Merry Swissmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

Usually, Christmas movie actors stick to one channel. For example, you rarely see Hallmark actors in Lifetime Christmas movies. Somehow, Jodie Sweetin has managed to be on both channels in one year. Maybe she is the true Queen of Christmas.

Alex (Jodie Sweetin) is an architect who travels the world designing luxury hotels. She decides to spend Christmas in Switzerland, where her mother (Jane Wheeler) is opening an inn. Little did Alex know that her mother invited her ex-best friend, Beth (Mikaela Lily Davies), who happens to be dating Alex’s ex-boyfriend, Jesse (David Pinard), to come for the holidays as well. She decides to spend her time helping Liam (Tim Rozon), who manages the inn, plan for the holiday festivities so she can avoid her troublesome personal problems.

Merry Swissmas is one of the few Christmas movies that treats children like children. Love interest Liam has a son, Kelby (Hudson Robert Wurster) and there is a scene where Alex talks to him about how he remembers his late mother. It is a touching scene that is so well done. There aren’t a ton of movies, especially movies where a parent has passed, where anyone asks the child how they are dealing with it. It was probably my favorite scene out of the entire movie.

Outside of that one scene, the rest of the movie is fine. There is some weirdness in how Alex handles the ancient grudge she holds against Beth for the stupidest of reasons. Yes, Alex is mad at Beth because Beth is dating her ex-boyfriend. It’s such a high school thing to be mad about. But it’s not even the fact that Alex is mad. It’s how she handles being around Beth. She barely even looks at Beth. And every time Beth tries to make a grand gesture to fix their relationship, Alex just walks away. She is not a nice person.

While I do wish they had left out the Beth/Jesse part of the story since it is completely unnecessary, I did think that Merry Swissmas was a pretty watchable movie. I would have liked it to focus a little more on Alex and Liam or Alex and her family but that’s OK. At least we all get to walk away with a little more knowledge about Swiss holiday traditions. That is something no other Christmas movie has given us.

A Royal Queens Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

It is a little annoying how uninteresting these movies are. Writers are trying so hard to churn out as many of these as possible that no one cares about whether these movies should exist. It is mentally exhausting.

Colin (Julian Morris) is a prince who wants to make some decisions for himself. Dee Dee (Megan Park) is an Army veteran who isn’t sure what she wants to do next in life. The two accidentally meet while Dee Dee is delivering some pastries to the New York hotel where Colin is staying. She shows him around New York City while he helps her with a children’s Christmas show.

Why are New York accents so terrible? Why did they have to have a dinner scene where Dee Dee’s Italian-American family ask Colin if he wanted “gravy” on his pasta in order to have Dee Dee explain that “Italians call sauce gravy!”? Why is a prince from a foreign country so skilled at jazz piano? Why is Dee Dee’s cousin the only one working at her bakery and how did she make 1500 pastries all by herself?

Yeah, there’s a lot of A Royal Queens Christmas that makes no sense. I can see how it ticks all of the right boxes: a prince, a military veteran with a dog, a tight-knit family, children singing. Somehow these things don’t come together to form anything interesting. Everyone seems to float through each scene with no real purpose. It would be nice if anyone cared about anything they were doing. Even when Dee Dee gets offered a job doing something she’s supposed to like, she doesn’t seem like she actually wants it. It’s like the director told everyone that the movie’s motto is “Yeah, OK.”

I would recommend skipping this one. The number of boring movies this year is starting to drive me crazy. Give me one really great thing about a movie so I can be like “watch it for this!” I don’t think it’s asking a lot to have one good thing. Christmas shouldn’t be so dull.

P.S. It’s actually really annoying that Dee Dee’s cousin is named Zoe and everyone pronounces it Zo when it should be Zo-ey. Skip the entire movie for that reason alone.

Swept Up By Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

Maybe Hallmark Movies & Mysteries mean the movies are a mystery to me. This is one of those movies that sounds fine on paper but is a little confusing in reality.

Gwen (Lindy Booth) is an appraiser for an auction house. When Alan Hawthorne (Vlasta Vrana) decides to sell his house and everything inside, Gwen gets the job to auction it all. She has to work with Reed (Justin Bruening), who owns the company that will clean the house.

While the main story is about Gwen and Reed preparing the house for sale, the side story about Gwen trying to raise enough money to buy the auction house is weird. Her boss, who I assume also owns the business, seems to want to sell it to her but he also wants to accept the highest price tag no matter who is paying. Of course, this sets it up for Alan to sweep in and buy it all for her, which is also weird. I think this might have ended better if Gwen decided to start her own auction house or appraising business instead of relying on either her boss to give in or someone else to foot the bill.

As for the main story, it’s fine. I wasn’t particularly taken by either of the lead characters but I’m sure there are people out there who think they are amazing. They both seemed very bland to me. I would have liked it better if one of them was a little more excited about things. Gwen kept talking about how she loved appraising things but we never really saw that. Reed kept talking about families and traditions but, again, we didn’t see anything like that.

I wouldn’t recommend watching this. Unless you are having trouble falling asleep. You wouldn’t have a difficult time dozing off while this is on.