Last year, Hallmark gave us the very terrible A Nashville Christmas Carol. This year they gave us another twist with Boyfriends of Christmas Past. I hope this one is better than last year’s.

Lauren (Catherine Haena Kim) and Nate (Raymond Ablack) have been best friends since college. No matter what Lauren has gone through, Nate has been by her side. Unfortunately, Lauren is afraid of long-term commitment. As Nate gets ready to reveal his true feelings to her, Lauren is visited by the memories of three past boyfriends who show her how she pushes away anyone that wants to be close to her. Can she overcome her fears before it is too late?

While Boyfriends does share some similarities with Nashville, this year’s foray into A Christmas Carol does it better. Both movies let go of the ghosts of Christmas Present and Christmas Future to focus on Christmas Past. However, that is entirely the point of Boyfriends. Lauren is blind to the fact that every time a boyfriend wants to move their relationship to the next level, she bails. The boyfriend spirits/memories even keep pointing out how she runs to Nate every time she breaks up with someone and Nate is always there to help her pick up the pieces.

To be honest, my only real gripe about the movie is how Nate has been basically throwing himself at Lauren the entire time they have known each other and he hasn’t given up yet. The movie doesn’t tell us how many years have passed since college. There’s only vague references like “so many years ago” or “after all these years.” I’m pretty sure they have known each other for at least eight years. There were three boyfriends - the first she dated during her junior year of college for at least a year, we do get that much information; the second was after college and asked her to move in with him, so that had to be a couple of years at least; and the third was asking her to marry him, so that had to be another couple of years. Why wouldn’t Nate try to confess his feelings earlier? Why would he stick around for so long pining after her? It’s pretty obvious that he isn’t happy with the current status of their relationship.

Since this is a Hallmark movie, that one issue is pretty small. The characters are fleshed out a little more than most Hallmark movies so it’s easy to overlook. It’s a safe bet that this will be one of the better Hallmark Christmas movies this year. Give it a watch. At the very least, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee is always entertaining.

I think maybe I need to figure out some sort of BAD ranking. Like, boring is a 1 but an awful script is 8 or something. It might make it easier to decide just how bad a movie is.

Sam (Vanessa Lengies) finally got the job she wanted. On her first day, she finds out that her boyfriend, Will’s (René Escobar Jr), company bought her new company and fired a lot of the staff. Feeling weird that he saved her job, Sam immediately quits and goes back to her hometown, where she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, Noah (Corey Sevier).

Heart of the Holidays is a mess. At the beginning of the movie, Sam is a whiz at planning things. I didn’t even realize that she worked in the financial industry because she was so busy planning things. (I think she was supposed to be convincing the guy replacing her to work for the company? I’m not really sure what she was doing.) But when she moves home, she is terrible at everything…except planning a pop-up food bank on Christmas Eve. I think that the writers wanted her to be a “hometown girl finds that community is important” character or something. That doesn’t really come through. She talks about how she wanted to work with charities but then she became a stockbroker? Her character makes no sense.

The plot isn’t all that different. It wants to be “big city girl returns to small hometown to find she still loves her hunky ex-boyfriend.” While that does happen, it goes about it the wrong way. The writers tried to throw in another woman, Marina (Tina Jung), to tempt Noah away….but at no point does it feel like those two would ever be a couple. It feels like this was written by high schoolers.

Seriously, Hallmark. Step up your game. No one should watch this movie. As a matter of fact, can I unwatch it?