Trivia At St Nick's | 2024 Christmas Movies

Trivia At St Nick’s is one of those movie titles that could be really good or be absolutely terrible. Honestly, I think the name of the lead characters’ trivia team would have been a better title…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Celeste (Tammin Sursok) is an astronomy professor who loves competing in the local bar’s Christmas trivia contest every year. Unfortunately, her team, The Quizmas Elves, have yet to win the big trophy. When her Jeopardy!-winning colleague has to drop out of the contest for a speaking engagement in Asia, Celeste is forced to accept Max (Brant Daugherty), the college’s football coach, onto the team to make the required number of members. As the team participates in team building activities that help them build their Christmas trivia knowledge, Celeste finds herself appreciating Max more than she thought possible.

Yes, I think The Quizmas Elves would have been a much cuter title than Trivia At St Nick’s. (St Nick being the name of the bar where the trivia contest is held.) Title aside, I did find this movie enjoyable. It focused more on learning new facts and building camaraderie amongst the team members than making Celeste and Max take romantic walks among the snowy trees or something. The movie also allowed whole trivia questions to be read so we, the audience, could participate at little as well. Usually movies with trivia fade out over half of a question to start another one so we don’t get to try to guess the answers ourselves. It was a nice change of pace.

I think my only critique is that they made Celeste a little too “Type A.” She almost becomes unlikeable by only letting certain teammates answer certain questions - for example, history buff Gary (Willie C. Carpenter) is only allowed to answer the history questions and get shushed when he tries to answer something outside of his expertise . I’m not sure why her team would stick around year after year. I know my friends and family would drop out of something that is supposed to be fun if I was super controlling. But, of course, that gets resolved by the end of the movie. I guess there needed to be some sort of conflict.

Rating: Merry Quizmas!

Joyeux Noel | 2023 Christmas Movies

The commercials for Joyeux Noel were pretty deceiving. They made it seem like this was a random woman wandering a Christmas market looking for love. Not once did they mention the Christmas mystery! I should have been looking forward to this one.

Lea (Jaicy Elliot) is a copy editor longing to be a reporter. When the newspaper’s lead Christmas story falls through, Lea convinces the editor to allow her to travel to France to try to find the story behind a long lost love from a local Christmas market. The editor agrees, as long as she brings ace reporter Mark (Brant Daugherty) with her.

Finally! We get a mystery movie where they actually try to solve the mystery. Granted, Lea isn’t great at sleuthing in the beginning but Mark shows her the ropes and they start investigating. And, sure, it’s not some deep dark unsolvable thing. It’s a bit of a fluff piece about past romance but there is a valid and sweet ending to their story. I actually found myself enjoying the movie more than I expected. (I even loved the running joke of tourists always bumping into locals.)

Rating: A different kind of French twist

#Xmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

When I saw that there was going to be a movie this year called #Xmas, I took a deep breath and hoped it wasn’t going to be as stupid as it sounded. It probably could have been titled better.

Jen (Clare Bowen) owns her own interior design business with her sister, Ali (Anna Van Hooft). However, business is not going well. The women enter a contest run by mega-influencers, Zoe (Lillian Doucet-Roche) and Charlie (Sebastian Stewart). They pretend that Jen is married to her friend, Max (Brant Daugherty), and they have a baby, who is really Ali’s baby. When they become finalists and the influencers come to visit them, everything begins to fall apart.

I was slightly relieved as soon as I realized that this movie wasn’t going to be about an app or a software developer. However, that relief was negated as soon as Jen opened her mouth. This seems to be another instance of women writers that hate women. Jen is constantly negative about everything. I get that she’s supposed to lack self-confidence and is constantly doubting herself but why would she open an interior design business? This is the personality of someone who needs a boss. Not someone who can run their own successful business. It’s probably the reason their business was failing in the first place and I don’t understand why anyone would continue to be around her.

In addition to the self-misery, Jen is also mean to a lot of the people around her. While her mother, Liz (Karen Kruper), is fairly self-centered, Jen is absolutely vile to her every chance she gets. Then there is Max. Jen expects him to put his career aside just to live near his friend. She doesn’t want to be romantic with him, she just doesn’t want him to leave her. I think I might hate Jen and, no, she isn’t worth the redemption arc.

There isn’t a lot to make this movie worth watching. I enjoyed Van Hooft’s performance and Max tries his hardest to be the best character in the movie. In the end, I can’t recommend watching #Xmas. Maybe if the big redemption cycle started earlier in the movie so we could see her actually apologizing to everyone. (No, there are no apologies to be had.) But as it stands, it’s a movie about an awful woman being awful to everyone around her. I see enough of that in real life.

Advent Day #2: Mingle All The Way

I admit that I don’t usually watch Hallmark Channel movies. Most of the time, I find them unbearably cheesy. Mingle All The Way had a few moments that made me roll my eyes but I, generally, enjoyed the movie.

Molly Hoffman (Jen Lilley) is the founder of an app called “Mingle All The Way.” It’s a networking app where busy singles can find someone to be their ‘plus one’ at all of their company/social events. When Molly has to prove the app’s worth to a potential investor, she signs up and matches with Jeff (Brant Daugherty), a marketing professional. Despite a rocky start, the pair end up falling in love.

There were a few low points in the movie. The awkwardly blatant product placement for Jergens lotion was one. (Seriously, it was a random close up of the bottle as Molly squirted some on her hand.) Sadly, another low point was Molly’s mother, played by Lindsay Wagner. A lot of movies have at least one parent who puts too much pressure on the main character. However, Molly’s mother goes way too far. She is pretty much verbally abusive to her daughter. And she doesn’t change her stance until a man tells her how awful she’s being. (Thanks, Jeff! Molly’s dad should have stepped up years ago.)

With that said, I did enjoy the on-screen chemistry between Jen Lilley and Brant Daugherty. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy each other’s company and I think that is really what saved the movie. I don’t think I would watch the movie a second time but I would recommend checking it out at least once.