Deck The Walls | 2024 Christmas Movies

Next up is Hallmark’s Deck The Walls, a movie about house flippers that is so laden with product placement it made me audibly groan. It may be a little cheesy when movies make up fake companies as vendors for the characters but it is so much better than real company logos and stores being front and center.

Rose (Ashley Greene) is an interior designer that gets tasked to help her brother, Sal (Danny Pellegrino), with a charity house flip in her hometown. Contractor Brysen (Wes Brown) is also on the job. Can Brysen get “Runaway Rosie” to stop running away from her problems and face them?

For the most part, Deck The Walls is a fine movie. The acting is fine, the plot is fine, the script is fine. What is not fine is the amount of time that Home Goods takes up. (Also Nutella but that has far less screen time than Home Goods.) This movie really should have been called Deck The Walls With Home Goods. I get that movies sometimes need product placement to help with the budget. But here is how much Home Goods is in this movie:

1. Rose does a web search for “stores in solon.” (Solon being where the movie takes place.) The first result is a giant Home Goods logo. The second result is mostly covered up by Rose’s hand.

2. Rose goes into Home Goods to look around for inspiration and has a rather long conversation with associate Oliver about how she’s going to look around for inspiration and how many aisles full of stuff they have.

3. After the gang gets more money for their project, Rose goes back to Home Goods to buy more stuff. We see her walking out of the store carrying at least five Home Goods bags with the logo in full view and the giant logo on the store itself behind her.

The Nutella place is bad but not as bad. Aunt Gigi (Carolyn Hennesy) says she’s going to make Christmas cookies with Nutella. Then they cut to everyone in the kitchen smearing Nutella on cookies as the camera pans past an open jar of Nutella. ‘Tis the season to be advertising.

There are a few other instances where the characters name products but I’m not sure how much product placement it really is since they are talking about products from the late 90s-early 2000s. (Pogs, Tamagotchi...things like that.) So, yeah, the movie is watchable if you can get past all of the product placement. There are even a few cute moments between characters. I just wish they didn’t try to market stuff to us so hard.

Rating: GO AWAY HOME GOODS!

Haul Out The Holly: Lit Up | 2023 Christmas Movies

Teri Hatcher isn’t the only one with two movies this season. Lacey Chabert also has two Christmas movies! We already watched A Merry Scottish Christmas. Now it’s time for the sequel to last year’s Haul Out The Holly, Haul Out The Holly: Lit Up.

A year has passed since Emily (Lacey Chabert) took over both her parents’ house and the annual Christmas festivities. This time there are some new neighbors: Jane (Jennifer Aspen), Joe (Seth Morris), and Jimmy (Kenneth Cummings) Johnson. They are better known as the Jolly Johnsons, winners of a Christmas reality show. Can Emily and Jared (Wes Brown) keep the neighborhood traditions or will the Johnsons take over?

I really enjoyed the first movie from last year. Lit Up is a perfect sequel to it. Adding the Johnsons gave it the conflict that it really needed. Last year, Emily wasn’t super keen on taking part in all of the Christmas cheer. This year, her festiveness is threatened by the absolute insanity of the new neighbors. And of course, the secondary characters, the same comedy geniuses from last year, are still over the top and hysterical. I don’t know if they will be able to kick out a third movie but I would love to see more of this gang.

Rating: The perfect Christmas storm

Haul Out The Holly | 2022 Christmas Movies

With Candace Cameron Bure’s defection to Great American Family, Lacey Chabert has been left as the face of Hallmark. She gets to do all of the fun commercial bumps telling us to stay tuned for movies and whatnot. Her movie this season, Haul Out The Holly, was released during the coveted Thanksgiving weekend timeslot. But is it any good?

Emily (Lacey Chabert) has just broken up with her boyfriend. Needing someplace to stay, she comes back to her parents’ house for the holiday. Her parents, however, are planning on going to Florida to find a new house for themselves. Emily now has to fulfill all of her parents’ holiday duties for the neighborhood Christmas celebration.

We’re going to ignore the fact that Emily’s parents did a very crappy thing. They knew that Emily just went through an emotional breakup then they straight up lied to her about spending the holidays at home with her. They tricked her into doing things like decorating the entire house and baking cookies for the neighborhood contest and organizing snowman making events. She didn’t sign up for any of these. They are terrible parents.

On the other hand, Haul Out The Holly was a ton of fun. Normally, Chabert-led movies are overdramatic and boring. Not this one! Even the romance with childhood-friend-turned-HOA-president Jared (Wes Brown) was fun. I am going to give Chabert credit for doing an amazing job but I’d also like to note that she was supported by some major comedy players - Stephen Tobolowsky, Melissa Peterman, Ellen Travolta, Peter Jacobson…I would have been surprised if the movie failed with this amount of talent involved.

Haul Out The Holly should definitely be on your Must See list. This movie was so much fun that I actually might watch it again next year. I never thought I would say that about a Hallmark movie!

Every Time A Bell Rings | 2021 Christmas Movies

Every Time A Bell Rings was actually released back in November on Hallmark’s streaming service, Hallmark Now. I thought I was going to miss it since I’m not subscribed to the service but they decided to release it on their Movies & Mysteries channel too. I’m glad they did.

Three adopted sisters - Charlotte (Erin Cahill), Emily (Brittany Ishibashi) and Nora (Ali Liebert) - return home for Christmas after being separated for years. When they arrive, they find their late father has arranged one last Christmas scavenger hunt for them to complete. Will the search for the Christmas Bell reignite the strong bond between sisters?

I absolutely loved this movie. Granted, there were a few blemishes but nothing that took away from the loveliness of the plot. Watching the three sisters not only rekindle their bond but also figure out how they want to live was nice. Sure, the writers had to put in some sort of obstacle for each sister but none of them are terribly important to the core of the story. They could have easily left out each of the conflicts to focus solely on the scavenger hunt and it still would have been a good movie.

It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to actually recommend watching a movie. But this one should be on your list to watch. Especially if you have sisters.

A Nashville Christmas Carol | 2020 Christmas Movies

It’s A Christmas Carol but in Nashville! Different, right?

Vivian (Jessy Schram) is a television producer/director that rarely takes time off. She’s too busy planning a Christmas special when she is interrupted by the ghost of her dead mentor, Marilyn (Wynonna Judd). Marilyn sends the Christmas spirits Vivian’s way in order to get her life back on track.

I’m generally not a big fan of country music. But I do like good music. Sara Evans as Belinda and RaeLynn as Alexis knock it out of the park. I could see myself watching the Christmas special with them. Especially when they were singing together. The rest of the show….

We’re all familiar with A Christmas Carol - the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future visit Scrooge to show him his terrible ways. A Nashville Christmas Carol spends a little too much time with the spirit of Christmas past, who goes by Pat (Kix Brooks), and completely abandons the spirit of Christmas-yet-to-come. That was a little disappointing. I wanted to see hints of Vivian getting together with love interest/former best friend Gavin (Wes Brown). Instead, we get a “The future is what you make it” type of speech from Marilyn.

I think maybe the worst part was that Vivian’s past was not all that exciting. We hear that Vivian and her sister, Georgia (Sarah Borne), grew up without their mother but we don’t know why their mother is gone. They just say “she left.” A lot of the Christmas Past time was spent at a Christmas party where Gavin got the job of his dreams but Vivian thought he kicked her to the curb. Of course, Vivian was wrong and….blah blah blah. Once again, these are conflicts that could have been resolved if someone opened their mouth and said something. It doesn’t make a good conflict.

Honestly? You should skip A Nashville Christmas Carol. There are better versions of Dickens’ book that are actually worth your time. The Muppets Christmas Carol is the absolute best. Watch that one instead.