The Merry Gentlemen | 2024 Christmas Movies

Netflix is very thirsty this year. First we had Hot Frosty with the muscular snowman coming to life. Now we have The Merry Gentlemen, a movie featuring shirtless male dancers. I’m afraid for the rest of this season.

Ashley (Britt Robertson) just got let go from her job as a dancer with the Jingle Belles. When she comes home to Sycamore Creek, she finds that the club her parents, Lily (Beth Broderick) and Stan (Michael Gross), own is very past due on the rent. If they don’t come up with $30,000 by Christmas, they will lose the space. To raise the money, Ashley decides to put on an all-male revue starring handyman Luke (Chad Michael Murray), bartender Troy (Colt Prattes), taxi driver Ricky (Hector David Jr.), and her brother-in-law Rodger (Marc Anthony Samuel).

As a dancer, this movie annoyed me. The Jingle Belles are supposed to be the Rockettes, complete with kickline. However, it’s painfully obvious that Robertson has zero dance experience and the director does absolutely nothing to try to hide it. Instead, she is put dead center of every dance, making the whole thing look amateurish.

This bleeds over into The Merry Gentlemen. Thankfully, Prattes has dance experience (he’s currently on Broadway in Aladdin) and David has martial arts experience (he was a Power Ranger). Those two are the saviors of the male revue. The other two move like it physically hurts them. I guess it’s a good thing they all work out so they have nice abs?

Sadly, even if you try to ignore the bad dancing, which is difficult since it’s the entire plot, the rest of the movie isn’t much better. The romance feels unearned. Ashley likes Luke because he is pretty and Luke likes Ashley because she taught him choreography? I really wish Netflix went in a different way with this. Hire some more actual dancers. I know this may sound stunning but there are dancers who can act. This would have been so much better if Ashley was a really good dancer and was able to take the “country bumpkins” and turn them into good dancers. But you have to cast people that can dance for that to happen. I am very disappointed.

Rating: The Rockettes would never

Holiday Mismatch | 2024 Christmas Movies

Hallmark has reunited Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick from the 1990s sitcom, Sabrina The Teenage Witch. They aren’t witches in Holiday Mismatch but they bicker almost as much.

Barbara (Broderick) has recently retired. She decides to volunteer to work on the town’s Holiday Committee to help plan festive events. There she meets Kath (Rhea), a long-standing member of the committee who isn’t quite as organized as Barbara. Meanwhile, each of them sets their adult child up on a date. When they realized that their kids are dating each other, the women decide to try to break the new couple up.

I love when Rhea and Broderick work together. They have such great comedic timing and they play off of each other so well that sometimes it’s difficult to believe aren’t rivals. Honestly, Holiday Mismatch should have been entirely about them. The romantic subplot was boring and unoriginal. If Hallmark really wanted to leave a romantic plot in, they should have made the kids dislike each other as much as their mothers did. It would have definitely been more interesting. As it is, get rid of the kids and leave the moms to form an unbreakable friendship. It doesn’t have to be all about romance, you know.

Rating: The kids ruin the fun, as usual.

When I Think Of Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

Hey, guess what? It’s another movie about singers! When I Think Of Christmas isn’t only about one singer though. We have three singers in this one!

Sara (Shenae Grimes-Beech) is a New York lawyer who has returned to her hometown to help her mother, Anna (Beth Broderick), move into a smaller home while celebrating the holidays. At one of the town festivities, she finds out that her ex-boyfriend and ex-singing partner, Josh (Niall Matter), is producing the town holiday concert. Will they spark a new love for music along with reigniting their love for each other?

When I Think Of Christmas is an interesting movie. There are a couple of conflicts that keeps the audience interested in staying tuned instead of just the big conflict with the main couple. Yes, I said main couple. This movie also has a secondary will-they/won’t-they couple! And each of the main characters have multiple conflicts. Does Hallmark want our brains to explode?

Here’s a quick rundown of the conflicts: Sara and her job, Josh and his job, Sara and Josh romantically, Anna and Sara’s history, and Sara and her romantic interest George (Mark Humphrey). While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a conflict, there’s also a big plot point about Anna and Sara remembering their deceased father/husband. We don’t normally get this much going on in a Hallmark movie. It’s nice to have stuff going on outside of romance. I know, I know. Romance is supposed to be all we think about. I don’t think I can roll my eyes any harder.

With all of that said, the script isn’t fabulous. There are a few weird things that no real human being would ever say to another but I will allow it this time. I will call When I Think Of Christmas a watchable movie that most people will enjoy. Go forth and sing thee thine carols!

Christmas Sweethearts | 2022 Christmas Movies

I think I get it now. The former CEO of Hallmark didn’t leave the channel because he thought “The Gays” were taking over. It was because people actually acted like they enjoyed being around each other. I think all of the movies I have watched on Great American Family, so far, have consisted of couples that didn’t even like being in the same room as each other. It explains a lot.

Ashley (Breanne Hill), a party planner living in Los Angeles, has come home for the holidays. When she finds out that her high school sweetheart, Grant (Tanner Novlan), is dating popular influencer Bella Vega (Masiela Lusha), she decides to pretend to date her friend and co-worker, Liam (Colton Little), in order to make him jealous. Things go awry when Ashley finally gets what she thought she wanted.

Sometimes the jealousy plotline works well. But it only works when all of the people involved like each other. There are some longing looks from Grant towards Ashley and we’re supposed to gather from the very beginning that Liam is in love with Ashley but it’s difficult to see either of the men actually wanting to date her. She comes off as very self-centered, especially since her entire plan is to break up a current couple. The only person I feel bad for in this movie is Bella. She didn’t do a single thing wrong except for maybe be a little on the dumb side.

My vote is to stay away from Christmas Sweethearts. I’m sure there will be another, better, jealousy Christmas movie this year. This one is just bad.

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.