A Very Merry Beauty Salon | 2024 Christmas Movies

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beauty salon-themed Christmas movie. I definitely haven’t seen a black beauty salon-themed Christmas movie. I hope that Lifetime doesn’t mess it up with A Very Merry Beauty Salon.

Sienna (Tia Mowry), who owns Divine Beauty Salon, does a lot of charitable work for her community. Now she is being honored at the annual Tinsel Ball in Atlanta. As she prepares for the ball, she meets Lawrence (RonReaco Lee). He is the CEO of his family’s wine business, which has is not only opening a shop near Sienna’s beauty salon, they are also co-sponsoring the ball. The sparks begin to fly between Sienna and Lawrence but will business and family get between them?

While I think that A Very Merry Beauty Salon was a wonderful movie, it was also very slow. Instead of action, we get a lot of scenes of people just sitting around talking. I think the only action montage we get is of Sienna, Ella (Ashli Auguillard), and Miss Kimmy (Cocoa Brown) working on their clients’ hair. There is a scene where Sienna and Lawrence are practicing a dance but I wouldn’t really call that a montage. As a result, the movie does seem to drag a little. Which is sad because the acting is amazing and the plot could have been so much more interesting. It felt like the writers weren’t really sure how to move the actors from scene to scene.

Despite the slowness of the movie, I do think it is watchable. As a matter of fact, I think I would love to see a series about Sienna, Ella, and Miss Kimmy. They were such fun to be around. We need more of them.

Rating: Can I come to the salon?

Yes Chef! Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

As we’re heading toward the end of the Christmas movie season, Lifetime only has a few more movies on their docket. Yes Chef! Christmas is the beginning of the end.

Alicia (Tia Mowry) is a self-taught chef who gets nominated to compete in The Kringle Cook-Off. Her mentor is Logan (Luke Humphrey), a self-involved chef that doesn’t like Christmas. Together, they try to come up with the perfect Christmas meal to submit for the contest.

Tia Mowry has become something of a Christmas movie staple. While her movies aren’t always amazing, they do usually cover interesting topics. The plot of chefs trying to figure out a Christmas theme isn’t new but the subplot of Alicia trying to find her birth parents made the story a little more interesting. As is typical with Lifetime movies, I would have preferred a little more time spend on the subplot but these type of movies rarely want to dive deeper into that territory. In the end, this movie is fine. There’s nothing awful about it but there’s nothing to keep the audience going either. A good background noise movie.

Rating: Can I have just a little sweet potato casserole?

Advent Day #18: A Gingerbread Romance

OMG. Another movie with a baker? But this time the baker is a MAN?! What is the world coming to?

So. In A Gingerbread Romance, Tia Mowry-Hardrict plays Taylor, an architect who is given an assignment to participate in a life-sized gingerbread house contest. Taylor gets Adam (Duane Henry), a local baker, to be her partner. Along with his daughter, Brooke (Melody Nosipho Niemann), Adam teaches Taylor the ways of Christmas.

I am going to give the movie props for making the male lead the baker and the female lead the architect. (Yeah, we’ve already seen a female architect this season in A Majestic Christmas. Maybe it’s a new trope.) However, I have one giant problem with Gingerbread. I’m not sure if Mowry-Hardrict is uncomfortable with her mom bod or the director was trying to hide her second pregnancy (I’m not sure when the movie was filmed but she gave birth on May 5, 2018) but she spends the entire movie in either a cardigan, a jacket, or one giant sweater. (Yes, she has one giant sweater she wears without the jacket or cardigan. Everything else is covered up.) It was a little distracting to see everyone else wearing typical winter indoor wear and she has on a trenchcoat. As a matter of fact, it is what ruined the movie for me. It made it feel like there was some sort of judgement toward larger people. Which is annoying because she is absolutely not fat!

The rest of the movie was pretty bland. Taylor kept going on about how she travels so much and how she is an ARCHITECT so, therefore, she knows what she is talking about. And Adam repeatedly talks about how he wants to own his own bakery but the investors wouldn’t back him because he dropped out of culinary school. (I don’t think that’s how it works?) I suppose it’s awesome how Taylor includes Adam’s daughter in the project but it somehow feels contrary to her character. It’s more Tia and less Taylor.

If you are a fan of Tia Mowry-Hardrict, it isn’t a terrible watch. Just don’t expect an epic romance or even a decent story. It’s just meh.