A Season For Family | 2023 Christmas Movies

Thanks to the commercials, I knew that A Season For Family was about adoption. But I didn’t know who was the adopted one and what that meant to the plot of the movie. In short, Hallmark commercials kinda suck.

Maddy (Stacey Farber) and her adopted son, Wesley (Benjamin Jacobson), come back to their hometown in Utah. While shopping for ski rentals, they meet Paul (Brendan Penny) and his adopted son, Cody (Azriel Dalman). Little did Maddy and Paul know that Wesley and Cody are actually brothers.

For once, the kids take center stage in a Hallmark movie. Sure, there is a little bit of romance between Maddy and Paul but that is secondary to the needs of Wesley and Cody. Granted, I think Paul makes way too big of a deal regarding telling Cody that he’s adopted and that Wesley is his brother. Especially since the boys get along so well. But I guess they had to pad the script somehow. In the end, this is a sweet movie for someone looking for more than just straight up romance.

Rating: No fighting from these brothers

Single And Ready To Jingle | 2022 Christmas Movies

Single And Ready To Jingle is not only an extraordinarily stupid title, it doesn’t even fit the premise of the movie. Sigh.

Emma (Natasha Wilson) is a senior vice president at a toy company. Her toy, KPop Panda, is the second most wanted toy for the holiday season. Frustrated with work and the holiday season, her assistant, Lucy (Merry Lou Proudfoot), books Emma a vacation to St. Thomas. However, Lucy accidentally booked Emma a flight to St. Thomas, Alaska instead of the tropical paradise. With a massive snowstorm incoming, Emma is stuck in Alaska until the weather clears enough to get a flight out.

If you read the title for this movie, you would think that it’s about a woman who is sad that she doesn’t have a relationship. But Emma’s feelings about being single are secondary to her feelings about not having the best toy of the season. I think this movie would be better with a toy-themed titled like The Unwanted Toy or The Misfit Toy or something. Sure, her toy wasn’t unwanted or a misfit but it would reference Emma’s singleness and he klutziness.

As for the movie itself, Single And Ready To Jingle is fine. Once again, there’s nothing stand out about it and there is nothing terrible about it. It just is. I suppose I was a little annoyed about how Emma kept harping on her toy being second best but…well…that’s the plot. It’s a dumb plot but it’s a plot.

Eh, this is one of those movies that you could turn on while you’re doing something else but I would probably say to skip it altogether. It needs a little something more to make it worth watching.

Advent Day #9: Christmas Lost and Found

Have we actually moved into a land of good Lifetime movies? It’s a little difficult to believe but these past few movies haven’t been too terrible. Christmas Lost and Found seems to follow the current trend of decent Lifetime Christmas movies.

In Lost and Found, Whitney (Tiya Sircar) is an event planner who lives in New York but came to her hometown of Chicago to visit her grandmother, Frances (Diane Ladd). Frances gives Whitney all of the Christmas ornaments they had collected over the years but Whitney accidentally throws them away while cleaning. A mysterious letter shows up sending Whitney and Frances’s neighbor, Brian (Edward Ruttle), on a scavenger hunt around town to find the lost ornaments.

When I saw that Tiya Sircar from The Good Place was the lead actress here, I was hopeful that this would be a good movie. I like quite like her. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. To be honest, the only thing I didn’t really like about the movie was the lack of focus on the actual scavenger hunt. Instead of making the entire movie about that, the writers gave Whitney a job (planning a party and designing a Christmas window for a local department store) that divided her time. While that was nice in itself, it took away from the importance of finding the ornaments. Whitney would frequently just put the next clue in her handbag instead of reading it right away because she had to run off to a meeting or something for the store. I think I would have liked it better if it was just a fun-filled frantic romp around town.

My recommendation? Give it a go. If anything, you’ll come to love Sircar just as much as I do. And that is always a good thing.