The 2022 Christmas movie season has started! We’re starting the season with Hallmark Channel’s Noel Next Door. And, yes, of course the title is a pun on the main character’s name.

Noelle (Natalie Hall) is a divorced single mom to Henry (Callum Shoniker). While waitressing at a local diner, she meets Jeremy (Corey Sevier), a stroke survivor. The two hit it off but little does Noelle know that Jeremy is the neighbor that has been terrorizing the neighborhood with his anti-Christmas ways. Will they be able to reconcile their differences?

I’m not sure if it’s because this is the first Christmas movie of the season or if it was actually good but I quite enjoyed Noel Next Door. Usually, I find all of Corey Sevier’s characters unbearably annoying. This time around, he manages to somehow combine the “annoyed at life” and “charming leading man” types somewhat smoothly. I think my only complaint for him is that he is a little inconsistent with his character physicality. I know that not all stroke survivors have the same issues afterward. He just needs to decide when his limbs will and won’t work for him.

As for Natalie Hall, I think most of the time she chooses terrible scripts. She is frequently cast as a cardboard cutout of a woman that has zero personality. In Noel Next Door, her character has a little more depth to her. It nice to see the change since I don’t think Hall is a bad actress. She just makes bad decisions when it comes to Christmas movies.

While I think that Noel Next Door is a very watchable movie, it isn’t particularly groundbreaking. We still have the “one person hates Christmas, the other person will fix that” trope. But it isn’t the main point of the movie and I think that is what makes it better. The movie focuses more on the relationships than it does the holiday. That is almost always a win in my book.