The Lifetime movies are the ones that I go into with the least amount of knowledge. There better be some magic in Merry Magic Christmas or I will be mad.

Beth (Patricia Isaac) is a financial advisor who has been tasked to help a local theater survive an impending financial crisis. Nate (Andrew Dunbar) happens to run the theater and he’s terrible at finances. At dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her best friend Coley (Corey Woods), Beth’s fortune cookie tells her to keep an eye out for 624, a special angel number. Can Beth survive being inundated by 624 and save the theater at the same time?

The biggest thing that annoyed me about this movie is Nate. Every time Beth tries to tell him that the theater will close unless they can raise the funds to cover their bills, Nate just shrugs and says it will work out. He doesn’t want to sell memorabilia from past shows; he doesn’t really want to ask patrons to donate money; he thinks the money will magically appear for no reason at all. I used to work in the theater. I have family that works in the theater. Theater people are not like that. Theater people will do whatever they need to in order to keep their art going. I hate Nate a lot.

If we look past him (which is difficult since he’s the romantic lead), the rest of the movie is fine. The angel number thing is a little annoying. There aren’t any hints about what 624 means, it just keeps appearing everywhere. When she sets her alarm clock for 6:30, it goes off at 6:24. When she is riding her stationary bike for 5 miles, the meter randomly changes to 6.24 miles when she’s done. When she sets a timer for 5 minutes to hard boil some eggs, it refuses to time anything but 6 minutes, 24 seconds. These things mean nothing. What is she supposed to get out of this 624 number? (Spoiler: It’s Nate’s birthdate.) It is a stupid plot device that is badly used.

Ratings: 624 out of 1,000,000

A Christmas Together With You could have easily been a non-Christmas movie. I actually think that this was written as a regular Hallmark romantic movie but then someone somewhere decided they needed another Christmas flick so they added some Christmas stuff to this one. And that is OK.

Megan (Laura Vandervoort) runs a small café in town. Frank (Harry Lennix), one of her regular customers, tells her about his long lost high school sweetheart. Since neither of them have holiday plans, Megan decides that they are going to track down Frank’s sweetheart, Claire (Liza Huget), so he can profess his love to her.

If you tune into the Hallmark Christmas movies to be inundated with Christmas decor and festivities, you aren’t going to find them here. Sure, there’s a Christmas tree getting decorated and there is one scene where they go caroling but that is pretty much it. A Christmas Together With You focuses more on the search for Claire than it does Christmas. As someone who isn’t a giant fan of Christmas, I’m glad they toned down the holiday cheer for this one.

On the romance side of things, the movie mostly revolves around Frank and Claire. We do get a little romance from Megan and Steve (Niall Matter) but they aren’t the main couple in the movie. They honestly don’t interact all that much so I’m not really sure why they fell in love. Unless Megan just likes his dog a lot. I’m not sure they would even know each other’s names if it wasn’t for the dog.

The down side of this movie is the inaccuracies in the script. Frank shows us a black and white photo of him and Claire from high school. While we couldn’t see her full outfit, it looked like the two of them were dressed rather formally. He was in a tie and jacket and she seemed to be wearing a nicer dress. Then Frank claims this is 1971. I’m not sure the photo is time-period appropriate. It looked like it was more 1950s than 1970s. Also, Megan talks about going to culinary school but we don’t see her make anything more difficult than a green bean casserole. (Please note: you can get the recipe for a green bean casserole off of the back of a can of green beans.) She talks about wanting to own a restaurant but we don’t actually see her having any of those skills. Yes, she cooks a dinner for 30 people. That does not make one a chef.

With all of that in mind, I’m not sure A Christmas Together With You is worth watching. I mean, I would watch it because I’m a fan of Niall Matter. I don’t think there’s another reason to watch it unless you are into slow-burning storylines. Because this one does run slow.