Before diving back into Hallmark and Great American Family and Lifetime, I watched one more movie from Hulu. Reporting For Christmas. Let’s see if it’s a hot story or a dud.

Reporter Mary Romero (Tamara Feldman) wants to make a difference in her community. When she is given a puff piece on a family-owned Christmas toy factory, she tries to tell the story of the family and the Iowa town. Unfortunately, her bosses have a different agenda.

While I understand what they were going for here, I wish there was a little more. The factory is the largest company in this little town but we hear very little from actual townspeople about it. There is a montage of Mary interviewing people but that mostly focuses on the fact that the factory’s head of marketing, Lexi (Maura Kidwell), keeps trying to put the toys in every shot. The only information we really get about the history of the factory and how it has changed the town is from Blake (Matt Trudeau), who is the grandson of the man that created the company. And Blake isn’t exactly telling the right story. It would have been nice to actually hear from the townspeople how the factory changed their lives.

Also, there are a lot of the same “reporter” tropes in the movie. I was easily able to tell what was going to happen and how the movie would end. That isn’t always a bad thing but I shouldn’t be able to tell you “Oh, this is how it’ll end” by the middle of the movie. Change it up a little. People don’t really want cookie cutter movies, even though studios think they do.

Rating: Mistle-groan