Christmas On The Slopes | 2022 Christmas Movies

So this movie is called Christmas On The Slopes but it’s about chefs. Sure, they are cooking at a ski resort but that has little to do the with actual movie. My mind is boggled.

Sophia (Soma Chhaya) is a celebrity chef. When her latest restaurant in Savannah, GA fails on opening night, Sophia decides to take a Christmas vacation at a luxury ski resort. As she sneaks into the kitchen for a snack, the head chef, Ansel (Olivier Renaud), mistakes her for his new sous chef. Sophia doesn’t correct him and ends up helping him cater a wedding for a famous fashion designer.

Once again, a movie that could have been completely avoided if the lead characters simply had a conversation. It’s difficult to believe that Sophia owns any restaurants, much less three. At no point does she assert herself. Instead, she allows Ansel to walk all over her. How in the world could she run two successful restaurants without being at least a little assertive? Even if you want to say that was all her business partner, she would have had to be a little assertive at some point to become as famous as she did.

In addition to the conflict being dumb, at no point did I believe that Sophia and Ansel were falling in love. Even at the end during the Big Declaration Of Love, I didn’t believe it. Sure, they were spending time together outside of the kitchen but none of it felt romantic.

When Christmas On The Slopes ended, I didn’t have a particularly strong feeling about it. Now that I am rethinking the movie, I think I hate it. There definitely isn’t anything appealing about it. And Sophia is a terrible character. I’m saying not to watch this one…unless you really badly need ideas for recipes. Even then, you won’t get the whole recipe, you’ll just get general ideas like “add cranberries to bread” or “put sage in stuffing.” Useless information, really.

Christmas In The Wilds | 2022 Christmas Movies

What happens when you are in the wilderness and everything goes wrong? Nothing. Nothing happens.

Buck (Victor Zinck Jr) works for the Rescue Services for Wayne Forest. His girlfriend, Jessica (Kaitlyn Leeb), is spending Thanksgiving with his family when he gets called away to help rescue some stranded skiers in Avalon County. Instead of returning home, Buck chooses to spend a few weeks helping his old work partner, Meg (Jennifer Mote), clear some snow from the mountains to avoid avalanches. When he can’t get back home on Christmas Eve due to an impending storm, Jessica decides to go to him.

For a movie called Christmas In The Wilds, it was surprisingly boring. Every time the movie tried to make a new conflict interesting, it failed hard. Buck can't fly his plane out of Avalon County because he’s low on fuel and the fuel truck can’t get in due to snow. When Jessica decides to drive her Jeep to him, they decide to meet halfway at a family cabin. Buck and Meg take snowmobiles while Jessica drives. Jessica crashes her Jeep and changes to a sled pulled by dogs. Buck crashes his snowmobile so has to share with Meg. When the three finally meet up in the middle of nowhere, Meg decides to take one of the dogs to get a drink at the river and lets the dog step into a fox trap. Meg takes the injured dog back while Buck and Jessica continue to the cabin. But then the couple has to cross a raging river and Buck falls in and…..do you see where I’m going with this?

EVERYTHING goes wrong in this movie. And none of it is interesting because they just leap up from one issue only to run into another problem. The writers should have had someone be injured and stay injured. Like maybe Buck got hurt and Jessica had to pull him on a sled or something. But nope. Buck got injured in the snowmobile crash but we would never know because he’s perfectly fine. Then Buck, who works in RESCUE SERVICES, says it’s fine if they cross this ranging river in the middle of December? Buck is stupid.

Don’t watch Christmas In The Wilds. It’s stupid and annoying and annoyingly stupid.

Christmas Lucky Charm | 2022 Christmas Movies

I’m pretty sure that the woman who write Christmas Lucky Charm hates women. Or, at the very least, has a very low opinion of women.

Jessica (Sugenja Sri) runs her own bakery. For the past three years, she has been baking Christmas wedding cakes for her ex-boyfriends. Apparently, the new brides have been calling her a Christmas lucky charm. After she breaks up with a man, he will meet the love of his life before Christmas that year. With the help of gallery owner, Mitch (Adrian Spencer), Jessica hopes to break the tradition.

Ugh. This movie. In all of these ex-boyfriend scenarios, Jessica is the one that has ended the relationship. Why would it be so surprising that men who are looking for a commitment would find a new lasting relationship? Jessica wasn’t upset with the situation until she was told that the brides called her a good luck charm. Which makes it sound like men are going to want to date her solely so she can break up with them. Which, ew. This whole premise is stupid.

In addition to that, both the characters themselves and the acting in Christmas Lucky Charm are terrible. The actors say their lines as if they have never spoken to anyone before. Everything sounds extremely unnatural. And the characters? I’m positive they are all made out of cardboard. The most boring kind of cardboard there is.

Seriously, don’t watch Christmas Lucky Charm. UPtv seems to have a strange taste in movies. Most of them aren’t completely terrible but then you have things like this. Can we raise the bar just a little on Christmas romance movies? Please? Just having a person of color in a lead role isn’t nearly enough. The movies themselves need to be better.

The Picture of Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

We are a little over halfway through November and The Picture Of Christmas is the 34th Christmas movie I have watched this season. At this point last year, I had only watched 17 movies. No wonder this year feels insane!

Ember (Chelsea Hobbs) is a graphic designer in New York. She returns to Willow Hill in order to sell her late grandmother’s Christmas tree farm. While there, she finds her old storybook illustrations, rekindling her love for illustrating instead of just graphic design.

There seem to be a lot of inherited farms in this year’s Christmas movies. I would love to know why the ladies are always so surprised to find out their grandparents hired people to help them on the farm. Since these grandparents all die, I assume they are older people. Do they really think one or two elderly people can run an entire farm by themselves? Even if a grandparent didn’t tell me about their hired help, I would assume there was some sort of hired help. Especially if the farm is an actual working farm with an actual working business like a Christmas tree farm!

The Picture Of Christmas is a fine movie. There is nothing particularly stand-out about it. Ember’s drawing are nice. Emily (Mila Jones), the daughter of love-interest Brandon (Giles Panton), is adorable. She’s probably the best part of the entire movie. Otherwise, everything is bland. Ember tells Brandon that she’s selling the farm and potential buys come to see the place. Brandon wants to buy the farm but doesn’t want to tell Ember. It’s the same stupid conflict that could be solved if everyone was just honest with each other.

If you have nothing else to watch on television, The Picture Of Christmas would be all right to turn on and tune out to. If you are looking for something engaging, you won’t find it here. I would say to watch it for Emily and ignore all of the adults. They are boring anyway.

A Tiny Home Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

A Tiny Home Christmas is probably the first Christmas movie title that confused me. Is this about people that live in tiny homes celebrating Christmas? That seems weird. It did get me interested in the movie, which is the point of a title, right?

Blair (Rebecca Dalton) and Mason (Christopher Seivright) were not only co-hosts of a hit design show, they were also dating. When her father’s construction company started to fail, Blair quit the show and went home to help the family business. One of Blair’s ideas is to build a community of small homes for the town’s houseless citizens. Mason, who has come back to town to sell his house, accidentally walks in on Blair’s pitch to the state’s Secretary of Housing. Now they will need to work together to try to make this project come to life.

Surprisingly, I found A Tiny Home Christmas very endearing. As I think we all know by now, I enjoy movies where the romance doesn’t steer the entire plot. And that is what happens here. Blair’s passion to get this project going - both to help her father’s business and to get people into houses - is so sweet. Her annoyance with Mason does sour it a little but you can kinda see where she’s coming from . Even though that all could have been solved with a simple conversation. But we know how these movies go.

If I was to complain about anything in the movie, there is one tiny thing that bothered me. There was a hint that there was some sort of romance or at least flirting between Blair and Scott, one of her father’s employees. Mason even shows a bit of jealousy toward him. Yet it goes nowhere. I’m pretty sure there isn’t even a conversation about how they are just friends or that he works for her father or anything like that. It felt a bit misleading.

Other than that, I really liked A Tiny Home Christmas. I think this might be a movie that you could actually watch and enjoy. Even the montages were interesting!