All I Need For Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

The title for All I Need For Christmas reminds me of those Blake Shelton Time For Christmas movies. Thankfully, this is not in that series. So let’s see what it is.

Maggie (Mallory Jansen) is a singer/songwriter who is having trouble getting her career off the ground, blaming technology for making all music sound the same. After her touring gig has been cancelled, she returns to her family’s Christmas tree farm for the holiday. There she meets Archer (Dan Jeannotte), a man with family troubles whose tech company is about to launch two new apps for musicians. Maybe the two of them can help each other in more ways than they originally thought.

When I turned this movie on, I didn’t think I would like it. Boy, was I surprised. In these sort of movies, one of the main characters is usually kinda terrible and they get turned around by the others. On the contrary, both of these people are fairly nice. Sure, Maggie is a little mean to Archer at the beginning when she finds out he runs a tech company but she quickly learns that she was wrong and actually apologizes to him. TWICE! And Archer tries everything he can to stay a normal, even-keeled person, even when his sister, Piper (Emily Tennant), tries to push his buttons.

Despite All I Need For Christmas airing on the subpar Hallmark Mystery channel, I do recommend watching it. It has the perfect synergy between cheesy, saccharine, and conflict. I think this is one that almost anyone would enjoy.

Rating: Can I pet them pigs?

A Dance In The Snow | 2024 Christmas Movies

So let me get this right - The Christmas Quest, a movie about an actual mystery, is on the main Hallmark Channel while A Dance In The Snow, a movie about an autistic girl and her mother, is on Hallmark Mystery. Make it make sense, Hallmark!

Jenny (Vanessa Burghardt) is an autistic high school senior. Her mother, Melanie (Erica Cerra), does everything she can to make Jenny’s life easier, including opening a center for autistic people. When the school’s winter dance rolls around, Jenny doesn’t want to go due to a bad experience the previous year. As a surprise for Jenny, Melanie, with some help from Jenny’s literature teacher Daniel (Mark Ghanimé), decides to join the dance planning committee in order to make the dance more accessible for everyone. Meanwhile, Jenny and her friends decide to plan their own winter dance as a surprise for Melanie. Love begins to bloom for both women but, thanks to the secrecy, their relationship falters a little.

This was a pretty sweet movie. It was nice to see an autistic actor (Burghardt) playing an autistic character. Usually the directors give some lame excuse about how difficult it is to find someone or work with them. A Dance In The Snow proves those excuses wrong.

With that said, I don’t know that this movie is for everyone. The plot does move pretty slowly and there isn’t a ton of action happening. However, it really is a nice break from the insanity that is the traditional Hallmark Christmas movie.

Rating: There’s no Christmas but there is snow

Christmas Under The Lights | 2024 Christmas Movies

Alas, we are still in the Bad Movie Era. Hallmark Mystery’s Christmas Under The Lights has some cute animals but that is about it.

After her mother passes away, Emily (Heather Hemmens) returns to the family’s animal rescue ranch to help her brother, Nick (Antonio Cayonne), and his friend, Luke (Marco Grazzini), plan the annual Christmas Carnival.

This movie was so boring. I know that a lot of the movie is Emily’s journey through her grief and childhood trauma and it’s awful to say that her journey is boring. But this is a movie. There needs to be something interesting to keep me from looking down at my phone. And, to be honest, I lost interest so often that I had a difficult time telling Nick and Luke apart. I really hope that a better movie shows up soon.

Rating: At least the alpacas were cute?

A Novel Noel | 2024 Christmas Movies

You know, I still hate when the movies on Hallmark Mystery don’t have a mystery in them. A Novel Noel is another non-mystery on the Mystery channel. Why must they do this?

Harper (Julie Gonzalo) is a book editor that has lost her love for her job. When she gets an offer from Sawyer (Brendan Penny) to work at his bookstore in Maine for the month of December, she jumps at the offer. Hopefully, this will help her find her passion again.

I wanted to like A Novel Noel so much. There was so much they could have done to make this an interesting movie. They could have gone deeper into the cute Christmas events the town was running. Or they could have gone deeper into the secret-editor-helping-writers plot. She basically ignored all of the other writers, including the one that inspired her to start the writing group, to solely focus on Sawyer. Blech. Like every other Hallmark Mystery movie, it’s fine. I just wish there was more.

Rating: WHAT DID BETH WRITE?!

A Reason For The Season | 2024 Christmas Movies

Now we’re heading back over to Hallmark Mystery with A Reason For The Season. Is it a mystery? Not really. But I’ve now resigned myself to the knowledge that this is the channel Hallmark uses for all of the non-traditional romance movies. Which is fine.

Thirty-five years ago, Elizabeth Lane (Taylor Reid in the flashback, Sarah-Jane Redmond in the present time) suddenly gave birth to her daughter, Evie (Taylor Cole), in a small town diner with the help of six strangers. Now, realizing that her adult daughter doesn’t appreciate the wealth she has built, Elizabeth sends Evie back to that small town to find the six strangers and grant their Christmas wishes. With the help of Kyle (Kevin McGarry), the only lawyer in town, Evie sets her sights on completing her mother’s challenge.

This is one of those movies that could have gone very wrong. We get a lot of “spoiled rich girl goes good” type of Christmas movies. And a lot of them are bad. Thankfully, I didn’t think A Reason For The Season was that bad. It’s a Hallmark movie so of course there is some terrible dialog and a handful of cheesy acting. But I thought that the actors got the message across well enough.

I suppose, if I had to find something bad with the movie, I would say that it was a little unbelievable that someone with access to THAT much money wouldn’t have gotten a credit card or driver’s license in their fake name instead of pretending they keep forgetting their stuff all over the place. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for Evie to get everything she needed to make herself successful. Especially if she was just giving away $1,000 diamond tennis bracelets. But, to be honest, this is a small nitpick. It was a little annoying that she had to keep hiding her real name but it didn’t ruin the movie. In the end, it was still decent.

Rating: Can I get my Christmas wish granted too?

Five Gold Rings | 2024 Christmas Movies

Woah, Hallmark Mystery has actually given us a mystery movie! Sadly, Five Gold Rings isn’t the type of movie that we, the viewers, can solve along with the characters. But it is a mystery!

As a child, Audrey (Holland Roden) would watch her grandmother return lost items to people during the Christmas season. After her grandmother passed, Audrey was tasked with finding the owners of five gold rings to return the valuable items. Her grandmother insisted that Audrey get help from Finn O’Sullivan (Nolan Gerard Funk), the first person that had a lost item returned. The pair fall in love as they find the owners of the rings.

Five Gold Rings started off as a decent movie. I thought we would get some really good sleuthing. Instead, we keep getting sidetracked with Audrey's failing art career and a grumpy rival shop owner and making Finn’s mother feel better about her art. There was so much going on that wasn’t trying to find the owners of the rings. Obviously, they find all of the owners but it all seemed a lot easier than it should have been. I get why writers think we need useless side plots to keep us entertained but sometimes we don’t really need that. We just need a good story.

Rating: The fifth ring was the lamest story of all.

My Sweet Austrian Holiday | 2024 Christmas Movies

I don’t think I understand how Hallmark chooses which movies are going on the main channel and which are going on the Mystery channel, which was rebranded from Movies & Mysteries. My Sweet Austrian Holiday is on the Mystery channel but there are no mysteries to be found.

Charlotte (Brittany Bristow) runs her family’s chocolate shop in Vienna. Unfortunately, the shop is in danger of closing because a real estate developer wants to buy the location. Little does Charlotte know that her new friend and love interest, Henry (Will Kemp), recently took over that same real estate company. Will Charlotte have to shut down her shop and return to the United States?

Ugh, this was such a terrible movie. Charlotte is a newbie chocolatier. Yet she never makes a single bad chocolate. Everyone raves about every piece that she makes. There are multiple times that she tries out a new recipe and not once does that recipe fail. I hate it.

On top of that, there is nothing interesting between Charlotte and Henry. She only complains and he doesn’t have anything to add at all. I think they may be the most boring couple I have ever seen. Well, until the end when the both magically know how to do a super choreographed waltz. Yeah, this movie is ridiculous. It isn’t worth your time.

Rating: 2020’s Christmas In Vienna is better

This Time Each Year | 2024 Christmas Movies

What do you do when you are Hallmark and you want to have a movie about a very serious subject but you can’t really say the name of the serious subject? Call it This Time Each Year and throw it on the Hallmark Mystery channel. It’s a mystery if you don’t actually say the word, right?

Lauren (Alison Sweeney) and Kevin (Niall Matter) are having marriage troubles. They have been separated for a year but Lauren still hasn’t told her mother. When her mother comes to visit, Lauren asks Kevin to pretend nothing has happened. Will this bring them together or break them farther apart?

This is a movie about alcoholism that doesn’t want to actually be about alcoholism. Kevin was successfully working as a bartender and not drinking when his boss randomly fires him because he doesn’t want to tempt Kevin with holiday parties? Kevin walks everywhere (even though we don’t see that) because he lost his license the year prior, though they don’t ever say how or why he lost his license. (If it was drunk driving, you rarely lose your license in the US after only one instance.) This Time doesn’t want to make Kevin out to be a bad guy. He has to get back with Lauren, after all. But it really is disingenuous to only give him vague alcoholic stereotypes that don’t seem to have any actual consequence.

If you overlook this giant shadow hanging over the movie, it’s still pretty boring. Lauren spends the entire movie feeling bad for herself. One of the big problems they have is a house the couple bought before they split. It’s a gorgeous house that they claim is a money pit but, again, they only give vague things that needed to be fixed in the house. When we actually see various parts of the house, there isn’t anything that seems wrong. I know that you can’t always see the bad parts of a house but they literally named things like “the staircase” and “the roof” but neither needed work. Anyway, Lauren blames herself for buying the house and putting their family in financial strain and it is just so lame. Neither of these people are interesting and the movie neuters the parts it wants to make interesting.

Rating: Just sell the house already