Christmas With The Singhs | 2024 Christmas Movies

I originally thought Christmas With The Singhs was going to be a wacky “white guy learns about other cultures” movie. Kinda like what we had with Mistletoe & Menorahs back in 2019. Alas, it is not that type of movie. There was such potential and they wasted it.

Asha (Anuja Joshi) and Jake (Benjamin Hollingsworth) reconnected after graduating high school 18 years ago. After dating for a year, Jake proposes…without getting her father’s permission first. As they spend their first Christmas as an engaged couple together, can they meld their Christmas traditions together or will this tear them apart?

This really would have been a great way to highlight the differences between an Indian family Christmas and a white American family Christmas. Instead, what we get is Asha’s father, Samuel (Manoj Sood), rudely demanding that the couple do absolutely everything his family does while ignoring everything Jake’s family does. While I haven’t experienced it myself, I have heard that Asian families are rather strict about things. But this is insane. Thankfully, Asha’s mother, Nirmila (Nimet Kanji), is more understanding but that is probably because her family gave up their Hindu religion to join Samuel’s Catholic religion. She understands the sacrifice they made and how difficult it was to combine their families. Samuel is too set in his ways (or maybe selfish) to think about what would make his daughter happy.

I want to say the movie itself isn’t terrible. The acting and the script are pretty good. But it is really difficult to look past the fact that it is mostly Samuel stomping around whining about Asha ignoring her family when the couple spends most of their time WITH her family and actually ignoring his family. It all comes together in the end, of course. And I would love to maybe see a sequel where they truly highlight the things that each family does to make the season special to them. This just wasn’t it.

Rating: Samuel reading a story to children was really THE most important part of their tradition?

A Kismet Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

The first weekend of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies ends with A Kismet Christmas. Yes, I also had to look up the meaning of ‘kismet’ since they use it a million times in the movie. It means destiny or fate. I guess they can only use ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ so many times before they run out of titles. It’s just kismet, right?

Mia (Marilu Henner) bakes kismet cookies - cookies that will tell you who your true love is when you sleep with one under your pillow on Christmas Eve. One year, Mia’s granddaughter, Sarah (Sarah Ramos), sneaks a kismet cookie under her pillow. It told her that her true love was the boy next door, Travis (Carlo Marks). Unfortunately, Travis was getting married that day. Embarrassed, Sarah rips up the recipe for the cookies and leaves the town of New Britain. Years later, Sarah is a children’s book author. Her publisher runs a contest and the winner lives in New Britain. Sarah is forced to return to town and face both her grandmother and her childhood crush.

On one hand, I found A Kismet Christmas interesting. On the other hand, the slow parts were very slow. I liked the idea of magical cookies that told you who your true love is. If the movie dove deep into that, I think I would have liked it more. However, since Sarah tore up the recipe within the first 15 minutes of the movie, the cookies aren’t around a lot. Instead, we get a lot of people hemming and hawing about how there aren’t any kismet cookies and they wish there were kismet cookies so they could know FOR SURE that a certain person liked them. And since there are no cookies to be baked, Grandma Mia is fairly useless. She makes very vague statements about things and doesn’t tell Sarah any of the important news that is fairly necessary to her life. I think the movie would have been more interesting if the cookies were still around and the conflict is whether the magic in the house is leaving since Mia is planning on selling it.

Instead of the cool things, A Kismet Christmas focuses on Travis and his daughter, Jasmine (Rubi Tupper). In the beginning, Sarah was mortified about having to face Travis again after interrupting his wedding. She got over that so quickly and she spends a majority of the movie helping Jasmine with her contest-winning project or helping Travis make Jasmine happy. I understand that the writers wanted them to spend more time together to push the romance but it’s insinuated that they have always loved each other. Again, the focus should have been on the magic cookies and house. They could have easily had Travis and Jasmine try to help figure out why the house is losing its magic and how to get it back. It’s a much more interesting story.

Should you watch it? Probably not. Unfortunately, I think the boring parts outweigh the interesting parts. Which makes me sad because there was so much potential there. At least it’s only the beginning of the movie season. Maybe there will be something better soon.

A Christmas Together With You | 2021 Christmas Movies

A Christmas Together With You could have easily been a non-Christmas movie. I actually think that this was written as a regular Hallmark romantic movie but then someone somewhere decided they needed another Christmas flick so they added some Christmas stuff to this one. And that is OK.

Megan (Laura Vandervoort) runs a small café in town. Frank (Harry Lennix), one of her regular customers, tells her about his long lost high school sweetheart. Since neither of them have holiday plans, Megan decides that they are going to track down Frank’s sweetheart, Claire (Liza Huget), so he can profess his love to her.

If you tune into the Hallmark Christmas movies to be inundated with Christmas decor and festivities, you aren’t going to find them here. Sure, there’s a Christmas tree getting decorated and there is one scene where they go caroling but that is pretty much it. A Christmas Together With You focuses more on the search for Claire than it does Christmas. As someone who isn’t a giant fan of Christmas, I’m glad they toned down the holiday cheer for this one.

On the romance side of things, the movie mostly revolves around Frank and Claire. We do get a little romance from Megan and Steve (Niall Matter) but they aren’t the main couple in the movie. They honestly don’t interact all that much so I’m not really sure why they fell in love. Unless Megan just likes his dog a lot. I’m not sure they would even know each other’s names if it wasn’t for the dog.

The down side of this movie is the inaccuracies in the script. Frank shows us a black and white photo of him and Claire from high school. While we couldn’t see her full outfit, it looked like the two of them were dressed rather formally. He was in a tie and jacket and she seemed to be wearing a nicer dress. Then Frank claims this is 1971. I’m not sure the photo is time-period appropriate. It looked like it was more 1950s than 1970s. Also, Megan talks about going to culinary school but we don’t see her make anything more difficult than a green bean casserole. (Please note: you can get the recipe for a green bean casserole off of the back of a can of green beans.) She talks about wanting to own a restaurant but we don’t actually see her having any of those skills. Yes, she cooks a dinner for 30 people. That does not make one a chef.

With all of that in mind, I’m not sure A Christmas Together With You is worth watching. I mean, I would watch it because I’m a fan of Niall Matter. I don’t think there’s another reason to watch it unless you are into slow-burning storylines. Because this one does run slow.

A Godwink Christmas: Second Chance, First Love | 2020 Christmas Movies

While Hallmark tends to be on the Christian side of religion, we don’t usually see movies that directly reference God. Even during Christmas. This movie has figured out a way to do it without making it sound religious. Oh, and supposedly this is based on a true story.

Pat (Sam Page) is a single father moving home to Boise from Hawaii. While running errands his first day in town, he runs into his first love, Margie (Brooke D’Orsay). A series of coincidences (or Godwinks) keep bringing them back together.

Yes, in this movie, Pat’s mother, Lois (Michele Scarabelli), calls coincidences ‘Godwinks.’ Meaning that God is trying to nudge you in a certain direction. However, instead of just a “fancy meeting you here” type of coincidence, the writers made it so Margie is constantly losing jewelry and Pat always finds it. The first time, sure. After that, Margie needs to invest in some rubber stoppers for the backs of her earrings and she really should have the charm bracelet resized so it fits her. It’s not as cute as everyone else in the movie thinks it is.

Beyond that, SCFL is fine. I believe this is the second movie in a series of Godwink movies but I don’t think I saw the first. Since this is supposed to be based on a true story, there isn’t any real conflict. Pat has a problem finding a job but at no point does it seem dire. It sounds like he needs a job for the sole reason of making his sons, John (Rhys Slack) and PJ (Knox Hamilton), feel normal in Boise. (Which is a terrible reason for getting a job. Especially if it’s a job you aren’t going to like.) At one point Margie thinks that she might be losing her job but there’s no real reason for her to think she’s getting fired. She comes to the conclusion after people around her start making assumptions.

If you are into the “God has a plan for us” mindset, you’ll probably enjoy all of the A Godwink Christmas movies. It’s not my cup of tea so I would recommend skipping it if you’d rather stay out of the religious arena.