Cassandra Morgan

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Blending Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

I am so confused about who the target audience for Blending Christmas was. We have The Brady Bunch kids, one of the dads from My Two Dads, one of the aunts from Sabrina The Teenage Witch, and the aunt from Family Matters. It was a gathering of stars from sitcoms from the 70s through the 90s. Very strange.

Liam (Aaron O’Connell) wants to propose to his girlfriend, Emma (Haylie Duff). Her favorite place to spend the holidays, The Hacienda da la Sierra, will be going out of business soon. So Liam invites both of their families to come spend one last holiday with them at the resort. Will Liam be able to propose to Emma with the chaos of both families surrounding them?

I fully admit that I had a very difficult time watching this movie. Instead of seeing the characters, I kept seeing all of the actors’ old roles. Tell me that you can look at Barry Williams, Mike Lookinland, Christopher Knight, and Susan Olson together and not think of The Brady Bunch. They even added Jennifer Elise Cox who played Jan Brady in the Brady Bunch movies from the late 90s. Literally, only Marsha was missing.

The sad part is that the premise of Blending Christmas wasn’t that bad. They could have even doubled down on the Brady references by putting all of the men on Liam’s side of the family and the women on Emma’s. I think the writers didn’t do it because it would have made the families seem uneven. Cox only showed up via Facetime/Zoom calls and Olson was the only other Brady girl there. It also would have made it easier to tell who was in which family. As it is, I kept getting everyone mixed up.

Is it a movie worth watching? Sure, for the nostalgia factor. Unless you are able to divorce the actors from their iconic roles, I can’t see how this would be a good movie to watch for the movie’s sake. All of the good parts get lost in the chaos. I wish that the writers had toned down the craziness of the family to focus a little more on the couple at the center of everything. And I don’t think I say that very often.