As I’ve said before, I don’t do any research when I’m making the annual list of Christmas movies to watch. So when I saw one titled A Big Fat Family Christmas, it sounded offensive. The question was - how was it going to be offensive?

Liv Rose Chan (Shannon Chan-Kent) is a photo-journalist in San Francisco. Every year, her family throws a huge holiday party for the community. But Liv doesn’t wants to keep her professional life separate from her personal life. When the new journalist, Henry (Shannon Kook), is assigned to cover the holiday party with help from Liv, her life gets turned upside down.

I don’t understand why they titled this movie A Big Fat Family Christmas. If this is an Asian reference, I would love if someone from the Asian community could leave a comment or email me to let me know. I would greatly appreciate it.

The movie itself isn’t too bad. It’s mostly filled with Liv trying to keep Henry away from her family, even though Henry seems to know somehow. But the big conflict comes when Liv and Henry lose a bunch of money the community donated for charity. Liv has to come to terms with her family and being a part of the community. These are issues that are super important but the movie doesn’t want to get too deep about it. Everything is kept on the surface, which is a little sad. But I guess I can’t expect too much from a Hallmark Christmas movie.

While I didn’t find this particular movie very compelling, I do want as many people to watch it as possible. Hallmark (and other channels) need to know that we, the people, want to see more than just lily white characters in our romance movies. Christmas At The Golden Dragon is the better Asian-American Christmas movie of the season but, honestly, we need more than just two movies a year. Maybe if a bunch of people watch both movies, we can get more diversity in our leading characters.