Advent Day #11: Santa's Boots

Yes, this movie is called Santa’s Boots. It’s a title that doesn’t make sense until pretty much the end of the movie. Yes, I agree that it’s a dumb title. But let’s try to look past it.

When Holly (Megan Hilty) is forced to take a vacation from her job in Seattle, she heads home to celebrate the holidays with her family. Tired of putting up with her overly critical mother, Holly heads over to the family’s department store to hide. However, she ends up getting wrangled into being an elf for the store’s Santa, who happens to be a young, hot guy named Nick (Noah Mills). Of course, they fall in love.

“Wait, that synopsis didn’t say anything about boots!” You’re right. That is because the boots are an extremely small part of the story. Holly falls in love with Nick, Nick’s uncle falls ill, and Nick kinda ghosts everyone to spend time with his uncle in the hospital. Nick had left his well-loved boots at the department store to get repaired right before the aforementioned uncle issue. Since Holly doesn’t know how to find Nick (other than calling back the Santa temp agency guy when their first call was lost), she decides to pull a ‘Cinderella’ and have a ton of strange men try on Nick’s boots until she finds him. So, see? Nick is the store’s Santa and Holly uses his boots to try to find him. Hilarious, right? I didn’t think so either.

The rest of the movie doesn’t make a lot of sense either. Like so many of the women in these movies, Holly hides the fact that her family owns the store. I’m not sure why anyone would care that she’s the boss’s daughter. She’s still dressed like a freaking elf. And, even though Holly and Nick hit it off, neither of them bother to exchange contact information. Holly does call the Santa temp agency, run by Nick’s friend Rob (Matt Hamilton). Rob loses cell reception in the hospital but at no point does Holly try to call him back. Or send the card to Rob’s company that she talked about. There are so many other ways Holly could have tried to find Nick. If I was Nick, I would have been pissed that she had all of these men trying on my shoes that I just got repaired. But this is a Lifetime movie, of course. And in the Lifetime universe, this is cute.

Do I recommend this movie? Not really. It was so boring. The best thing about the movie was Patricia Issac’s singing. I’m not sure it’s worth sitting through the entire movie for a few snippets of Christmas music. Especially when there are better movies out there.

Advent Day #10: Homegrown Christmas

Another staple of holiday romance movies is “women who chose careers over family and are now miserable.” That is the basic premise of this movie. It’s probably my least favorite of the storylines.

Maddie (Lori Loughlin) has sold her popular shoe company. Now that she doesn’t have anything to do, she goes home to celebrate the holidays with her family, who happens to own a wood-working company that makes furniture. Her high school sweetheart, Carter (Victor Webster), works for the family company. Even though they are barely on speaking terms, Maddie and Carter have to work together to plan the high school’s winter dance.

I have issues with this movie. They aren’t giant issues but they are there. A lot of the “tension” in the movie is a result of two things: Carter didn’t move to New York with Maddie and Maddie didn’t stay in Claremont with Carter. The two of them harbor so much resentment over the fact that their high school relationship didn’t continue after graduation. I don’t think they state how old the characters are supposed to be but Lori Loughlin is 54 years old and Victor Webster is 45 years old. That is an awful long time to hold onto an ex. I can get into a “They were The One” plot as much as anyone but it just doesn’t work well here.

Also, Maddie frequently tells Carter how talented his woodwoorking is and how he should have his own business. Carter isn’t interested in owning a business and he’s not convinced that anyone would buy his work. Well, one - not everyone would be a good business owner. Just because he is good at making things doesn’t mean he would be good at selling it or keeping the books or any of the other things required to be a business-owner. Two - Carter makes the furniture for the family business! It may not be super creative like the wooden ornaments or miniature houses he made but they are the entirety of the family’s business and it is doing well enough that Maddie’s dad had retired before he passed away and now her mom is retiring. Most business-owners don’t get to do that!

If you can look past some of the problems in the movie, it’s not completely terrible to watch. It is more of a ‘turn on in the background for noise’ rather than a movie you can actually enjoy. I guess this is the first real dud for the Hallmark Channel.

Advent Day #9: Christmas Lost and Found

Have we actually moved into a land of good Lifetime movies? It’s a little difficult to believe but these past few movies haven’t been too terrible. Christmas Lost and Found seems to follow the current trend of decent Lifetime Christmas movies.

In Lost and Found, Whitney (Tiya Sircar) is an event planner who lives in New York but came to her hometown of Chicago to visit her grandmother, Frances (Diane Ladd). Frances gives Whitney all of the Christmas ornaments they had collected over the years but Whitney accidentally throws them away while cleaning. A mysterious letter shows up sending Whitney and Frances’s neighbor, Brian (Edward Ruttle), on a scavenger hunt around town to find the lost ornaments.

When I saw that Tiya Sircar from The Good Place was the lead actress here, I was hopeful that this would be a good movie. I like quite like her. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. To be honest, the only thing I didn’t really like about the movie was the lack of focus on the actual scavenger hunt. Instead of making the entire movie about that, the writers gave Whitney a job (planning a party and designing a Christmas window for a local department store) that divided her time. While that was nice in itself, it took away from the importance of finding the ornaments. Whitney would frequently just put the next clue in her handbag instead of reading it right away because she had to run off to a meeting or something for the store. I think I would have liked it better if it was just a fun-filled frantic romp around town.

My recommendation? Give it a go. If anything, you’ll come to love Sircar just as much as I do. And that is always a good thing.

Advent Day #8: The Christmas Pact

Finally! A Christmas movie on Lifetime that doesn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out! Actually, this one was pretty darn cute. I did start out hoping this movie was some sort of sequel to A Different World (for those of you that don’t know, The Cosby Show had a spin-off and it was awesome and it was called A Different World) but it wasn’t. Sad times.

No, A Christmas Pact is the story of the lifelong friendship between Sadie (Kyla Pratt) and Ben (Jarod Joseph). When the movie starts, the pair are eight year old kids. The two of them plant a small Christmas tree in the backyard of their church. Then they make a pact that they will return to that spot every Christmas to keep the magic of Christmas alive. And they mostly follow through, until they grow up and Sadie becomes a professional photographer who travels the world. But Ben always shows up. Eventually, Sadie comes back home and the pact resumes. Everyone else can see that they are in love but will they ever realize it?

Now why did I think this may be A Different World sequel? Because Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Hardison play Sadie’s parents and they were the on-again/off-again couple, Whitney and Dwayne, in the series. While my heart was a little broken that they were playing different characters, I did enjoy seeing them together again. They definitely play a great couple.

As for the movie itself, I found myself actually liking it a lot. I thought that the characters stayed true to their friendship the entire time. Granted, it did seem that they didn’t keep in touch very often when they weren’t on-screen. They could have easily called each other or written letters or whatever but I think most of the ‘out-of-touchness’ was for the benefit of the audience so we knew what was going on in their lives. It was strange but not completely out of the realm of possibility. And, really, it didn’t matter that much. We were here to watch them change as they grew to see if they would grow together or apart. (OK, well, we knew it wasn’t going to be apart…it would be a terrible movie, otherwise.)

I think that is why Pact was so different from other movies. Most Christmas rom-coms need some sort of fabricated conflict to throw two adults into a relationship. This time around, we got to see a relationship turn from friendship into romance. And it was adorable.

Advent Day #7: A Majestic Christmas

I never thought that I would be looking forward to a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. After Lifetime’s duds, I’m depending on Hallmark to save the season. Movie-wise, at least.

A Majestic Christmas is a slightly different kind of Christmas movie. This one isn’t about the romance as much. Nell (Jerrika Hinton) is from a small town called Briar Falls. Every year, they have a 12 Days of Christmas Festival, which ends with a grand production in the town’s theater, The Majestic. The previous owner of The Majestic passed away, leaving it to her nephew, Connor (Christian Vincent). He has decided that, instead of keeping it as a theater, he’s going to change the building into a multi-plex. Nell, an architect, gets the project from her firm. Everyone in town is sad that they are losing their theater but maybe Nell can get Connor to change his mind.

While I didn’t love this movie, I did enjoy it. I liked that the romance aspect took a backseat to the community events. Instead of trying to make Connor fall in love with her, Nell tried to make Connor fall in love with Briar Falls. Yes, it still had a lot of the problems all of these movies have - people’s jobs are sketchy or they are doing things that don’t really fall into their actual job’s realm, everyone seems to have bundles of money even though they would barely make any with the jobs they have, etc. - but, well, you just have to expect those and look beyond them. I’m more concerned about the characters and the story. Are the ladies in the movie simply as a love interest or are they more than that? In Nell’s case, she is more. She still seems like a young woman who doesn’t quite know where she fits in the world but she is working hard to figure it out and she isn’t relying on anyone to help her do it.

So maybe it’s not a Christmas Classic but it is a Christmas Enjoyment.

Advent Day #5: A Twist of Christmas

You know, I think Lifetime was a little jealous of Jingle All The Way so they figured they had to make their own toy-based Christmas movie. Thankfully, this doesn’t follow Jingle’s path. Instead of parents fighting to find the difficult-to-get awesome toy of the year, A Twist of Christmas has two busy parents mixing up their shopping bags and getting each other’s purchases.

On one side, we have Abby (Vanessa Lachey), a writer for a parenting magazine who lives her life following strict schedules. On the other side, we have Ryan (Brendon Zub), a lawyer who takes life as it comes. Of course, both of them are single - Abby is widowed and Ryan is divorced. As I said, they mix up their purchases but then, thanks to a whole lot of misfortunes, have to spend way more time together as planned. Which makes them fall in love. Of course.

I ended up watching this movie with my 16-year old daughter. And both of us are VERY confused. Throughout the movie, they talk about how each family spends Christmas Day. Multiple times it seems like it IS Christmas Day, only for a character to say Christmas is the next day. Maybe we missed something very important but it seems like time has no meaning here.

Another confusing part, for me anyway, is that Abby’s parents come to celebrate Christmas but are completely useless. Abby asks Ryan to babysit her son, Elliot (Christian Convery), even though her parents are RIGHT THERE. They could babysit him! There is one point in the movie where they are babysitting both Elliot and Ryan’s daughter, Jasmine (Lina Renna), but only because both Abby and Ryan decide to take a long walk to the store? It really makes no sense.

Oh heck, let’s pile the rest of the confusing things into one spot: I have no idea where this is supposed to take place. They reference some Washington DC spots but all of the trees have their leaves and it is very green outside. (Hey, Hollywood! In wintertime in the NorthEast, it is cold, trees have no leaves, and there is sometimes snow. Lush, green grass isn’t a thing in the winter months.) Then there’s a scene where all of the adults take the kids for pictures with Santa but it’s in a stadium? That has an ice rink. Where people both skate and walk in the same space. Yes, there were people ice skating right next to people walking around, looking at stuff. There was even a couple pushing a stroller on the ice. I don’t understand.

Twist isn’t nearly as bad as Love for Christmas. Not by a long shot. However, for most of the movie, Abby is a straight up bitch. She is just so MEAN. Ryan isn’t an amazing character either but I can kinda forgive him since he’s usually reacting to Abby’s terrible attitude. Even when Ryan cracks Abby’s control issues, they aren’t a good couple. I don’t understand why they end up falling in love. Especially in such a short time. At least I think it’s a short time. ARGH.

You know what would save this movie? Chrissy Teigen. I have decided that she would take Abby’s bitchiness and turn it into something charming. I don’t know how she would do it but I have confidence in you, Chrissy! You need to save Christmas!

Advent Day #4: A Shoe Addict's Christmas

Since A Shoe Addict’s Christmas first aired back in November, I was really hoping that Hallmark would re-air this in December so I could watch it. I mean, what Christmas movie list is complete without a Candace Cameron Bure movie? Thankfully, Hallmark came through for me.

Basically, this movie is a sort of romantic retelling of A Christmas Carol. Our girl, Candace, plays Noelle, a department store HR manager who (somehow) gets put in charge of helping plan a holiday gala for the local fire station. (The gala is for the fire station but the department store is footing the bill.) Firefighter Jake (Luke Macfarlane) gets assigned to help Noelle plan the festivities. One night, Noelle meets her guardian angel, Charlie (Jean Smart). Charlie tells Noelle that she has given up on her passions in life - photography and love. So Charlie uses shoes to transport Noelle back in time to show her the past three years of Christmases to get Noelle’s professional and love lives back on track.

Hm. Um. Yeah. Shoe Addict wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting. But that doesn’t mean it’s good either. While Noelle proclaims to love shoes, it feels empty. She continually claims that “every shoe has a story” but doesn’t really tell any stories about her shoes. I suppose we can say that Charlie using shoes to transport Noelle back to important moments in her life as a ‘shoe story’….no, no we can’t say that. Because those moments aren’t about the shoes at all. They are about Noelle saying no to things she should have said yes to. Then there is some shoehorned thing about a cross necklace that Noelle’s mom used to wear? It’s another semi-plot line that is introduced then thrown to the side until it’s needed again. Honestly, it feels like the writers wanted to throw so many things into the movie that they just couldn’t bear to cut any of them.

On the good side, I really did enjoy Jean Smart as the clutzy guardian angel. She seemed to be the most genuine character of the bunch. Everyone else turned their Cheese Factor up to 11. With that said, I’m glad I sat through a Candace Cameron Bure movie. I have seen a ton of commercials for her recent Hallmark movies but I’ve never actually sat through one. Now I feel like I sat through them all! And that is my recommendation - find one Candace Cameron Bure movie that sounds interesting and watch that one. Skip the rest.

Advent Day #3: Love For Christmas

Now that I have watched a Netflix movie, a Hallmark movie, and a Lifetime movie, I’m pretty sure that all the terrible movies will be on the Lifetime channel. Before I jump into the review, there are a few things you need to know about this movie. It’s not actually titled Love For Christmas. This is actually a 2012 movie titled A Golden Christmas 3 that has been repackaged as Love For Christmas. (Apparently, it’s also known as Home For Christmas. I’m not sure why one movie needs three names….) You should also know that this movie is quite terrible.

How do you know that a movie is going to be terrible? If the movie starts out with an awful song over the credits that goes on for too long, drowning out the first lines of the movie, you have walked straight into a terrible movie. Though, to be honest, we don’t really need those beginning lines because they are just a woman yelling for her dog.

Before we get to the dogs (even though the movie is kinda marketed as a dog movie), let’s talk about the actual people. Our heroine is Heather Hartly (Shantel VanSanten) is a community theater director who runs into an old friend from school, Bobby Alden (Rob Mayes). Bobby has just returned home from a stint in the Navy. However, Heather is currently dating her terrible boyfriend, Roger (Mark Famiglietti). Blah, blah, blah. Heather and Roger end up married.

Sadly, the actual plot of the movie is absolutely meaningless. Heather is supposed to be a theater director but she frequently lets the star of her play walk all over her. Mr. Cole (Orson Bean) straight up insults Heather every moment he gets. (Until the end of the movie, of course, when he turns out to have a heart of gold.) She also doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time in the actual theater. (I was a stage manager in college and my early 20s. You spend quite a bit of time in the theater. Especially right before the show opens.)

Heather also lets her drip of a boyfriend walk all over her. Supposedly, Roger and Heather have been dating for six years. SIX! Yet he doesn’t listen to a word she says. Every time she tries to have a conversation with her, he talks on his cell phone. He actually admits that he thought the theater was doing “Brigadoon” instead of “A Christmas Carol,” despite Heather talking about the play AND all of the signage on the theater building. (We see the signage frequently.) When Heather breaks up with him, he just brings her a second golden retriever puppy. Then he crashes her play rehearsal with terrible carolers (singing “We Wish You A Merry Roger”) in order to propose to her. Thankfully, he just disappears from the movie about halfway through.

Now. The dogs. There are three dogs in this movie: Heather’s puppy (maybe named Bandit? She stops using his name after the first 15 minutes.), Bobby’s sister’s dog, and the puppy Roger gives Heather. At no point are any of the humans in control of the dogs. The movie actually starts out with a montage of maybe-Bandit running away while Heather yells for him. Bobby’s niece, Myra (Alexandra Peters), tries to walk their dog but ends up getting pulled so badly that she needs Bobby to save her. Once Heather gets the second puppy (which stays unnamed until the end of the movie), both puppies run rampant in the theater. Does anyone really think this is cute? It’s not cute. It’s irresponsible dog ownership.

Usually, I can find one or two decent things about a movie. Something, typically the plucky best friend, that keeps me from thinking I wasted my time. But I don’t think there is anything redeemable in this movie. There is, legit, a 12-year old girl that says “I have had a lot of experiences with love.” That’s right! Not even the KID can save this movie! When Heather moves to New York on Christmas Day, people are walking around behind her in light jackets. Guess what, it’s really cold in New York in December. Not even NEW YORK can save this movie!

With a heavy heart, I cannot recommend this movie. I’d even recommend covering your dog’s eyes so they don’t see it either.

Advent Day #2: Mingle All The Way

I admit that I don’t usually watch Hallmark Channel movies. Most of the time, I find them unbearably cheesy. Mingle All The Way had a few moments that made me roll my eyes but I, generally, enjoyed the movie.

Molly Hoffman (Jen Lilley) is the founder of an app called “Mingle All The Way.” It’s a networking app where busy singles can find someone to be their ‘plus one’ at all of their company/social events. When Molly has to prove the app’s worth to a potential investor, she signs up and matches with Jeff (Brant Daugherty), a marketing professional. Despite a rocky start, the pair end up falling in love.

There were a few low points in the movie. The awkwardly blatant product placement for Jergens lotion was one. (Seriously, it was a random close up of the bottle as Molly squirted some on her hand.) Sadly, another low point was Molly’s mother, played by Lindsay Wagner. A lot of movies have at least one parent who puts too much pressure on the main character. However, Molly’s mother goes way too far. She is pretty much verbally abusive to her daughter. And she doesn’t change her stance until a man tells her how awful she’s being. (Thanks, Jeff! Molly’s dad should have stepped up years ago.)

With that said, I did enjoy the on-screen chemistry between Jen Lilley and Brant Daugherty. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy each other’s company and I think that is really what saved the movie. I don’t think I would watch the movie a second time but I would recommend checking it out at least once.

Coming Soon - My Own Advent Calendar

It is that time of year again. Time for the schlocky holiday romance movies to come out. To really kick off the rebirth of my blog, I will be doing my own sort of advent calendar. Every day from December 1 through December 25, I will post a review of a new holiday movie. Here are the rules:

1. The movie must be new for 2018. No previously released movies.

2. The movies will all be from one of three sources: Hallmark Channel, one of the Lifetime network channels (they will mostly be on Lifetime but some may be on the Lifetime Movie Network), or Netflix.

Yes, there are some holiday movies that have already aired. Apparently the holiday season begins in October, according to Hallmark Channel. Unless those movies are re-aired, they will not be reviewed. The cable channel movies will all be movies aired after December 1st. I’m giving Netflix a little more leeway since they have a weird release schedule.

If you have any movie suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. And make sure you call me out if I break any of my rules. (I mean, I made them…I should be able to follow them, right?) Let’s celebrate the holidays the right way!