Christmas 2024 Wrap-Up

And now it is time to wrap up the 2024 Christmas season. It felt both hectic and laid back at the same time. I’m not sure how that happened!

This year I watched 74 Christmas movies. That is probably why this season felt more laid back. This was the the lowest number of movies I have watched since I moved from my advent calendar format. 2023 was 92 movies, 2022 was 127, 2021 was 78, and 2020 was 86. I think this is because Hallmark moved some of their new releases to their Hallmark+ streaming service, which I did not subscribe to this year. That cut at least seven movies from the schedule. It was also frustratingly difficult to find new movies this time around. Great American Family continues to change their movies after they have released their schedule. Movies they have announced to air on one date will be replaced by a different movie and air on a different date. It was so frustrating.

Speaking of Great American Family, I am going to cut them from the list of movies next year. While I wanted to continue to watch Candace Cameron-Bure and Danica McKellar, almost all of the movies on the channel are so boring and difficult to sit through. I hope that their 2025 movies don’t turn political but it feels like that is the way the channel is heading.

Since I am going to cut out GAF, I am going to spend more energy trying to find movies on other streaming channels. I didn’t watch anything on Roku, Disney+ (though I did watch one Hulu movie), or Peacock. There was also a locally-made movie released in theaters that I was hoping to go see but I couldn’t make it in time. And, who knows, maybe I will sign up for Hallmark+ this year. We’ll have to wait and see what their streaming-only releases are.

As always, please feel free to let me know if there is a streaming channel that you’d like me to cover. I know there are a million of them out there now. There has to be a channel with some great Christmas movies that I don’t know about.

Best Christmas Movies of 2024

If you have read most of my Christmas movie reviews this season, you’ll know that a majority of the movies were super boring. They were so boring that it made it really difficult to keep watching them. (And I didn’t watch the last five of the season!) However, this is the list of the bright, shiny Christmas lights that kept me going even when I wanted to stop early. These are the best Christmas movies of 2024.

BeBe Winans’ We Three Kings - It’s rare for me to want a Christmas movie to be longer. This was one that did.
All I Need For Christmas - The movie that proved that adults can apologize to each other when they screw up.
Hanukkah On The Rocks - Hallmark airs one Hanukkah movie each season. It is amazing when the movie teaches about the various Hanukkah traditions.
The 5-Year Christmas Party - Sometimes a movie needs to be a slow burn. This wouldn’t have worked any other way.
Debbie Macomber’s Joyful Mrs. Miracle - I never thought I would love a Mrs. Miracle movie. I was wrong.
Sugarplummed - My favorite movie of the season. Anyone who disagrees is just plain wrong.

Honorable Mentions:
Holiday Crashers - This one was just plain fun.
A Christmas Castle Proposal - A sweet little change-up to the prince trope. Though it may have slipped onto the honorable mentions list because it’s a sequel.

There were a few other movies that were decent but not quite good enough to make the Best list. These are the ones that really did make me think “Oh, maybe the next movie will be this good too!” instead of making me want to cancel my streaming subscriptions. I hope Christmas movies keep getting better instead of worse. Next up, my big Christmas wrap-up post where I talk about my plans for Christmas 2025.

Worst Christmas Movies of 2024

While I don’t normally like to start the year out on a negative note, I want to get the worst movie list out of the way so we can talk about the good movies this year! A lot of the movies this year weren’t bad, just boring. I’d hate to put them on the worst list for being boring. With that said, let’s get into the worst Christmas movies of 2024.

A ‘90s Christmas - When you link your movie to a specific decade, the viewers are looking for nostalgia. This movie only gives confusion.
Five Gold Rings - A mystery movie that completely fell apart by the second ring.
Christmas On The Alpaca Farm - This was a movie written by people who heard of alpacas but never actually saw one.
Tails Of Christmas - Never, ever make dogs the focus of your movie. It always ends up making your movie bad.
Mistletoe & Matrimony - I wasn’t sure about putting this on the list because it wasn’t completely terrible. Then I remembered the bride wanted to book a horse-drawn carriage at the last minute for a Christmas Eve wedding in Chicago.
Christmas By Candlelight - Bad script, bad plot, bad acting. There isn’t much more to say.
Christmas With The Singhs - This one wouldn’t have been on the list if the writers didn’t make the Singhs so unbearable. It’s possible to make a “sucky in-laws” movie without making them whiny babies.
Leah’s Perfect Gift - I almost rage-quit this movie. We need a sequel where Leah leaves the awful family before she marries their son and finds someone awesome who actually loves her.

Dishonorable Mentions:
Deck The Walls - While this movie wasn’t awful, the product placement was so bad and so in-your-face that it gets a dishonorable mention.
Sincerely, Truly Christmas - When the main female character acts like a child, it’s an immediate ‘no, thank you’ from me.

There you have it. These are the movies I thought were the worst this year. Let me know if you want a separate list for the movies I thought were the most boring. There were a lot of them! Coming up next: The BEST movies!

Get Him Back For Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

Great American Family really does love their husband-wife pairings this year. We had Mario Lopez and his wife in Once Upon A Christ, now we have the PenaVegas in Get Him Back For Christmas. Oh, Mario Lopez does appear in this movie as well…as himself. Great American Family really needs to branch out some more with their actors.

Bella (Alexa PenaVega) is an up-and-coming singer who recently came into the spotlight thanks to her rockstar boyfriend, Sage Majors (Alan Powell). When Sage breaks up with her, Bella goes back home for the holidays. She meets up with her old songwriter friend, Jack (Carlos PenaVega), in the hopes that they can write a new song together that will help her win Sage back.

Get Him Back was both interesting and boring at the same time. There were some cute scenes: playing around with outfits in the Salvation Army store Jack worked at; Jack’s brother, Matt (Kevin Valdez), trying to figure out if Mia (Abbey Romeo) likes him and whether he should ask her out; and some of the performance scenes were cute. But then they are followed by ridiculousness: Bella setting up a solo performance for Jack in the Dallas Cowboy stadium with the Cowboy cheerleaders was unbelievable; all of the scenes of Jack and Bella writing songs was cringe-worthy; and the sheer misuse of comedic virtuoso Victoria Jackson was heart-wrenching. It leaves me unsure if I actually liked the movie itself or if I only enjoying the actors. Either way, the movie could have definitely used another go-round with the editors.

Rating: More Victoria Jackson, less Mario Lopez

Once Upon A Christmas Wish | 2024 Christmas Movies

Don’t let anyone tell you that Great American Family doesn’t love nepotism. Many of the actors in Once Upon A Christmas Wish are from the same family. And the only other child with lines in the movie is related to the writer/director. This was a bad decision.

Brian Ortega (Mario Lopez) is the mayor of Long Grove. As he prepares the town for Christmas, he finds his 4th grade letter to Santa, complete with wish list. Surprisingly, the items on his wish list begin to come true. When his former classmate, Nina (Courtney Lopez), coming back to town, his wish list really can be complete.

In case you didn’t know, Mario and Courtney Lopez are married. Their son, Dominic, plays Joey, a writer for the school newspaper. And the director’s daughter plays Hannah, a girl at Joey’s school who made a box to gather letters for Santa. To be honest, none of that works. Even though their actors have been married for over a decade, Brian and Nina barely seem to like each other. They only hang out and talk because they haven’t seen each other in a long time. You wouldn’t think they are boring but they are.

Also, this movie is a musical. It’s not marketed as a musical but it is. Normally, I love musicals. But Mario’s dancing in this is so wooden that, every time he is given choreography, I am immediately taken out of the movie. Courtney, meanwhile, gets all of the singing that isn’t delegated to a children’s choir. She’s a decent enough singer but the song she sings over and over is bad. I will give her credit that she is a better dancer than Mario. But that isn’t saying much.

Rating: Santa wasted his powers on this wish list

Home Sweet Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

Home Sweet Christmas is the second Candace Cameron Bure movie on Great American Family this year. I honestly didn’t realize this movie was on the schedule. When I referenced a second Cameron Bure movie this year, I was talking about Let It Snow, a Hallmark movie from 2013 that GAF somehow got their hands on. I’m not going to watch that one. But I will watch Home Sweet Christmas.

Sophie (Cameron Bure) is an acquisitions and mergers lawyer living in the big city. When her great uncle passes away, he leaves her a majority stake in Marlow Maple Meadows, a sugar maple farm. With only a few days before Christmas and a big merger, she must go back to the small town to decide what to do with the farm. Reliving her childhood memories with her old friend, Sam (Cameron Mathison), Sophie realizes that maybe she’s not ready to sell the farm after all.

Ugh. This is yet another boring movie. Her job is boring, his job is more boring, even the big montage of them fixing up the house is boring. I thought that maybe we would get a little intrigue when they realize that great uncle Henry had a mystery love when he was younger but, no, they left it for too late it the movie so that mystery is solved almost immediately. Home Sweet Christmas is another movie that doesn’t really have a point. They put two people together, tell us they are in love (or will fall in love), and that is it. There has to be more to a movie than just falling in love. But at least this movie had a dog?

Rating: Sell the whole thing and go away

A Cinderella Christmas Ball | 2024 Christmas Movies

It feels like a lot of Danica McKellar’s Christmas movies involve either a prince or dancing. Well, A Cinderella Christmas Ball has both! Though I’m not sure why they titled the movie that way. This has nothing to do with the Cinderella story at all. (After some research, it was originally titled A Royal Christmas Ball and they changed it.)

Chelsea (McKellar) owns a dance studio in Chicago. When she finds a photo that may be of her birth mother, who was also a dancer, in Havenshire, her students fly her out so she can find out more. Once in Havenshire, she gets hired to teach Phillip (Oliver Rice), the prince, how to dance a very specific variation of the waltz. However, he is very unwilling to learn. That is a lot on her plate for her short four day trip.

I think Great American Family’s theme for this year’s movies is “A couple steps below Hallmark.” The plot for A Cinderella Christmas Ball is stupid. Chelsea’s mother died in an accident when she was five years old yet she doesn’t know who her mother is. I don’t remember her ever saying that her mother gave her up for adoption before that so her mother’s identity would be information that is available to her. This movie would have been a whole lot better if she was like “I want to emotionally connect with my mother more” and just made the whole visit to Havenshire a sight-seeing vacation to maybe visit the same places her mother did. Instead, this is all about Chelsea getting information about her birth parents.

In the end, it’s fine to watch. I think the Hallmark and Lifetime movies are way more interesting than anything GAF has put out so far this year but I’m also not really their target audience.

Rating: Can I look away like Chelsea does when she’s dancing with Phillip?

Christmas By Candlelight | 2024 Christmas Movies

I try really hard to go into all of these Christmas movies with an open mind. Sure, they may be cheesy but I go into these trying to find something good. I may find one bad movie a week or so. But sadly, after watching Christmas by Candlelight, I think we may be in the beginning of a block of bad movies.

Juliet (Erin Agostino) works in the marketing department of a big health and fitness company. Her boss, Hilda (Shauna MacDonald), wants her to find a Christmas product to promote to get more people to visit the company’s website. With only two weeks until Christmas, Juliet turns to candlemaker Tom (Harmon Walsh) to help her come up with some custom Christmas candles that will knock everyone’s socks off.

To start off, the plot is very bad. I don’t think any boss would tell someone to come up with a new product to sell immediately. It doesn’t work that way. Also, why is the marketing department in charge of finding products to sell? That isn’t their job. Their job is to sell the products someone else makes. And why would the boss randomly change the contract for a vendor without telling anyone? I’m pretty sure changing a contract after someone signed it is illegal.

Matching the awfulness of the plot is the one-two punch of a bad script with bad acting. Lines that no real person would say are delivered with the woodenness of a marionette. This movie makes me want to throw every Christmas candle I find.

Rating: They left enough candles lit that they can literally burn it all down.

A Little Women's Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

Great American Family has given fans of Louisa May Alcott a present - A Little Women’s Christmas. A modern retelling of the Little Women story with a few changes.

Jo March (Jillian Murray) is a children’s book author who is trying to move into the young adult genre. When her book idea is rejected, her publisher tasks her with finding a new story while she goes to visit her family at home for Christmas. Little does Jo know that her publisher has sent Fritz (Trevor Donovan) to keep an eye on her. Meanwhile, Jo and her sisters - Meg (Jen Lilley), Beth (Laura Osnes), and Amy (Julie Reilly) - try to figure out how to have the best Christmas without their parents or Meg’s husband, John (Jesse Hutch).

I am sad to admit that I am not a Little Women fan. I don’t think I’ve ever even read the book. So there were probably a lot of references and things that simply went over my head. However, that doesn’t mean it is a bad movie. Thankfully, the women playing the March sisters are all very competent actresses. At no point was I taken out of the story by bad acting. Instead, I think this movie just wasn’t for me. There wasn’t a lot of depth to the plot and it verged on being a little too religious. I’m chalking both of those up to being unfamiliar with the source material. I think that, if you are a fan of the book, you will most likely be a fan of A Little Women’s Christmas.

Rating: A little too sweet for me

A Cozy Christmas Quilt | 2024 Christmas Movies

This picture for A Cozy Christmas Quilt is hysterical. Ferelith Young’s arm disappears in the space between her face and Harmon Walsh’s. And I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be holding in her hands, which are at weird angles. It makes no sense. Almost like the movie itself.

Liam (Walsh) is a firefighter whose sister got engaged and wants to get married before the couple moves to Rome. Their family tradition is to get married at Christmastime so they only have a few weeks to get everything together. On top of that, it’s also tradition that the mother of the bride gift the couple a handmade Christmas quilt. Liam, not knowing how to sew, turns to Amy (Young), a fiber artist, to teach him how to make a quilt.

The most interesting thing about this movie is the sort-of rivalry between Amy and the woman that taught her how to quilt, Miriam (Jennifer Wigmore). Unfortunately, it is never expanded upon. Miriam says awful things straight to Amy’s face for absolutely no reason. They are both finalists in a competition but I don’t think that gives Miriam any reason to be terrible.

As for the rest of the movie, it’s fine. It’s the same boring stuff. Amy and Liam have very little chemistry, they spend most of their time doing non-quilting things, and they are just dull people. C’mon, Great American Family, give me something good!

Rating: The dullest Christmas quilt