If you will recall, I banned the Marvista (or Mar Vista or MarVista) production company from last year’s Christmas movie list. Because they make terrible movies that have multiple names. When I turned on Mistletoe & Menorahs, I was greeted with the dreaded Marvista logo. I actually shuddered. But I made it through the movie…..let’s talk about it.

Christy (Kelley Jakle) is a toy company executive trying to land a new client. When she gets invited to the client’s holiday party, she is excited because she is all about Christmas. Her co-worker, Samantha (Cory Lee), quickly tells her that the client is Jewish! Samantha sets Christy up with her son’s history teacher, Jonathan (Jake Epstein), who will teach her all about Hanukkah. Meanwhile, Jonathan needs to learn about Christmas in order to impress his girlfriend’s father.

As Marvista movies go, this one was not terrible. It does have an alternate name, of course. A Merry Holiday. Mistletoe & Menorahs is a better title.

Also, this is the second time this season we have seen Jake Epstein as the male lead. He also was the writer/nanny in A Storybook Christmas. While it’s weird to see actors appear in more than one Christmas movie per season, I don’t mind it. Jake is a very charming leading man. (I bet that Marvista filmed this movie years ago and only released it now. That tends to be the way they work.)

The movie itself is pretty good, for the most part. My main problem is that Jonathan teaches Christy all about the history of Hanukkah while Christy only teaches him about the surface of Christmas. She teaches him about decorating trees and wrapping presents but nothing about the story behind Christmas. Maybe that is how the writers kept the story from getting too preachy. It just seemed a little odd.

Well, should you watch this? Yes. This isn’t a great movie. There are definitely some flaws. But it was entertaining and I think I might try to find other movies starring Jake Epstein. He is quite charming.