it’s mostly whining. They could have gone with a magic theme…that would have been cool. They could have gone with a Murphy’s Law type of theme. Nope, they chose a hysterical woman upset over absolutely nothing. This should not be on the Hallmark channel.

Rating: D

Lonestar Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

Well, that was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I don’t think I understand how Lifetime chooses what movies to air. Do they just pick the ones that sound the most Christmassy?

Erin (Stephanie Bennett) is a widow with two young daughters. When her mother goes on a Christmas cruise, she decides to spend the holidays with her estranged father, Gary (Brent Stait). There she meets a local Mexican restaurant owner, Mateo (Marco Grazzini).

Lonestar Christmas isn’t really a romance Christmas movie. Yes, there is romance in it but it’s really about a woman that is emotionally broken. She has a lot of anger towards her father from him not being around when she was a child. Granted, it sounds like maybe he was going to college or something. They don’t really explain why or how he wasn’t around. Everyone just says he wasn’t around. In addition, I’m not sure she has truly grieved her dead husband. Since she has two young children, she admitted that she focused on raising them instead of dealing with her emotions. Erin needs to go see a therapist immediately.

I don’t have anything against a movie about a woman working through her emotional trauma. That might actually make a good Christmas movie since a lot of people have troubles around the holidays. If they took out Erin’s patient, Tessa (BJ Harrison), and replaced her with an actual therapist, it would have changed the mood of the movie. Erin (who is an occupational therapist) already uses Tessa as a sort of therapist, which is a terrible idea since she is one of Erin’s PATIENTS. She is not a friend, she is not a confidant, she is a patient. They should have had Erin talking to a professional to deal with her problems.

Should you watch Lonestar Christmas? I would say skip it unless you want to watch a woman devolve into self-pity. I really wish they had treated this differently so I could recommend it.

Christmas Unwrapped | 2020 Christmas Movies

There are Christmas movies that are about romance during the holiday season. Then there are movies that are about Christmas spirit that happen to have romance in them. Lifetime’s Christmas Unwrapped is the latter.

Erik Gallagher (Marco Grazzini) runs a charity that gives away millions of dollars in presents every year. Charity (Amber Stevens West) is a reporter assigned to write an article about Erik, specifically where he gets the money to support the annual event.

Christmas Unwrapped is a little like a dollar store Elf. Where Elf’s Buddy was a human raised by Santa and his elves, Unwrapped’s Erik was a foster child tasked by Kris Kringle to help distribute cheer (and gifts) at Christmas. Of course, you have the unbelieving humans (Elf has Jovie, Unwrapped has Charity) that not only end up believing in Santa at the end - they also fall in love with their male counterpart.

Sadly, Unwrapped isn’t as fun as Elf. The pacing is a little slow at times and the big conflict in the third act could have easily been avoided if Charity just told Erik what was going on instead of letting him find out…and assume the worst…on his own. There’s also a secondary love story between Charity’s friend, Tisha (Cherion Drakes), and Erik’s friend, Aaron (Morgan Kelly), that doesn’t ever get resolved. We get some longing glances between them and that’s it. It would have been nice to see the two of them at some of the Christmas events kindling their own romance.

But just because the movie isn’t as good as Elf doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a watch. The acting is decent, the plot is OK, even the expected twist was pulled off fairly well. Give it a go and let me know what you think about it. I’d like to hear if you liked this one as well.