I swore that I was going to finish the 2021 Christmas movies. So I’m starting with Hallmark’s Crashing Through The Snow. Yes, it is a dumb title. But is the movie just as dumb?
Maggie (Amy Acker) and Jeff (Kristian Bruun) are divorced parents to two daughters. Jeff and his girlfriend, Kate (Brooke Nevin), are planning to take the girls to Kate’s family home in Colorado for Christmas. When Kate finds out that Maggie has never been away from the girls at Christmas, she invites Kate to come along with them. At the estate, Maggie’s brother, Sam (Warren Christie), makes a surprise visit. Kate begins to feel left out of her kids’ Christmas, thanks to all of Maggie’s Christmas plans, so Sam teams up with her to help her push her way back into the family dynamic.
Most of the time, the conflict in these family Christmas movies can be resolved with a simple conversation. That isn’t the problem in Crashing Through The Snow. Sure, they could talk a bit more but it can be extremely difficult to welcome a step parent into a kid’s life. And it can be even more difficult to watch your former partner replace you as the love in their life. The conversations that Maggie and Sam need to have are difficult and uncomfortable. Their lives would have been better if they were more open with each other in the beginning but it’s easy to understand why they weren’t. Everyone just wanted to make everyone else’s trip easier and less dramatic.
As with a lot of these types of movies, the problem is that none of the couples have any sort of chemistry. Like I have no idea what Jeff sees in Kate. It looks A LOT like he loves her because her family is mega rich. At the same time, I have no idea what Sam sees in Maggie. (Spoiler: they also fall in love.) Maggie’s big personality trait is that she is clumsy. (I think I might hate that part of the movie the most.) Sure, they spend some time together but it’s not a ton of time and they kinda butt heads a lot. Just because someone teaches you how to ice skate, that doesn’t mean you love them.
Overall, I didn’t find the movie too terrible. It is still on the boring side but I think, as my first step back into Christmas movies, this wasn’t the worst movie I could have picked.