Santa, Maybe | 2023 Christmas Movies

It’s rare that I get mad at a Christmas romance movie. Santa, Maybe has pushed me over that edge.

Lila (Aubrey Reynolds) manages the local theater. The board of directors has hired a new marketing coordinator, Glenn (Samuel Whitten), who happens to be Lila’s high school bully. Glenn pulls Lila’s name for the company Secret Santa. Can Glenn make up for his past and can Lila pull off the perfect Christmas ballet without forsaking her personal life?

I’m pretty sure that things that bother me, a theater person, would not bother a normal person. But they are things that shouldn’t have been in the movie. For example, no one recasts a major role in the Nutcracker at the last minute. This is a ballet that takes months to perfect and no one would approve a major cast change with less than a month preparation. No matter what the new marketing guy says. Also along those lines, no one would let the marketing guy cast any role. That’s not his job. He could bring it up to the director or the artistic director or the choreographer but he would not be the one making that decision. Also also - why bother having an understudy if you aren’t going to use them? THAT IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF HAVING AN UNDERSTUDY. Someone who knows the role and can step in when the actor/dancer cannot perform. You don’t recast a role because the dancer is injured when you already have an understudy. What the hell.

On top of all of that, the Secret Santa thing they run is stupid. They are supposed to give each other one gift per week for six weeks. We’re talking about theater people! They are stereotypically broke! Who thinks they could afford to buy six separate gifts for someone? This is the stupidest Secret Santa ever.

I really hate when movies set themselves in a theater then completely ignore the rules of how a performance works. You would think that someone somewhere along the line would know that none of this is even close to reality and try to get it fixed. Then again, maybe they don’t know how scripts work either.

Rating: A sugar plum dud

Navigating Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

I know I complain about these movie titles a lot. Navigating Christmas sounds like something that should be about travel. But it’s not. I think this was supposed to about emotional navigation but that is really pushing it. Hold on, let me go into more detail.

This is the first Christmas that Melanie (Chelsea Hobbs) and her teenage son Jason (Everett Andres) are spending together since Melanie’s divorce. After Jason gets ditched by his father, Melanie takes them on a vacation to spend Christmas at a lighthouse. When they get there, they find out that they have also signed up to do chores, like preparing the lighthouse for the Christmas festival. Has Melanie ruined Christmas for her son?

OK. So. Navigating Christmas is supposed to be a reference to Melanie helping her son emotionally navigate the holidays without his father. However, she doesn’t really do that. She keeps his father’s “big secret” from him instead of straight up telling him. She doesn’t have a deep conversation about why the divorce happened. Instead, she lets him believe that her “working too much” was the cause. And she does nothing but avoid every emotional hurdle that comes her way. A World Record Christmas did a much better job showing a loving mother helping her child navigate his emotions. This one would have been better titled Avoiding The Rocks or something.

Rating: At least the lighthouse is pretty?

Best. Christmas. Ever! | 2023 Christmas Movies

The first of this season’s Christmas movies from Netflix is Best. Christmas. Ever! It has some big names attached to it - Brandy Norwood, Heather Graham, and Jason Biggs. Will it live up to the star power?

Every year, Jackie Jennings (Norwood) sends out a holiday newsletter detailing the lives of her family members. Jackie’s life seems to be picture perfect, unlike the life of her old friend Charlotte (Graham). When Charlotte, her husband Rob (Biggs), and their kids wind up at Jackie’s house a few days before Christmas, Charlotte tries to prove that Jackie’s newsletters are nothing but lies.

The bulk of this movie lays at Graham’s feet. There is a sub-plot of the kids trying to figure out if Santa is real but a majority of the movie revolves around Charlotte’s hijinks trying to snoop around Jackie’s house. Of course, that means that there isn’t anything too surprising going on plot-wise. However, both Graham and Biggs are comedy standards. Both of them are perfectly matched with Norwood’s perfect persona. I actually found myself enjoying this quite a bit. I’m glad Netflix usually pulls through for me.

Rating: Get in the solar powered hot air balloon

A World Record Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

I think we had a Christmas movie about Guinness world records last year. This year we have A World Record Christmas. Is this a new trope?

Charlie (Aias Dalman) is an autistic boy trying to win the approval of his deadbeat dad. His town is trying to win the “Most Wrapped Gifts In One Hour” Guinness World Record so, while the adjudicator is in town, he decides to try to beat the “Most Jenga Blocks Balanced On One Upright Block” record. With help from his mother Marissa (Nikki Deloach), her husband Eric (Lucas Bryant) and his best friend Amy (Daphne Hoskins), he tries to stack 1401 Jenga blocks.

First, I’d like to say that I applaud Hallmark for casting an openly autistic actor as an autistic character. It gave the movie a little more depth than if they hadn’t.

With that said, this movie was nice but it felt like it was lacking a little something. I think it was the fact that there was no real “villain” in the story. Sure, we had Charlie’s biological dad, Peter (Matt Hamilton), basically ignoring him but that isn’t much of a villain story. Especially since the blame is mostly placed on a wrong email address. Maybe if Peter was a little meaner about not being around for Charlie or something like that. We’re also told that kids make fun of Charlie for being different but we never see that either. Actually, all of the other kids we see are really nice to Charlie. As a result, the big obstacle is just…autism. Thankfully, Nikki Deloach and Lucas Bryant are strong enough actors to carry the movie with their relationship alone.

Rating: The tallest tower built on the smallest block

Reporting For Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

Before diving back into Hallmark and Great American Family and Lifetime, I watched one more movie from Hulu. Reporting For Christmas. Let’s see if it’s a hot story or a dud.

Reporter Mary Romero (Tamara Feldman) wants to make a difference in her community. When she is given a puff piece on a family-owned Christmas toy factory, she tries to tell the story of the family and the Iowa town. Unfortunately, her bosses have a different agenda.

While I understand what they were going for here, I wish there was a little more. The factory is the largest company in this little town but we hear very little from actual townspeople about it. There is a montage of Mary interviewing people but that mostly focuses on the fact that the factory’s head of marketing, Lexi (Maura Kidwell), keeps trying to put the toys in every shot. The only information we really get about the history of the factory and how it has changed the town is from Blake (Matt Trudeau), who is the grandson of the man that created the company. And Blake isn’t exactly telling the right story. It would have been nice to actually hear from the townspeople how the factory changed their lives.

Also, there are a lot of the same “reporter” tropes in the movie. I was easily able to tell what was going to happen and how the movie would end. That isn’t always a bad thing but I shouldn’t be able to tell you “Oh, this is how it’ll end” by the middle of the movie. Change it up a little. People don’t really want cookie cutter movies, even though studios think they do.

Rating: Mistle-groan

How To Fall In Love By Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

It would be great if Christmas movies would actually decide on a title. Roku’s How To Fall In Love By Christmas is also listed as How To Fall In Love By The Holidays, depending on where you look. It makes it difficult to actually find the title when you want to watch it. Especially when there are other movies with a similar title.

Nora Winters (Teri Hatcher) is the CEO of a lifestyle magazine. When the reader numbers start dropping, the board of directors partners with a dating app to try to win over younger readers. They insist that Nora, herself, use the app and write a column documenting her journey to love. To help get the younger demographic, they hire photographer Jack (Dan Payne) to take pictures along the way.

We have seen this storyline before. A newspaper or magazine writer has to write an article or column about falling in love around the holidays. But they can’t just write about it, that would be dishonest. No, they have to actually fall in love. That isn’t usually how the writing world works but whatever. It’s supposed to be interesting. (I don’t think it is.)

What is interesting here, though, isn’t the tired romance storyline. It’s the B plot with Nora’s sister, Adley (Rachel Wilson), running their late mother’s bakery and charity almost entirely by herself. I would love to have a movie that showed her story. Sure, she’s already married with a kid so she doesn’t need that romance plot. Or does she? How wonderful would it be to show how a woman running a business and a charity included her husband in her life? It wouldn’t be about just appeasing him. It would be about how they work together to keep everything running while the “successful” sister runs off to take care of whatever she thinks is important. That would have been so much more interesting.

Rating: A tired and overused 10-step program

A Heidelberg Holiday | 2023 Christmas Movies

Hallmark might have outdone themselves with A Heidelberg Holiday. A movie that takes place in Germany featuring actual German actors and mostly filmed in Germany? It may be too much.

Heidi (Ginna Claire Mason) handmakes glass ornaments. Her dream is to sell them at the Christmas market in Heidelberg, Germany, where her family is from. She manages to get a spot at the last minute thanks to her grandmother, Oma (Nela Bartsch), who also arranges her to stay with some friends. In Heidelberg, Heidi meets Lukas (Frédéric Brossier), a local artisan who happens to be the son of Oma’s friends. Lukas helps Heidi navigate the town as well as selling at the market.

This was actually a really cute movie. Instead of focusing on the romance, it spent more time showing the sights of Heidelberg, various Christmas traditions, and highlighting Heidi’s family. The romance builds slowly, giving us a nice pay-off in the end. I think that this should be the template for Christmas romance movies. A little bit of Christmas, a lot of character development, and a slow burning romance that builds throughout the movie. Writers should take notes.

Rating: How do you say ‘watch this’ in German?

A Christmas Blessing | 2023 Christmas Movies

According to IMDb, A Christmas Blessing used to be titled Blessings of Christmas. Blessings of Christmas would have been better, honestly. There are a lot of movies named A Christmas Blessing.

Mandy Gilmore (Lori Loughlin) is leaving her cooking show to travel the world, dining at every Michelin star restaurant. Before she can leave, she has to stop in Milwaukee to sign the deed to her late aunt’s food pantry over to Adam (James Tupper), who owns the business next door. As she is getting ready to sign, she is visited by Otto (Jesse Hutch), who reminds her of her aunt’s seasonal goodwill toward those in need. At the last minute, Mandy tries to get together one last holiday food pantry and feast.

This is on Great American Family, of course. It is a little heavy-handed with the religious overtones but I don’t think they ever blatantly say this is “God’s doing” or whatever. I was waiting for some sort of pun on Otto’s name but, if there is one, I didn’t catch it.

Anyway, it’s a decent enough movie. A little too saccharine for my tastes but I’m sure this is right up the alley for some other people.

Rating: Watch out for the ice!

Christmas Island | 2023 Christmas Movies

When I first saw the commercials for Christmas Island, I thought it sounded very similar to the Broadway musical Come From Away. Except that the plane in Christmas Island was grounded by weather and not a terrorist attack.

Kate (Rachel Skarsten) is a pilot that has been hired by the wealthy Sharpe family to fly them to Switzerland for the holidays. Unfortunately, they run into a major blizzard and are forced to land on a small island in Canada called Christmas Island. Can Kate save her job (and Christmas)?

I have to admit that I enjoyed Christmas Island. But not for the romance. It was for the Sharpe family, especially the kids. I knew the movie was going to Save Christmas for them (it is Hallmark, after all) but I found myself really hoping their parents would come through for them. I would have liked a few more scenes or montages of the family spending more time together but it wasn’t needed to make the movie watchable.

At the end, this movie wanted us to pull for Kate and Oliver (Andrew Walker) to get together. But it didn’t make me actually care if they did. I think they would have been perfectly fine as friends. Alas, Hallmark does not make friends, only romantic partners.

Rating: Me and The Sky

A Christmas Frequency | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re going to take a break from Hallmark and Great American Family for a moment and tune into Hulu for A Christmas Frequency. It stars Denise Richards so it can’t be completely awful, right?

Kenzie (Ansley Gordon) is the producer of the Breakfast With Brooke radio show. When the ratings start to fall because Brooke (Denise Richards) is depressed over her failed marriage, Kenzie decides to set Brooke up with blind dates on air. The audience will vote on which date they like best, making him Brooke’s date for the show’s live Christmas show. Things change when Ben (Jonathan Stoddard), a man that Kenzie is interested in dating herself, shows up on the list of potential blind dates. Is there any way to save the show and make everyone happy?

Overall, I thought this was a good movie. There were a few scenes that felt like they dragged but there weren’t many. Ansley Gordon was a delight as Kenzie and Jonathan Stoddard was charming. Sadly, Brooke spent a lot of the movie moping so we didn’t get to see a ton of range from Denise Richards. While this won’t be an annual movie by any means, it was a refreshing break from the usual stuff I watch during the Christmas season.

Rating: Turn the radio up