Noel Next Door | 2022 Christmas Movies

The 2022 Christmas movie season has started! We’re starting the season with Hallmark Channel’s Noel Next Door. And, yes, of course the title is a pun on the main character’s name.

Noelle (Natalie Hall) is a divorced single mom to Henry (Callum Shoniker). While waitressing at a local diner, she meets Jeremy (Corey Sevier), a stroke survivor. The two hit it off but little does Noelle know that Jeremy is the neighbor that has been terrorizing the neighborhood with his anti-Christmas ways. Will they be able to reconcile their differences?

I’m not sure if it’s because this is the first Christmas movie of the season or if it was actually good but I quite enjoyed Noel Next Door. Usually, I find all of Corey Sevier’s characters unbearably annoying. This time around, he manages to somehow combine the “annoyed at life” and “charming leading man” types somewhat smoothly. I think my only complaint for him is that he is a little inconsistent with his character physicality. I know that not all stroke survivors have the same issues afterward. He just needs to decide when his limbs will and won’t work for him.

As for Natalie Hall, I think most of the time she chooses terrible scripts. She is frequently cast as a cardboard cutout of a woman that has zero personality. In Noel Next Door, her character has a little more depth to her. It nice to see the change since I don’t think Hall is a bad actress. She just makes bad decisions when it comes to Christmas movies.

While I think that Noel Next Door is a very watchable movie, it isn’t particularly groundbreaking. We still have the “one person hates Christmas, the other person will fix that” trope. But it isn’t the main point of the movie and I think that is what makes it better. The movie focuses more on the relationships than it does the holiday. That is almost always a win in my book.

Midnight at the Magnolia | 2020 Christmas Movies

I am stunned. I may have found a good Christmas romance movie. Let’s get into it.

Maggie (Natalie Hall) and Jack (Evan Williams) have been best friends since high school. Now they co-host a relationship radio show. When they get an offer to syndicate their show, they agree to a New Year’s Eve event where they will introduce their significant others to their parents. Things take a turn for the worse when their partners break up with them. They decide to pretend to be a couple in order to continue with the event.

For the first time, I enjoyed a Christmas romance movie. Midnight at the Magnolia on Netflix has a good blend of best-friendship and romance. Since Maggie and Jack have been friends forever, we get to see both their serious and their goofy sides. In the real world, this is how a lot of long-lasting relationships start. As friends.

To be honest, there isn’t much more to the movie. There is little time dedicated to their jobs, which is actually a good thing. The movie isn’t about their jobs or their troubles. It’s about their changing relationship. And Midnight at the Magnolia handles it well.

This is definitely a movie I can recommend. Especially if you are looking for a good romance movie. There isn’t a ton of Christmas, there isn’t a ton of fluff. It’s just a good romantic story.

A Very Charming Christmas Town | 2020 Christmas Movies

How many Christmas tropes can they fit into one movie? I think Lifetime’s A Very Charming Christmas Town is trying to hit every single trope possible.

Aubrey (Natalie Hall) is a former-songwriter-turned-blogger. She visits Danish-style town, Solvang, CA, to see if they really are the “Most Christmassy Town in the USA.” Even though she is a bit of a brat, Sawyer (Jon Prescott) takes on the challenge of showing the magic of Solvang.

OK. Let’s count off the tropes this movie crams in: A musician (check, she’s a somewhat famous songwriter), a blogger (check, she stopped writing songs to write lifestyle blog posts),a woman loving sugar (check, she practically drools at every cookie, candy, and pastry she sees), a business owner (check, this time it’s the male lead!)…I think maybe that covers all of them. Poor Aubrey really does feel like a checklist of characteristics instead of an actual person.

In case you didn’t know, Solvang is a real town in southern California. Usually these Christmas movies center around a fake town with a wintery/Christmas-sounding name. While I’m not positive the movie was actually filmed in Solvang, there were some nods to the town. At least that gave it a little dose of reality.

Uuugghh…I don’t know what to say about AVCCT. The characters were terrible cardboard cutouts (with the exception of Laurel played by Kelley Jakle), the plot sucked, the conflict was unbelievable, even the resolution was dull. The only good parts were Kelley Jakle’s singing and the town itself. So I guess do a slow fast forward (not the super speedy one!) so you can see the town and stop about ten minutes from the end so you can hear Jakle’s one song. That’s the best this movie will get.