Sealed With A List is another Hallmark movie that I couldn’t tell what it was about from the commercials. They really are bad at trying to convey the plot in a 30 second clip. Well, let’s see what we got.

Carley (Katie Findlay) has settled into a life that she isn’t very happy with. She makes a pact with her best friend, Jamie (Kelcey Mawema), that she will change her life in the next year. However, next December rolls around and she has done nothing. On a whim, she gets fired from her job - thanks to taking the blame for a problem caused by her inept boss, Wyatt (Evan Roderick). That is when she makes a list of things she wants to accomplish by the end of the year. And she makes Wyatt help her achieve them.

I thought this was a rather cute movie. Instead of focusing on a blossoming romance, the story focused on trying to make both Carley and Wyatt better people. Carley needed to get out of her comfort zone and Wyatt needed to stop relying on his father’s money to do everything for him. Sealed With A List could have easily gone the wrong way but I think Findlay’s portrayal of Carley was just what the movie needed. She was able to pull off competent yet shy but still outgoing when the situation needed. She was easily my favorite part of the whole thing.

Rating: I don’t run but that Christmas 5K looked like fun

Hallmark has decided to give us two Christmas romance movies in one! Though in A Tale Of Two Christmases, it’s one woman and two men. This could get messy.

Emma (Katherine Barrell) is an architect living in Chicago. She has to decide whether to go home to Vermont to celebrate Christmas with her family and childhood friend, Drew (Chandler Massey), or stay in Chicago to spend it with her crush, Max (Evan Roderick). Thanks to some Christmas magic from Santa, Emma gets split into two separate Emmas to explore both possibilities.

I have to admit that this sounds like a very interesting plot. We get to see Emma experience both choices but Emma herself doesn’t know it’s happening. So instead of like a split personality type thing, it’s simply two completely separate stories featuring the same female lead with two different male leads. What could have been interesting just turned dull.

Since this is Hallmark, they are obviously going to pick one of the men over the other. There’s no way they would let both of them be The One. The result is that Max is kind of a self-centered rich douchebag while Drew fawns over everything Emma does. It would have been cooler if both men were on the same level and Emma’s big decision was to stay with her corporate job or move home to work with her father. That is a much more interesting story.

Sadly, twice the romance doesn’t mean a better movie. While I wouldn’t recommend watching A Tale Of Two Christmases, I do have to say that Massey is pretty fun as Drew. I guess if you want to sit through it, he would be as good a reason as any to do it.