Usually, when we get a Christmas movie with a gay main couple, that couple is male. Lifetime changes it up with Under The Christmas Tree. Women rule this time around.

Charlie (Tattiawna Jones) is a tree whisperer. With her partner, Rohan (Shawn Ahmed), she is looking for a Christmas tree for the state capital. She finds the perfect tree on property owned by Alma (Elise Bauman) and her parents. Can Charlie convince Alma to let her cut down the tree?

I was intrigued to see where Under The Christmas Tree was going to go. After all, it was written by the guy that wrote 2020’s The Christmas Setup, which was really good. Thankfully, this one wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t quite as good as Setup but it wasn’t boring. Instead of trying to force the two women together, they were allowed to have the “love at first sight” moment that so many straight movies have. The first time Alma sees Charlie, she stumbles over her words. Charlie is a little more confident so she gets the “you know you want to be with me” personality. It was really nice to see this change. Having to watch women be stereotypically female all the time in Christmas movies sucks. I liked seeing all of the women have very different personalities.

With that said, I wouldn’t say this is the best Christmas movie. It still has some very slow parts and the main tree conflict is stupid. They also keep trying to throw Ricki Lake into scenes for no real reason. I think they wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth casting her.

Despite the slow parts, it was a decent movie to watch. It didn’t fully capture my attention but I was able to pay more attention than I have in the other movies I’ve watched this month.