Merry Christmas everyone! I’m going to take a little break from Christmas movies today (and maybe tomorrow) because there are only five movies left to watch! We’ll take a well deserved break from the craziness and enjoy some down time. Reviews will be back soon!
Carry-On | 2024 Christmas Movies
Taking a short break from the romance and family friendly fare, we’re turning to Netflix’s newest thriller, Carry-On. It’s only rated PG-13 so it shouldn’t be too scary.
Ethan (Taron Egerton) is a TSA agent at LAX. When he asks his supervisor about a possible promotion, he gets moved to the carry on luggage scanner as a test. Unfortunately, this puts him directly in the path of an unknown traveler (Jason Bateman) who wants him to pass through a carry on no matter what the scanner says or else Ethan’s pregnant girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson), will die. Ethan, unwilling to put his girlfriend or everyone on the target airplane in danger, does everything he can to avoid disaster.
Carry-On is a pretty typical terrorist type of action movie. Something along the lines of Die Hard, which also takes place during the Christmas season. Much like Die Hard, this was quite enjoyable. As with most movies like this, there were a few parts where I wondered how many bullets a certain gun could hold or why an officer didn’t respond to someone acting weird in an airport. But none of that took anything away from the movie itself. If you are looking for something beyond Christmas romance, this should fit the bill.
Rating: I will never look at carry on luggage the same
That Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies
There hasn’t been a ton of new Christmas movies for kids this year. Thankfully, Netflix has released That Christmas, an animated story that kids will probably love. The plot is a little difficult to describe so hold on tight!
A huge blizzard is about to hit the town of Wellington-On-Sea. As Christmas Eve approaches, Sam (Zazie Hayhurst) worries that her naughty twin, Charlie (Sienna Sayer), won’t receive any presents from Santa. Meanwhile, Sam’s friend, Danny (Jack Wisniewski), who happens to have a crush on Sam, is having trouble with loneliness since his single mother has been very busy with work and his father is unable to reach him due to the snow. Then there is another group of children who have been left home under the care of Bernadette (India Brown), the eldest of the children, as their parents attend a family wedding. Will they all be able to have a happy Christmas?
While this is a strange movie, it was really cute. From an American perspective, it does seem that most of the parents are awfully neglectful but I think things are very different in the United Kingdom. Also, maybe they should learn to check the weather report before they leave their children home alone. But it’s this loneliness that brings them all together and shows them that community is very important. Especially around the holidays.
Rating: I would also like to celebrate Kids Christmas
Trading Up Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies
There are only a few more days left until Christmas. That means there are only a few more Christmas movies left to watch! The last movie from Hallmark Mystery is Trading Up Christmas. Did they end on a high note?
Keri (Meredith Forlenza) is a single mother desperately in need of a house. Her sister, Michelle (Italia Ricci), read the story of a boy who traded a red rubber band for a house. Michelle decides to try the same thing except she will trade a family heirloom stocking for a house for her sister. When the local newspaper catches wind of Michelle’s story, reporter Dan (Michael Xavier) gets assigned the story. Can they manage to get Keri a house before Christmas?
While this is a very sweet story, the execution is so boring. I didn’t hate the movie but I wasn’t very captivated by it. I was hoping that they would make the trading stuff more interesting. Also, the little conflicts between Michelle and Keri were kind of annoying. Despite the fact that they keep saying Michelle is the “dreamer” of the family and that she always makes her dreams come true, Keri was very negative about the whole trading idea. I get that she’s supposed to be a realist but she didn’t have to be so against it that she tells Michelle to stop trying. Like, let Michelle do her thing. If she gets you a house, great. If she doesn’t, you are in the same position you were before.
Rating: Will someone trade me something for this movie?
Nutcrackers | 2024 Christmas Movies
I am not sure how I completely missed a Ben Stiller Christmas movie. Nutcrackers premiered on Hulu on November 29. And somehow I just found out about it. Either the marketing is bad or I really do live under a rock.
Mike Maxwell’s (Stiller) sister and her husband recently passed away. Now he has to travel to her farm to sign the paperwork for her four boys to go to foster care. Unfortunately, the social worker, Gretchen (Linda Cardellini), is having trouble finding a home for the boys because it is so close to Christmas. As Mike tries to find someone to adopt the unruly kids, he finds that one of the boys has rewritten a version of the Nutcracker ballet. In addition, the boys are lovely ballet dancers since their mother was a prima ballerina at one point in her life and owned a dance studio before her death. The family decides to put on the show in order to find a new family. Little does Mike know that they have found their family.
Nutcrackers is one of those movies where you are supposed to dislike characters. Mike is very selfish. To the point that he doesn’t actually seem to mourn his sister’s death. He just wants to get rid of the kids and move on with his life. The kids themselves are, in the beginning, awful. They break into a closed carnival and destroy some of the attractions. They run around unsupervised causing all sorts of havoc. But they are also grieving children that no one pays attention to. All they need is a good adult figure to care about them and listen to them and not simply bark rules at them.
Interestingly, this movie felt a lot like movies from the 80s or 90s. Something like Overboard or Problem Child. I’m not sure if the throwback feeling of Nutcrackers will be a turn off for people but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, myself. There were even a few tears shed at the end.
Rating: Yes, The Nutcracker does need some updating.
Operation Mistletoe | 2024 Christmas Movies
Heading over to Hulu, I thought Operation Mistletoe looked a lot like a Hallmark Christmas movie. It even features Jen Lilley, who has done her fair share of Hallmark (and Great American Family) movies. How does it compare to the OG Christmas movie channel?
Grace (Lilley) is an interior designer who works with her best friend, Olivia (Melanie Leishman), and her brother/Olivia’s husband, Jack (Steve Belford). When her former classmate, Ryan (Nick Bateman), comes home to sell his grandmother’s house, Mayor Sami (Lisa Michelle Cornelius) convinces him to hold the Ribbon and Bows charity ball one more time before he lets the house go. Grace agrees to decorate the house for the ball with a little help from Ryan. Olivia, meanwhile, tries to get Grace and Ryan together by hiding mistletoe all over town for them to kiss under.
Well, this is another bland Christmas movie. There is nothing special about any of the characters or the story or any of the locations they are in. Then there are entire scenes that are completely overpowered by the background music. They might as well not even be talking. Though many of those scenes are just Grace offering to buy people hot chocolate. Girl has an addiction problem.
I would recommend staying away from this one. There are way better movies out there to spend your time on.
Rating: The hot chocolate must be laced with something
Mistletoe & Matrimony | 2024 Christmas Movies
For those of you that don’t know, Oprah Winfrey has her own television network called OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). I’ve been wanting to watch their movies for awhile but I didn’t have a way to access it. This year they have released at least one of their Christmas movies - Mistletoe & Matrimony - on HBO Max. Let’s check it out.
Olivia (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) is an amazing wedding planner. When her sister, Rosemary (Asha James), announces not only her engagement to her girlfriend, Gwen (Krista Nazaire), but also that they want to get married on Christmas Eve in two weeks, Olivia tries her best to step up to the plate and plan her sister’s dream wedding. To add to the stress, Gwen has asked her best friend, Isaiah (Etienne Maurice), Olivia’s ex-boyfriend, to be the wedding photographer. Can Olivia give her sister everything she wants?
This is one of those movies where the family dynamic is crazy. The older sister gave up her dreams of traveling to take care of their mother after she had a bad fall. Then she’s trying to fulfill all of her sister’s insane requests, while everyone is else responds with “You know how your sister is.” (Who wants a horse-drawn carriage in Chicago in DECEMBER? You will die of frostbite.) To be honest, having to hang around her ex-boyfriend is the least of Olivia’s problems. Of course, everything resolves itself at the end but it is very stressful and annoying during the rest of the movie.
While I found Rosemary entitled and ungrateful, that doesn’t make the movie unwatchable. Just maybe stay away if you have a bit of a toxic family life. It may keep you from enjoying Mistletoe as much as you should.
Rating: I’m not sure the writer has ever seen winter.
Following Yonder Star | 2024 Christmas Movies
Surprisingly, with Following Yonder Star, I have caught up on all of the currently aired Hallmark/Lifetime/Great American Family Christmas movies. I don’t think I’ve ever caught up to the airing schedule before. I’m blaming the fact that Hallmark has released a bunch of movies on their Hallmark+ app that I decided not to get this year. But don’t worry, I still have Netflix and Hulu and all of the other streaming apps to keep me going!
Abby Marshall (Brooke D’Orsay) used to play the perfect wife and mother on TV. Now her life is falling apart thanks to a scandal. So she attempts to spend the holidays at a luxury resort in Vermont…but she accidentally booked the suite for next year. Thankfully, there is a room at a local bed and breakfast owned by Tom (John Brotherton). Abby spends her vacation helping Tom direct the church Christmas pageant, allowing her to find what is truly important to her.
For the first time in a long time, Hallmark has released a movie that references God a lot. Usually they stick to movies that make vague references to religion or they stay away from religion altogether. While it made a little bit of sense with the nativity Christmas pageant, it still felt odd in the context of the movie. Abby didn’t seem particularly religious through most of the movie then suddenly God has a plan. It was weird.
Beyond that, Following Yonder Star is fine. There’s nothing spectacular about it but it’s not awful either. It fits perfectly in that in-between space Hallmark loves.
Rating: People really are that delusional about celebrities
Christmas On The Alpaca Farm | 2024 Christmas Movies
I am nearing the end of the Christmas movies on my list and I will be very happy when this is over. I was looking forward to Christmas On The Alpaca Farm because how can you screw up a movie about alpacas, right? You make it not ab0ut alpacas.
Jess Hilliard (Kirsten Comerford) wants to create a line of sustainable high fashion. When the New York City fashion label she works for scraps her line of alpaca fleece sweaters, she quits to enter a Christmas competition with her own designs. Since the Flannery Farm, where she got her alpaca fleece previously, had to fire their entire staff when the sweater line was scrapped, Jess goes to help Andrew (Matt Wells) and his daughter, Georgia (Ai Barrett), harvest the fleece.
This movie should have been about a city girl being forced to work on an alpaca farm for some reason and she fails, at first, before falling in love with the animals and learning how to care for them and maybe she makes them silly little hats or scarves or something and, in the end, she falls in love with the alpaca man. But no, this movie had to be about fashion. They throw around the term high fashion a few times and nothing here is high fashion. Luxury, yes. High fashion, no. Those are two very different things.
I’m also annoyed that Andrew kept pulling this “You can’t blend my alpaca fleece with ANYTHING!” There are, like, 20 alpacas on his farm that we see. How much fleece does he really think they can generate? Google tells me that an average sweater uses about a pound of alpaca fleece and the average alpaca produces 5 to 10 pounds of fleece per year. Even though Jess is making some chunky sweaters, let’s be nice and say she’s only using one pound. And let’s say these alpacas are amazing at producing fleece so each one gives us 10 pounds. (Yes, I’m being super generous.) Ten pounds of fleece times twenty alpacas is 200 pounds of fleece. Each sweater takes one pound so Jess can make, at most, 200 sweaters per year with this fleece. That might be good for a starting point but there were big companies wanting to sell these sweaters. 200 sweaters per year isn’t a sustainable business plan.
Was there anything good about this movie? I guess Georgia was kinda cute. Ooh, maybe we can have a Georgia & The Alpacas movie and just forget about the adults. That could be adorable!
Rating: These sweaters were ugly and boring too
Get Him Back For Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies
Great American Family really does love their husband-wife pairings this year. We had Mario Lopez and his wife in Once Upon A Christ, now we have the PenaVegas in Get Him Back For Christmas. Oh, Mario Lopez does appear in this movie as well…as himself. Great American Family really needs to branch out some more with their actors.
Bella (Alexa PenaVega) is an up-and-coming singer who recently came into the spotlight thanks to her rockstar boyfriend, Sage Majors (Alan Powell). When Sage breaks up with her, Bella goes back home for the holidays. She meets up with her old songwriter friend, Jack (Carlos PenaVega), in the hopes that they can write a new song together that will help her win Sage back.
Get Him Back was both interesting and boring at the same time. There were some cute scenes: playing around with outfits in the Salvation Army store Jack worked at; Jack’s brother, Matt (Kevin Valdez), trying to figure out if Mia (Abbey Romeo) likes him and whether he should ask her out; and some of the performance scenes were cute. But then they are followed by ridiculousness: Bella setting up a solo performance for Jack in the Dallas Cowboy stadium with the Cowboy cheerleaders was unbelievable; all of the scenes of Jack and Bella writing songs was cringe-worthy; and the sheer misuse of comedic virtuoso Victoria Jackson was heart-wrenching. It leaves me unsure if I actually liked the movie itself or if I only enjoying the actors. Either way, the movie could have definitely used another go-round with the editors.
Rating: More Victoria Jackson, less Mario Lopez