A Magical Christmas Village | 2022 Christmas Movies

Hallmark usually puts their magical item movies over on their Movies & Mysteries channel. A Magical Christmas Village managed to make it to the main channel! That must mean it’s not very magical, right?

Summer (Alison Sweeney) is working on rebuilding an old building in town while raising her daughter Chloe (Maesa Nicholson). When her mother, Vivian (Marlo Thomas), has to move in, Summer’s perfect world is rocked. Vivian sets up a miniature Christmas replica of the town and tells Chloe that any wish she makes will come true. As Chloe creates scenarios with the mini villagers, wonderous things begin to happen.

It’s funny that the movie is named after the Christmas village set but the set isn’t highly featured. Yes, we get scenes of Chloe setting it up and playing with the characters. Those scenes are fairly far apart though. Granted, we still understand that Summer and Ryan’s (Luke Macfarlane) budding romance is only happening thanks to Chloe. But maybe we could have had a little more of the village appear.

Both Sweeney and Macfarlane are decent actors and Marlo Thomas is classic television royalty. So the movie is not lacking in the talent department. However, it is a basic by-the-book Christmas romance movie. The Christmas village twist does make it slightly more interesting. But I think the most interesting part of the movie is Vivian’s character. Her hippy ways seem way more magical than the village. It might have been cooler if all of the magic was Vivian’s. Like she was the one making her granddaughter’s wishes come true.

A Magical Christmas Village is actually a pretty good movie. It’s not the most interesting that we’ve seen so far but it’s not terrible. I think this is the first movie where we’ve had the two romantic leads actually have something real in common instead of only living on the same street or in the same town. This was one of the few couples I was rooting for. Thankfully, it’s a Hallmark movie so I knew they were going to get together in the end.

UnPerfect Christmas Wish | 2022 Christmas Movies

Another channel brand new to this year’s Christmas movie review list is UPtv. UPtv was formerly the Gospel Music Channel, which rebranded in 2013 to focus on family friendly entertainment. You’ll find shows like Gilmore Girls, Highway To Heaven, and Reba there. We’re focusing on the Christmas movies. First up, UnPerfect Christmas Wish.

Madison (Alys Crocker) and Cooper (David Pinard) have been best friends for over 20 years. Cooper has always been in love with Madison but she is very unaware of it. Currently, she is dating Luke (Ish Morris), who is rich and handsome and perfect…and travels a lot. Madison wants someone who will prioritize her in their life. If only she would realize that Cooper does that plus so much more.

This movie was so utterly frustrating. Every time we see Cooper, he is doing everything he can for Madison. Even we when see them as kids, he jumps on stage to help alleviate her stage fright during a Christmas concert. When they are adults, he literally takes on a second job with her company to be a Christmas elf with her. Madison, on the other hand, is so self-centered that she does nothing for Cooper. As a matter of fact, she actually screws him over a number of times. For example, he told her that he really wanted to go to his brother’s party. He ended up missing it because Madison was sad that Luke didn’t take her out for a super special exclusive date with just the two of them. Luke was in town so he took all of his friends out to dinner. He never said anything to Madison about just the two of them going out. So Madison ruined Cooper’s night because she made stupid assumptions. (As a side note, Madison has been dating Luke for like six months and most of those were long distance. This isn’t a close, long term relationship we’re talking about.) Cooper deserves so much better than Madison.

There are also some weird things I don’t understand. Jackie (Bukola Ayoka) is another of Madison’s best friends. She is never referred to as a roommate. However, Jackie acts like she lives with Madison…except for one scene where she makes Cooper use a hidden spare key to let her in the house. But Jackie makes a lot of coffee and bakes cookies and brings all sorts of pets there. Very confusing. Then there is this other scene where Luke rents out the studio where Madison takes yoga classes to give her the date she wanted the night before. It seems like he rented it at the last minute but no one else shows up to take the now-cancelled yoga class? Madison shows up with her yoga mat and in workout clothes so I don’t think an email blast was sent out to the whole class. Did the teacher call everyone individually? Even then, there is always one or two people that don’t get the message in time and show up anyway. This scene was dumb.

UnPerfect Christmas Wish is in this weird in-between place. It wasn’t a terrible movie. It wasn’t even all that boring. There’s some cute songs to offset any boredom that starts to set in. However, all of the characters are kinda terrible people. Cooper is probably the best and he lets Madison walk all over him. I would probably recommend skipping this one but you won’t hate yourself if you end up watching it anyway.

Another Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

This is the first year that I noticed a Christmas movie on the Roku channel. As usual, I didn’t do a lot of research before watching it so I knew nothing about Another Christmas before tuning in. I wish I knew less about it now.

Kelly (Sheena Faust) is an elementary school teacher alongside her friend, Tyler (Jimmy Willis III). Just before Christmas, Kelly gets a text from her ex-boyfriend (and Tyler’s best friend), Andrew (Malik Brazile). The two had parted on bad terms and Kelly is not willing to risk her heart again. But when Andrew comes home for the holidays, things just might change.

Another Christmas is a bad movie. Not a boring one, a bad one. And there are a lot of reasons why. First off, there are way, way too many characters. The movie begins by introducing each character or character pairing separately. It makes it very difficult to understand how the characters relate to each other. Instead of getting like five scenes that have nothing to do with each other, introduce the characters by having each of them come home for Christmas and we first meet them as they greet their family and friends. Or have a bunch of them meet up at a bar or restaurant or something. We, the audience, need something to bind these characters together and the movie doesn’t give us that.

Second, this is writer/director Stacie Davis’s first film as a director and it shows. There are a lot of strange shots where someone’s arm is in front of the camera and the audio echoes like they are in a tin can and the actors aren’t given direction so they just stand in one spot to talk to each other. It feels more like a movie a bunch of friends got together to make than a professional production. Davis only has one other script under her belt, Christmas in Carolina, which released in 2020. I’m not sure if Carolina suffers the same issue but the writing in Another Christmas comes off as if Davis has never held a conversation or even overheard someone talking. The sad thing is that I think this could have been a good script if it had gone through a couple more drafts and had some outside proofreaders.

Finally, give us an actual ending. This movie ended so abruptly that I actually had to rewind it and watch it again to make sure I didn’t miss something. I’m going to tell you the ending because there isn’t anything that it spoils. Camilla and Maison are a married couple having problems. The movie ends with Maison giving Camilla the keys to a Bermuda vacation house. She squeals excitedly, hugs him, and CREDITS. I have never seen a more jarring ending in my life. At no point do the two of them talk about wanting to own a vacation house in Bermuda. And Maison buying a whole house without talking to Camilla first doesn’t solve any of their problems. if anything, it’ll cause more problems. But we don’t get to know about any of that because the movie is DONE.

I really badly want some excellent Christmas movies that star people of color. The Liddle family series is a perfect example of a terrible movie that had great sequels and almost the entire cast is black. (I think there was a white neighbor in one of the movies.) All Another Christmas has to do is cut out part of the cast in order to focus on one or two of the couples and bump up the writing. I can’t recommend watching this movie but I am hopeful that something better is on the horizon.

Ghosts of Christmas Always | 2022 Christmas Movies

Every year, we get at least one take on the Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. This year, Hallmark gives us Ghosts of Christmas Always. Let’s hope it’s better than some of their other versions of the story.

Arlene (Lori Tan Chinn), Katherine (Kim Matula), and Roy (Reginald VelJohnson) are the ghosts of Past, Present, and Future, respectively. They get assigned to help Peter (Ian Harding) recover his Christmas spirit. After the trio finishes their task, they realize there was a mistake. Peter is not the one that needed their help. It turns out the one needing their help is a little closer to home.

Usually, these remakes of A Christmas Carol are terrible. They are uninspired and boring. Not this time around. Ghosts of Christmas Always is entertaining and somehow manages to keep the audience guessing about what will happen next, even though everyone knows the classic story. Chinn as Arlene is magic to watch. She may not be the main character but I would watch a million movies featuring Arlene and Roy traveling around time helping people. As for Katherine and Peter, it was really refreshing to see the two leads honestly have a will-they/won’t-they relationship where you know they will because it’s a Hallmark movie but HOW will they? They had the right amount of flirting and the right amount of “we shouldn’t do this” overtones without being creepy.

But I think my favorite part of the movie is how humble the writers made Peter. He is a wealthy man who has grown up in a wealthy family. Yet every step he takes, without his father’s condescending looks, is to try to make other people’s lives better. Even when Arlene takes him in the past, he responds with “I should have given away more of my presents” instead of any sentiment that should have landed him the Scrooge role. Again, it is a very nice twist on Dickens.

If you are still asking me if you should watch this, yes, absolutely, definitely. It is still early in the Christmas movie season but I can see this making this year’s top Christmas movie list. This may actually be a movie I actually watch again at some point. And that almost never happens!

Christmas Bedtime Stories | 2022 Christmas Movies

I keep forgetting that Hallmark throws all of their military-themed Christmas movies on their Movies & Mysteries channel. While I don’t have a problem with characters being in the military or characters having family members in the military, these movies feel like they are fetishizing the military. It kinda makes my skin crawl. And, yes, that includes Christmas Bedtime Stories.

Danielle’s (Erin Cahill) Marine husband goes missing during a mission gone bad. His is the only body they did not find in the wreckage. Three years later, Danielle’s daughter, Audry (Alice Comer), starts asking about her father. As Danielle tells her bedtime stories about Colby (Charlie Weber), Danielle mysterious things occur that happen to be related to each story. Despite trying to move on with her new fiancé, Pierce (Steve Lund), Danielle can’t shake the feeling that Colby may not actually be dead.

Uggghhh. There are so many things I hate about this movie. Why did Audry not only wait three years to ask about her father but also wait until the literal day her mother gets engaged to another man? A man that both of them supposedly like a lot. Why does Danielle agree to marry Pierce anyway? She never seems to enjoy his company, much less love him. Why do all of the mysterious things keep happening? If this isn’t Colby’s ghost giving some sort of “remember me!” events, why would the universe be like “Yep, Colby’s alive. That is why this Christmas tree salesguy called his trees the same exact phrase Colby did! And yep, all bells everywhere now have red ribbons because Colby gave you one of those. Oh, and here’s a freak snowstorm because there was a snowstorm when you gave birth to your kid.” It’s all just so dumb.

I always feel bad giving negative reviews to movies that feature military members. It makes me sound like I hate the military and I don’t. What I hate are movies that go out of the way to make the military look like some angelic force that can do no wrong. If you don’t think that is what is happening here, wait until the end of the movie and tell me that final scene doesn’t look like some sort of holy ghost. The whole scene even has that hazy dreamlike filter on it. It drives me crazy. Sure, we can have Colby miraculously be the only survivor of a devastating disaster and show back up three years later. But don’t make it look like he’s been living it up at a tropical resort drinking margaritas the whole time. That’s messed up.

In my opinion, I don’t think you should watch Christmas Bedtime Stories. There isn’t anything good here. The acting is terrible, poor Pierce who does nothing wrong gets screwed over in every single scene, and the ending is simply unbelievable. I can suspend disbelief for most things. Not for that. I really hope that a better military-themed Christmas movie comes out later this year. I don’t think we’ve had a semi-decent one since 2020.

Jolly Good Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

For the first time this season, Hallmark is sending us overseas. Jolly Good Christmas takes place in London, though we don’t see a ton of the London sights. It’s mostly just stores.

David (Will Kemp) is trying to find the perfect Christmas present for his girlfriend, Charlotte (Sophie Hopkins). While browsing her favorite store, he bumps into Anji (Reshma Shetty), a personal shopper. Anji prides herself on finding the perfect gift for her clients. Maybe Anji can help David with his problem.

While both Shetty and Kemp are both good actors, Jolly Good Christmas doesn’t really give them good material to work with. A majority of the time they are walking around a store or Anji is quizzing him about Charlotte’s tastes. Both of the characters are about as interesting as cardboard. And not even like good looking cardboard cutout cardboard. A plain old empty cardboard box. That is what David and Anji are. I’m not even sure why they like themselves much less each other.

Jolly Good Christmas feels like a movie where the writer kept adding things to the characters instead of making them fully fleshed out human beings to begin with. Anji is a personal shopper but she’s not really all that good at it but she’s good enough to be writing a book about it but she lied about the first time she bought someone “the perfect gift.” David is an architect but he misses the one and only time his client has time to meet with him so he has to sneak into a party to try to meet him but his boss is at the party and, oh yeah, his boss is the father of his girlfriend so now she’s mad at him for some dumb reason. It’s almost like the writer took an improv course before writing this thing.

Don’t bother wasting your time here. This is probably one of the most boring Christmas movies I have watched in a long time.

Catering Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

One of the things that annoyed me during the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies were all of the commercial bumps featuring Candace Cameron Bure. You know, those are the things where she’s like “Join me for the best Christmas season at Hallmark!” or some sugar-coated saying. Well, now that she’s jumped to Great American Family, she still gets the commercial bumps but now they feel like digs at the Hallmark Channel. “You’ve found me at my NEW home!” Ugh. Go away, Candace.

Molly (Merritt Patterson) owns a catering business that keeps losing jobs to her competition. When she wins the chance to cater the annual Harrison Christmas charity gala, she puts her all into impressing her client. Meanwhile, Jean Harrison (Rosemary Dunsmore) is trying to convince her nephew, Carson (Daniel Lissing), to settle down and take over running the charity foundation. Jean puts Carson in charge of overseeing the catering, which means Molly and Carson spend more time together. Will Molly make Carson want to give up his traveling photography job and settle down in New Hampshire?

With Catering Christmas, Great American Family channel seems to be trying to put both Lifetime and Hallmark out of the Christmas movie business. I actually had a pretty good time watching it. Sure, there were some slow parts that had me reaching for my phone for some games but, overall, I enjoyed it. Patterson and Lissing had some decent chemistry. They seemed to enjoy sharing the screen, even if they didn’t always seem like they were attracted to each other. Let’s just say they are on the higher end of the Christmas Movie Couple Ranking. They’re just not quite at the top yet.

If you have access to the Great American Family channel, give some time to Catering Christmas. Even if you only subscribe to one of the streaming networks hosting the channel for a few months through the Christmas season, I think it might be worth the few bucks for it. Now if only there was somewhere I could buy Carson’s photography prints for myself….

A Cozy Christmas Inn | 2022 Christmas Movies

I believe there are two Jodie Sweetin Christmas movies this season. It’s a little unusual for a known actress to be in more than one Christmas movie per year. Perhaps she’s trying to steal the Christmas season from Candace Cameron Bure. Well, let’s see if A Cozy Christmas Inn is any good.

Erika (Jodie Sweetin) is a real estate executive working for Sharon (Vivica A. Fox). Sharon sends Erika to a small town in Alaska to purchase a local inn. When Erika arrives, she finds that the inn is owned by her ex-boyfriend, Andy (David O’Donnell). Will Erika be able to make the offer before she falls in love again?

To be honest, I didn’t expect a lot from A Cozy Christmas Inn. Generally speaking, movies about inns or bed and breakfast places aren’t usually good. For some reason, they spend too much time on the hotel instead of the couple. While the romance shouldn’t be the sole focus of the movie, it should have a leading role.

Surprisingly, this hotel movie was quite good. It balanced Erika’s hesitancy at reconnecting with Andy, giving each of the interesting townspeople a small spotlight, and the actual rekindling of the romance between Erika and Andy very well. Both Erika and Andy had their “I know better than you” moment but neither of those moments were mean about it. Sometimes romance movies make one part of the couple snarky about knowing something more or being better at something than the other person. In this case, Erika cooks Andy a meal and Andy gives Erika a pair of real boots (as opposed to dress boots). There is a little bit of fun ribbing - Erika kinda makes fun of Andy’s diet and Andy kinda makes fun of Erika thinking that dress boots are appropriate for Alaska - but it’s never in a mean way that would make the other person feel bad. It’s moments like this that make them feel like an actual couple.

While there isn’t a ton of Christmas in A Cozy Christmas Inn, this is a really good movie. There is some holiday spirit and a winkwinknudgenudge that says Andy might be Santa’s son. But even if you love tons of Christmas in your Christmas movie, I think you would enjoy this one. I almost want to say it’s the perfect Christmas romance movie. Almost.

A Kismet Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

The first weekend of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies ends with A Kismet Christmas. Yes, I also had to look up the meaning of ‘kismet’ since they use it a million times in the movie. It means destiny or fate. I guess they can only use ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ so many times before they run out of titles. It’s just kismet, right?

Mia (Marilu Henner) bakes kismet cookies - cookies that will tell you who your true love is when you sleep with one under your pillow on Christmas Eve. One year, Mia’s granddaughter, Sarah (Sarah Ramos), sneaks a kismet cookie under her pillow. It told her that her true love was the boy next door, Travis (Carlo Marks). Unfortunately, Travis was getting married that day. Embarrassed, Sarah rips up the recipe for the cookies and leaves the town of New Britain. Years later, Sarah is a children’s book author. Her publisher runs a contest and the winner lives in New Britain. Sarah is forced to return to town and face both her grandmother and her childhood crush.

On one hand, I found A Kismet Christmas interesting. On the other hand, the slow parts were very slow. I liked the idea of magical cookies that told you who your true love is. If the movie dove deep into that, I think I would have liked it more. However, since Sarah tore up the recipe within the first 15 minutes of the movie, the cookies aren’t around a lot. Instead, we get a lot of people hemming and hawing about how there aren’t any kismet cookies and they wish there were kismet cookies so they could know FOR SURE that a certain person liked them. And since there are no cookies to be baked, Grandma Mia is fairly useless. She makes very vague statements about things and doesn’t tell Sarah any of the important news that is fairly necessary to her life. I think the movie would have been more interesting if the cookies were still around and the conflict is whether the magic in the house is leaving since Mia is planning on selling it.

Instead of the cool things, A Kismet Christmas focuses on Travis and his daughter, Jasmine (Rubi Tupper). In the beginning, Sarah was mortified about having to face Travis again after interrupting his wedding. She got over that so quickly and she spends a majority of the movie helping Jasmine with her contest-winning project or helping Travis make Jasmine happy. I understand that the writers wanted them to spend more time together to push the romance but it’s insinuated that they have always loved each other. Again, the focus should have been on the magic cookies and house. They could have easily had Travis and Jasmine try to help figure out why the house is losing its magic and how to get it back. It’s a much more interesting story.

Should you watch it? Probably not. Unfortunately, I think the boring parts outweigh the interesting parts. Which makes me sad because there was so much potential there. At least it’s only the beginning of the movie season. Maybe there will be something better soon.

Destined At Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

Destined At Christmas is my first jump into Christmas movies from the Great American Family channel. This is the channel that Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar left Hallmark for. This is also the channel run by the former CEO of Hallmark who didn’t like Hallmark including LGBTQ+ people in their programming. I’m not sure exactly what to expect but my expectations aren’t high.

Kim (Shae Robins) and Theo (Casey Elliott) meet while shopping on Black Friday. The two hit it off but lose touch after getting separated during a power outage. For the next month, they try to find each other. Close calls and misunderstandings abound until they are finally able to reconnect.

To be honest, I was expecting some sort of “God will work things out” message. That never happened. Instead, it was two people trying to find each other with the limited information they had. Granted, the whole movie could have been avoided if Theo just called out for Kim when he left the store. She called out for him but since she left first, he didn’t hear her. And there were a couple of weird places where they asked for the personal information of the other person. Why would a random store give out the contact information for one of their customers to a random person walking in off the street? For the sake of The Plot, I will give them a pass.

Surprisingly, I actually liked Destined At Christmas. Sure, it was a little cheesy but the acting wasn’t awful and the script was pretty decent. It would have been better if they had ditched the two potential love interested for Kim and Theo since they had zero influence on the main plot. However, I do understand what they were going for.

Destined At Christmas most likely isn’t going to make it to my list of top Christmas movies this year. That doesn’t mean it was a waste of time to watch. Grab a really good cup of hot chocolate and maybe your cell phone for the slower parts. I don’t think you’ll regret watching it.