Planes, Trains and Christmas Trees | 2023 Christmas Movies

Planes, Trains and Christmas Trees is the second movie of the season for Lifetime. I spent a lot of the movie thinking about how much the lead actor, Olivier Renaud, looks like Zac Efron. Like, I have watched other movies featuring this dude. I don’t know why this particular movie makes him look like that. Anyway….

Kayley (Kathryn Davis) is an event planner flying home to New York City. Brett (Olivier Renaud) is a sports agent also flying home to New York City. Thanks to a terrible snowstorm, all flights are cancelled. The pair team up to try to get home but end up stranded in Brett’s hometown of Redwood, Ohio. Since they are unable to leave, Kayley and Brett help his uncle plan a local Christmas festival.

Sigh. So. A lot of the movies I watch are just boring. The acting is fine, the plot is fine. It’s just fine. I want to say this movie is fine but….is there something more boring than boring? Like, nothing happens in this movie. Nothing. Kayley is ignoring her boyfriend’s phone calls but we never really find out why they are not getting along. (I can’t even say they are fighting! They don’t talk!) Cardboard man Brett doesn’t want to talk about anything. There are parts where Kayley acts weirdly around Brett’s family for no reason at all because then she’s all buddy-buddy with them. I really don’t understand this movie. I think they wanted to do a thing where Kayley has traumatic Christmas memories so she doesn’t like being around Brett’s family at Christmas but that never appears. And the awful thing is the acting and the story aren’t awful. There was so much potential here that was just wasted.

Rating: Can I live in the candy castle…by myself…no, seriously. Get out of my candy castle.

Santa's Got Style | 2022 Christmas Movies

Franco Lo Presti must really like modeling. In the beginning of the Christmas movie season, he was modeling suits in Well Suited For Christmas. Now he’s not only modeling suits but also being a store’s social media personality in Santa’s Got Style.

Madison (Kathryn Davis) is a department store executive tasked with finding the store’s next holiday promo. She decides to go with a hip, young, stylish Santa. Her best friend, Ethan (Franco Lo Presti), is unable to find her a model that fits her standards so he transforms into Rafe Hollyfield, his hot cousin. Things go awry when Madison wants Ethan and Rafe in two places at once. Will Ethan lose his best friend over this?

I thought this was actually a pretty clever movie. While we have seen the “one person pretending to be two” plot in other romcoms, I don’t think we’ve ever seen it in a Christmas movie. Though, if he was really able to get the Santa beard and wig on and off that fast, maybe he should be hired as a makeup artist instead!

For most of this season, UPtv has had fairly boring movies. Things that are perfectly fine to watch though you could easily find something better. Santa’s Got Style is one of those better movies. I think Lo Presti is quickly going to become one of Christmas’s leading men. He definitely has the charisma for it. Keep an eye out for him in the future!

Six Degrees Of Santa | 2022 Christmas Movies

Six Degrees Of Santa has a very cute gift giving premise in it. However, in real life, it would only work with a group of friends. The holiday spirit isn’t that strong between strangers.

Harper (Kathryn Davis) has created a program called Six Degrees of Santa. One person gives a gift to a second person, who enjoys the gift then passes it on to a third person. This continues until the gift has reached the sixth person, who gets to keep the gift. Tech businessman, Jason (Steve Lund), received a children’s book that was originally gifted by Harper. He makes it his mission to figure out who was his First Santa.

In the movie, strangers graciously hand the Santa present onto other people. I don’t believe that would actually happen. Either the person receiving the gift would never open it. (Honestly, who opens gifts left by strangers on park benches?) Or someone along the line wouldn’t pass on the gift. This situation only works when people are held accountable in some way.

As for the movie itself, it’s decent. It has the usual pitfalls - the conflict could easily be solved if everyone would just have a conversation about it. But the acting isn’t terrible. Davis and Lund have a bit of chemistry. Not enough to make the movie amazing but enough that it’s believable that they would get together. I do wish we got to see a little more of the gift giving aspect between other people, even if I do think it’s unrealistic. It would have been cute to see people in the background handing the Santa boxes off to other people.

Six Degrees Of Santa is one of those movies that is perfectly fine to watch. Maybe with a mug of cocoa and your phone nearby in case you get bored.

A Carousel Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

I guess carousels are now magical. We had a time travel carousel in Christmas Comes Twice. A Carousel Christmas gives us a wish-granting carousel. Everyone needs to be more careful the next time they go to an amusement park!

Lila (Rachel Boston) and her father, Roy (Stuart Hughes), are hired by the royal family of Ancadia to restore a carousel made by Roy’s grandfather. While there, Lila pairs up with the prince, Whitaker (Neal Bledsoe), to plan a Christmas festival to gain support for an arts academy.

Besides the fact that the carousel story is stupid, there is a lot wrong with this movie. The acting is rather terrible, the rest of the plot is boring, and the conflict is dumb. If I was to look for one redeeming quality, it would be the very subtle budding romance between Roy and Heidi (Jennifer Vallance), one of the royal family’s staff members.

Don’t watch A Carousel Christmas. If you’re looking for a royal Christmas movie, there are so many better ones out there. Or, even better, let’s stop romanticizing royal families. They all kinda suck.