Mom's Christmas Boyfriend | 2023 Christmas Movies

Lifetime’s Mom’s Christmas Boyfriend is very similar to this year’s Peppermints and Postcards from Great American Family. Let’s see if Lifetime could do better than “meh.”

Emma (Jeananne Goossen) is a single mom to her adopted daughter, Lily (Ai Barrett). While shopping for their annual charity, Lily enters the department store’s Christmas Wish contest. She wins with a wish that her mother could find a boyfriend. With the help of store employees Zach (Zach Smadu) and Brady (Chris Wilson), Emma goes on a variety of dates with Clark (Anthony Bewlz), a bachelor that responded to the store’s call for men to date Emma. But is Clark really right for her?

This movie focused a lot more on the kid than Peppermints did. Which is great. Frequently, a child is the centerpiece in a single mother’s life and when single mothers date, they look for someone who will accept her child not just put up with them. It was really nice to see Zach spending a lot of time with Lily while Clark solely focused on Emma. I think it was a nice change from all of the movies that treat children as some sort of extra piece in their families instead of an actual family member.

Rating: Can Emma teach me to bake bread?

Miracle In Bethlehem PA | 2023 Christmas Movies

I live about an hour from Bethlehem, PA. When I saw that there was a Christmas movie called Miracle In Bethlehem, PA, I was intrigued. It wasn’t actually filmed in Bethlehem, of course. It was filmed in Canada. Ah well.

Mary Ann (Laura Vandervoort) is a lawyer who is waiting to adopt a baby. After months of waiting, a baby in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania becomes available. Mary Ann drives to pick her up but gets stranded in Bethlehem due to a severe snowstorm. With no room in any of the local hotels, the new mom and her baby end up staying with Joe (Benjamin Ayres), a mechanic who has lost direction in his life since his father’s death.

While I understand that this movie was supposed to be an analog to the story of Jesus, it was a little offensive that a white woman so intent on adoption was insisting on adopting a baby. There are a lot of children in the system and, as they get older, it’s harder and harder for them to get adopted because people only want to adopt babies. Maybe we don’t normalize only adopting babies.

Obviously, since this is the story of Jesus, it is very heavy handed with its use of God and church. It’s a little annoying but, considering Jesus was the point of the movie, it’s understandable. It does make it a little less appealing to certain demographics though. Or maybe this was Hallmark’s way of saying they haven’t completely dumped God for LGBTQ+ stories.

Rating: At least it’s not a manger

Merry Magic Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

The Lifetime movies are the ones that I go into with the least amount of knowledge. There better be some magic in Merry Magic Christmas or I will be mad.

Beth (Patricia Isaac) is a financial advisor who has been tasked to help a local theater survive an impending financial crisis. Nate (Andrew Dunbar) happens to run the theater and he’s terrible at finances. At dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her best friend Coley (Corey Woods), Beth’s fortune cookie tells her to keep an eye out for 624, a special angel number. Can Beth survive being inundated by 624 and save the theater at the same time?

The biggest thing that annoyed me about this movie is Nate. Every time Beth tries to tell him that the theater will close unless they can raise the funds to cover their bills, Nate just shrugs and says it will work out. He doesn’t want to sell memorabilia from past shows; he doesn’t really want to ask patrons to donate money; he thinks the money will magically appear for no reason at all. I used to work in the theater. I have family that works in the theater. Theater people are not like that. Theater people will do whatever they need to in order to keep their art going. I hate Nate a lot.

If we look past him (which is difficult since he’s the romantic lead), the rest of the movie is fine. The angel number thing is a little annoying. There aren’t any hints about what 624 means, it just keeps appearing everywhere. When she sets her alarm clock for 6:30, it goes off at 6:24. When she is riding her stationary bike for 5 miles, the meter randomly changes to 6.24 miles when she’s done. When she sets a timer for 5 minutes to hard boil some eggs, it refuses to time anything but 6 minutes, 24 seconds. These things mean nothing. What is she supposed to get out of this 624 number? (Spoiler: It’s Nate’s birthdate.) It is a stupid plot device that is badly used.

Ratings: 624 out of 1,000,000

Friends & Family Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

This year, Hallmark has given us their first ever lesbian Christmas movie, Friends & Family Christmas. I am so glad that Hallmark has increased their diversity in Christmas movies. I’m tired of seeing the same thing over and over.

Daniela (Humberly González) is a budding photographer living in New York City. When she tells her parents that she will not be home for Christmas, they take it upon themselves to come to her for the holiday. Her father, Luke (Christopher Shyer), has been talking to his old college roommate, John (Barclay Hope), to try to set Dani up with John’s daughter, Amelia (Ali Liebert). After their initial meeting, Dani and Amelia decide to pretend to be girlfriends for the holiday season to appease their parents.

For the most part, this was a sweet original take on Christmas romance movies. No one came into someone’s hometown and wooed them off their feet. There wasn’t a family business about to close forever without someone’s help. Instead, this was just two women who made an arrangement then found themselves falling in love with each other. Yes, there was the usual lack of communication that caused the big romantic conflict but I’m pretty sure that writers don’t know how to end a movie without the lead actors avoiding conversations. I dream for the day that Christmas movies have people that actually talk to each other falling in love. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Rating: Not picture perfect but good enough

12 Games Of Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

12 Games Of Christmas sounded like an interesting movie. Of course, Great American Family is terrible at commercials so I didn’t know a lot about what the plot would be. But I like games, my family likes games. This should be a no-brainer, right?

Kelsey (Felisha Cooper) has invited her friends and family to her house for a holiday dinner. Just before everyone arrives, a board game - 12 Games of Christmas - appears on her doorstep. When the group finds out about the game, they all decide to play.

This was one of, if not THE, worst movie I have seen this year. The acting is absolutely atrocious. I tried to give them some benefit of the doubt but, alas, this feels like some awful community theater production where the director hired all of their friends as actors even though they can’t act. Not only that, the plot is trying really hard to be religious but without actually saying the religious stuff. The players are supposed to receive a “message” in order to leave the game but they are also told they can leave the game at any time. And the messages are things like “Appreciate family!” Not only that, the players are given 12 tasks to complete and frequently told they need to complete them together. But the tasks are individual things like painting ornaments or building a wreath. This feels like a movie that was either written by AI or by a team of writers who each got their own “day” to write then they just mashed them together to make it fit. I hate it.

Rating: Leave the game immediately

A Christmas Intern | 2023 Christmas Movies

Time to head over to Lifetime to take a look at A Christmas Intern. It doesn’t seem like an interesting movie but who knows what’s going on anymore…

Alexis (Ciarra Carter) runs her own small business called CYBER SANTA. When her retired mother, Cecilia (Jackée Harry), sees that Alexis needs some help, she jumps on a plane to be there. Since Alexis can’t afford to pay her, Cecilia becomes an unpaid intern for the company.

First off, everyone knows unpaid internships are awful. People should get paid for their labor, no matter what. College credit will not pay your bills. Unpaid internships should be done away with forever.

Looking beyond that, this is a fairly cute movie. Harry does A LOT of the heavy lifting though. If it wasn’t for her charisma, the movie would be terrible. Most of the other actors aren’t great at reading their lines. There’s a lot of cardboard acting going on. They should all be very appreciative of Harry’s talents and take a few lessons from her.

Rating: If a marketing class doesn’t tell you to do offline marketing, RUN AWAY

Designing Christmas With You | 2023 Christmas Movies

My husband was wandering around the house while I was watching Designing Christmas With You. He asked me if this was one of the leading men from a previous movie I watched this season and I told him no. That is when he asked me if all of the Christmas leading men look alike. He’s not wrong!

Colbie (Susie Abromeit) is a designer that has been hired to decorate a house for a big Christmas gala. She is forced to work with Ben (Liam McIntyre), the estate manager. Of course, he has a completely different vision from Colbie. Can they pull together the decorations before the event?

I’m not going to lie. This movie was so boring that I immediately forgot what happened as the credits rolled. Here is what I remember: Colbie met Ben before they started working together because she hit him with a snowball while playing a game at a winter festival. After they officially met, they were walking around a festival debating what things they liked and they both liked completely different things except for one blue candle in a glass votive. And Colbie’s hair had a weird swoop thing in it at the actual Christmas ball. I can’t remember anything else about it. There are dozens of movies about decorators. Go watch one of those instead.

Rating: I don’t want either of them near my decorations

Silent Night | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re going to take a break from romcoms and head over to Silent Night. This is an action thriller directed by John Woo so it should be good, right?

Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) is an electrician living in Texas with his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and his son Taylor. On Christmas Eve 2021, the family is on their front lawn playing with Taylor’s new bike when Taylor is killed in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. Brian tries to kill the gangsters, only to be shot in the neck, destroying his vocal cords. Over the next year, Brian trains to get his revenge on the men that killed his son.

There is a recent trend of “silent” movies. Movies where there are no speaking lines, except maybe some background mumbling. Very rarely are these done well. Silent Night is another example of a silent movie done badly. We know why Brian can’t talk but we are given no reasons as to why no one else is talking. As their marriage is breaking down, we never see Saya talking to Brian. She only texts him. Even the gangsters don’t talk to Brian when, in a normal thriller movie, they should be taunting him. There are giant plot holes that are never filled in because we don’t get anyone else’s perspective on what is happening. I wanted to like this movie so badly and it was such a letdown.

Rating: Somebody, anybody, everybody talk! No? OK, I guess.

Family Switch | 2023 Christmas Movies

Every year, I have a difficult time trying to find the list of new Christmas movies for the year on Netflix. When I look, I always find a list of old movies that are being released in December. As a result, there are a few Netflix movies I almost missed this year. Thankfully, I found an updated list of some new movies that came out recently. Family Switch is the first of these.

The Walker family has trouble getting along. When they go to the local planetarium to view the planets in alignment and take their annual Christmas photo, something strange happens. Sixteen-year old CC (Emma Myers) switches bodies with her mother Jess (Jennifer Garner), fourteen-year old Wyatt (Brady Noon) switches bodies with his father Bill (Ed Helms), and baby Miles (Lincoln and Theodore Sykes) switches bodies with the family dog Pickles. Can they all get back to their own bodies before they ruin each other’s lives?

My family rarely watches all of these Christmas movies with me. This time, I was able to convince both my daughter and my husband to watch Family Switch and I’m glad they watched it with me. While it’s not a new plotline (there’s a scene where they reference other movies with the same plot), it was pulled off very well. Garner and Helms are the perfect comedy duo to help guide the younger actors through the ins-and-outs of comedy timing. Together, the four main actors are awesome at playing each other’s characters. Sure, there are some bits that don’t work as well (the CGI baby only works when it is in the background, the closeups are a no-thank-you), but those are few and far between. This is actually a movie that I would watch again. Maybe more than twice.

Rating: Keep an eye out for a Weezer cameo!

Sealed With A List | 2023 Christmas Movies

Sealed With A List is another Hallmark movie that I couldn’t tell what it was about from the commercials. They really are bad at trying to convey the plot in a 30 second clip. Well, let’s see what we got.

Carley (Katie Findlay) has settled into a life that she isn’t very happy with. She makes a pact with her best friend, Jamie (Kelcey Mawema), that she will change her life in the next year. However, next December rolls around and she has done nothing. On a whim, she gets fired from her job - thanks to taking the blame for a problem caused by her inept boss, Wyatt (Evan Roderick). That is when she makes a list of things she wants to accomplish by the end of the year. And she makes Wyatt help her achieve them.

I thought this was a rather cute movie. Instead of focusing on a blossoming romance, the story focused on trying to make both Carley and Wyatt better people. Carley needed to get out of her comfort zone and Wyatt needed to stop relying on his father’s money to do everything for him. Sealed With A List could have easily gone the wrong way but I think Findlay’s portrayal of Carley was just what the movie needed. She was able to pull off competent yet shy but still outgoing when the situation needed. She was easily my favorite part of the whole thing.

Rating: I don’t run but that Christmas 5K looked like fun