A Very Merry Bridesmaid is what happens when Hallmark wants to make a bridezilla movie but doesn’t want to make the bride too controversial. And the bride isn’t even the main character! Hear me out….

Leah (Emily Osment) is turning 30 on Christmas Eve. Her older brother, Paul (Patch May), is also getting married on Christmas Eve. Determined to make sure the wedding is perfect, Leah downplays how important her 30th birthday is to her. But Drew (Casey Deidrick), her childhood crush, insists on celebrating her birthday every day leading up to the wedding. Will Leah’s dreams ever be a reality or will she keep putting everyone else before herself?

Let’s get the bride thing out of the way first. Paul is engaged to Julia (Frances Leigh). Julia wants to have the perfect wedding that she has dreamed of since she was a child. This includes buying a wedding dress from a designer in London and traveling overseas multiple times for fittings. She also wants to get married at the house she grew up in but it was purchased by someone else so she’s settling for Paul’s parents’ house. When the movie begins, Paul and Julia are flying back from London. He had a work conference, she was picking up the wedding dress. For some reason, the airline made Julia check the dress bag then they promptly lost the dress. Julia spends the next half of the movie complaining about not having the perfect dress and refusing all of the “backup” dresses until Leah’s stylist friend suggests an alternative.

As for the house, the sale from the buyers fell through so Paul decided to buy the house without telling Julia. (This isn’t the first movie this season that did this. It is terrible. Stop doing this, Hallmark.) Then Paul makes all of his groomsmen work on the house, including building a gazebo in the middle of winter in a Chicago suburb. On the plus side, when Paul finally tells Julia about the house, she is horrified at first. She eventually gives in and is happy she got her house back but, really, buying houses without talking to your significant other first is awful. Don’t do it. Also, don’t have a wedding in Chicago in December then have the reception OUTSIDE. It is cold. They are lucky no one died.

Oh, and the reason Julia wants these things? Because her deceased mother liked them. The dress was made by her mom’s favorite designer. The house is where Julia grew up with them. They are having the wedding on Christmas Eve because her mother loved Christmas Eve. Julia’s entire personality is “I can’t let go of the past.” Maybe be a little more reasonable and pick things that YOU like.

The worst part is that neither Paul nor Julia are the main characters of A Very Merry Bridesmaid. Leah is! And Leah has a legit gripe here, even though she never complains once about it. Christmas Eve is her birthday. She didn’t have a choice on when she was born. But now her brother is getting married on her birthday. And we don’t see anything about Paul pushing back on Julia for any of her wedding wants. As a matter of fact, Paul says “I would do anything for Julia to make her happy.” There should have maybe been a conversation saying “Could we pick a day that isn’t my sister’s 30th birthday? Maybe we can get married next year instead.”

For what it’s worth, the movie isn’t completely awful. Emily Osment is a joy to watch, even though her character needs to stand up for herself a little more. We do see her grow a little throughout the movie but we still don’t see her defending herself. She just goes outside her comfort zone a bit. Maybe we can get a sequel next year where she is a little more confident.

Is it worth watching? Yeah. It’s not amazing but it is worth a quiet night in. Maybe have a bottle of wine nearby in case Julia gets on your nerves.

Thanks to her friends at school, my daughter has recently started watching Hannah Montana. For those of you without kids, Hannah Montana is a Disney Channel show about a girl that lives a dual life as a pop star and a normal teenager. During the day, she is brown-haired Miley Stewart who goes to school and hangs out with her friends. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to her the day she held aloft her mighty....OK, she doesn't transform into She-Ra. However, with the quick donning of a blonde wig, she does transform into teen pop sensation Hannah Montana. The only people that know her secret are her father/manager, her brother, her bodyguard and her two best friends.

I think most parents have an automatic inclination to dislike any television show that their kid likes. Especially if said kid is in preschool and leftover visions of Teletubbies are dancing in your head. There are some terrible shows in the afternoon/evening blocks on The Disney Channel. (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody? I'm looking right at you.) Hannah Montana isn't so bad. The show's father/daughter pair are played by real life father and daughter Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus. This leaves the door wide open to poke fun of Billy Ray's Achy Breaky days and the show takes full advantage of it. I found myself chuckling when Lily, Miley's best friend on the show, made a joke about Billy Ray's old mullet. Sure, the songs on the show are a bit cheesy but they all have a decent message behind them. Besides, I have to give the show props for giving Miley a wig to use to become Hannah. How many times have we, as an audience, been asked to believe that a pair of glasses or a fake mustache have the ability to make everyone around the main character suddenly think they are a completely different person?

I attempted to figure out when new episodes of the series are aired but came up with nothing. Reruns are shown daily in a variety of time slots. We generally watch it at 7PM. I think new episodes come out on Saturdays, though they also seem to come out on Fridays and Sundays. If you check your local listings for The Disney Channel, you are bound to come up with at least a couple of episodes. Give it a try. I bet you'll be finding yourself humming along to some Hannah songs in no time.