Too Close For Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

THIS MOVIE MAKES NO SENSE. I swear Lifetime has just given up on Christmas movies. They put them out because they “have” to but they don’t want to.

Hayley (Jessica Lowndes) is spending Christmas with her sister, Amy (Vanessa Sears), and Amy’s in-laws. Unfortunately, Haley blames Amy’s brother-in-law, Paul (Chad Michael Murray), for the breakup of her last relationship. When Amy’s mother-in-law, Judy (Seana McKenna), falls ill and Paul’s Christmas trip falls through, it’s up to Amy and Paul to fulfill Judy’s wishes for the perfect Christmas.

I am so annoyed by Too Close For Christmas. I have no idea what Hayley does for a living. It seems like she plans something. Parties? Events? I’m not sure. I just know she constantly calls her boss to bug her about a possible promotion. There’s a running gag about Hayley not getting good phone reception at the Barnett house.

Then there’s this wanna-be-tension between Hayley and Paul. Apparently, at Amy and Tim’s wedding, Paul made a comment about Hayley’s then-boyfriend moving back to London without her AND IT HAPPENED. (Big gasp here?) So now Hayley blames Paul for it? It doesn’t seem like it was his fault. He may have been rude (they don’t actually show the interaction; Hayley just talks about it) but he didn’t make the guy decide to move across the ocean without his girlfriend. The movie tries very hard to make this the conflict between the two characters. IT IS DUMB.

Everything else feels so forced. There’s a charity gala that has to be planned and it ends up being left to Hayley and Paul. For some reason, Hayley decides to have a local barbecue place cater the event. Sure, ribs might be tasty but I’m not sure who wants to eat them at a gala, where they are wearing fancy clothes with perfect hair and makeup. I get that they wanted to come off as ‘down to earth’ and ‘relatable.’ But ribs are a messy food. Not something you eat at a fancy party.

I don’t like this movie at all. It has a 6/10 rating on imdb so I guess someone out there likes it. However, I can’t - in good conscience - recommend it. If you want to watch Too Close For Christmas, do it at your own peril.

The Christmas Listing | 2020 Christmas Movies

I guess now we have to add real estate agent to the list of Christmas movie jobs. There are more realtors in this movie than ‘regular’ people. Was RE/MAX a sponsor?

Julia (Lexi Giovagnoli) and Chad (Travis Burns) are competing realtors. When the owners of a nearby inn announce that they are getting ready to sell their business, Julia and Chad stay at the inn to compete for the listing.

Does this really happen? When a business decides to sell their real estate, do they hold a competition of sorts in order to pick a realtor? I thought you just picked a realtor. If you don’t like the one you picked, you fire them and hire another. This “come stay with us so we can get to know you” thing is weird.

Let’s assume that the scenario is a really real thing. At no point do Julia and Chad have any sort of romantic energy. There’s a few moments where they go from hating each other’s guts to something edging on friendship but I never got the feeling that they were “Meant To Be” or anything. So when they kissed at the end…it was kinda gross.

Sorry, Lifetime, but I can’t recommend The Christmas Listing to anyone. I will never get back the time I wasted watching it.

If I Only Had Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

Let me get this right, Hallmark. You took The Wizard of Oz and made it a Christmas romance movie? And everyone was OK with that?

Darcy Gale (Candace Cameron Bure) is a Kansas City publicist. In order to sign on an important client, she volunteers to work pro bono for the company’s charity in the northeast. With her help Vice President Glenn Goodman (Warren Christie) and his team find what they are missing to make their donation drive a success.

I wish I was joking when I said this movie is The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy, I mean DARCY, has a dog named Bobo that she, unfortunately, doesn’t take with her. At the charity, she works with three employees - Jackie (Jordana Largy), Bridget (Lucia Walters), and Riley (Robert Markus) - who are the Scarecrow, Tin Man (well, Tin Woman), and Cowardly Lion. Glenn isn’t really named Glenn. (Spoiler: He’s the Wizard.) There is even a scene where Darcy is gifted a pair of sparkly red heels.

It’s difficult to talk about whether this is a good movie. I mean, the acting is fine, if not a little over the top for the side characters. The plot…it’s literally The Wizard of Oz so you can’t really go wrong there. It’s a tried and true classic. But it is a weird pairing.

I suppose you could give it a try yourself. There isn’t anything particularly bad about it. And, hey, Alison Araya is in this too. That makes THREE Christmas movies she was in this year!

People Presents: Once Upon A Main Street | 2020 Christmas Movies

I am very confused by this movie’s title. Is People Presents a series of movies? Is it just produced by People Magazine? What does it mean and why is it there?

Amelia (Vanessa Lachey) wants to open a year-round Christmas store. Vic (Ryan McPartlin) wants to open a chocolate bakery. The two have bid on the same storefront in town. It’s up to Elder Dubois (Patrick Duffy) to decide who gets to buy the building.

Both Lachey and McPartlin are charismatic actors. Unlike most leading actors in Christmas movies, these two have the ability to bring something extra to their characters that makes them feel like real people. Granted, they don’t always pick the best scripts but they are usually the best part of the movie, even when they have to say stupid things.

Surprisingly, the script for Once Upon A Main Street wasn’t terrible. There were a few slow parts but a lot of it felt a bit like a buddy comedy instead of a romantic Christmas movie. I almost didn’t want them to get together as a couple. But, despite Billy’s (Scott Takeda) best attempts, Amelia and Vic were bound to get True Love’s Kiss eventually.

Down to the question everyone wants to know - is Main Street worth watching? Sure. The rewatchablity factor on it is low but it is kinda cute. Now if only they would give us the recipe for Nana’s New York Cheesecake…

USS Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

A very long time ago, I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina. Parts of USS Christmas were filmed there. It’s very weird to watch a Christmas movie and recognize locations.

While on a Christmas Tiger Cruise, newspaper reporter Maddie (Jen Lilley) comes upon a love story from the ship’s very first Tiger Cruise. Lt. Billy Jenkins (Trevor Donovan) helps her to track down the couple.

The term “Tiger Cruise” is heavily used in USS Christmas. Apparently, it is a period of time when family and friends can join their deployed sailors on their ship to experience the daily operations. While I love the concept (and yes, it is a real thing), it doesn’t have a lot to do with the movie. Sure, Maddie finds out about Sam (Hardy Rawls) and Dorothy (Ginny MacColl) while on the Tiger Cruise and the ship coincidentally takes them to New York, where they find more information about the couple…but that is it. We don’t even really see any of the named military characters actually working.

So far this season, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries has brought us pretty good movies. Unfortunately, this is not one of those. Everything about it is terrible. The actors have zero chemistry, the plot is boring, the conflicts are non-existent. It’s a complete waste of time. You would be better off untangling Christmas lights all night instead.

Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding | 2020 Christmas Movies

Sometimes a sequel is better than the original movie. That almost never happens in Christmas movies. Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding is the exception.

There are only 2 days left until Jacquie (Kelly Rowland) and Tyler (Thomas Cadrot) have their perfect Christmas Eve wedding. When Jacquie’s family shows up, things go awry.

Last year, we saw Jacquie and Tyler meet in Merry Liddle Christmas. And that movie was terrible. Jacquie was too much of a control freak and her entire family is like a chaos tornado that ruins everything they touch. Somehow, they family has tamed their wild ways. Since the movie needs some form of unbridled chaos, we are instead given Garrett, the wedding planner who refuses to speak to anyone besides Jacquie and quits abruptly after her family talks to him a whole three times. (Yes, that part annoyed me to no end.)

Of course, once the infuriating wedding planner quits, the Liddle family jumps to work trying to get Jacquie’s dream wedding ready in two days. While there are still catastrophic accidents that occur, there aren’t nearly as many of them. That makes Wedding much more bearable than the original.

It’s also nice that Jacquie isn’t as ridiculously controlling as she was previously. I don’t know if that is because she’s been spending time with Tyler’s kids or if she had some sort of epiphany. She is still a little weird - she wants an entirely white wedding on Christmas Eve with these atrociously ugly decorations and she apparently tries to feed children goat’s cheese with vegetables. But she isn’t throwing tantrums when things get ruined. She just kinda shrugs it off disappointingly.

The best part of this movie? You don’t need to watch the first one to understand this one. There’s a “Previously in Jacquie’s life” opening and the family members still all call each other by their relationship: “Hey Sis!,” “I love you, bro,” etc. (Let me say that I have a younger sister and I don’t think I have ever said anything like “Hi, Sis!” to her.)

Merry Liddle Christmas Wedding is definitely on my watch list. There are some adorable moments that made me smile. And that doesn’t happen a lot in Lifetime movies!

Christmas Waltz | 2020 Christmas Movies

At least this movie about dancing has actual dancers in it! This may be a Christmas movie first!

Avery (Lacey Chabert) is planning a Christmas wedding with her fiancé, David (Jeremy Guilbaut). After choosing the cake and scheduling ballroom dancing lessons, the couple cancels her wedding. Dance instructor Roman (Will Kemp) convinces Avery to keep the dancing lessons for herself.

Usually in Hallmark movies, they cast actors who can’t actually do the thing the character excels at. This time around, the cast dancers in the dancing roles. (Avery isn’t supposed to be able to dance well, which is why Chabert gets a pass here.) Kemp trained at the Royal Ballet School. JT Church (AKA John Talan Church), who plays the son of Roman’s head dance teacher, was the professional dancer paired with skateboarder Sky Brown in Dancing with the Stars: Juniors. (Spoiler: JT and Skye won!) As a dancer and a dance mom, it’s nice to see professional dancers cast as professional dancers. It’s annoying when you can’t see the people actually dance.

Another “new” thing in Christmas Waltz is that Lacey Chabert isn’t all that annoying! Her Christmas characters are usually whiny or annoying. Sure, her character spends a bit of time being sad but she also broke off an engagement 24 days before the wedding. She’s allowed to be sad about that. I hope that she’ll continue to get good roles in the future.

With all that said, if you don’t like dancing, don’t watch this movie. There is very little going on beyond the dance lessons. There’s talk about Roman opening a second dance studio but we don’t get to see that happen. I don’t think Avery and Roman even kiss, despite the fact that they are definitely set up as the romantic couple. They perform the Big Dance then roll credits. While I find that acceptable, people looking for the typical Hallmark romantic Christmas story might not like that. However, if you enjoy watching people dance, you might like this. They aren’t amazing dance moves but some of them are pretty. (To be honest, Church is the breakout performer here. He needs a lead role in something.)

Five Star Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

Can a movie be a comedy of errors if it isn’t funny?

When Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) returns home for Christmas, she finds that her father has turned her childhood house into a bed & breakfast. Once the news is broken to the rest of the family, they find out that the inn isn’t doing very well. The gang decides that they need to attract travel blogger Bea Turner to their B&B in order to get a five star review and gain more customers.

I don’t want to give away the twist, in case anyone wants to watch this…but it will make it difficult to talk about. After all, the plot of the movie revolves around mistaken identities and characters lying about who they really are. Lucy makes her family lie about who they are, while making assumptions about the actual customers staying with them. It’s a bit of a mess.

To be honest, the best part of the whole movie is that Lucy’s younger sister, Amber (Grace Beedie), gets to use her alternate persona to discover what she would like to do with her life. Lucy’s older brother, Will (Blair Penner), and his wife, Suzanne (Barbara Patrick), have a major life change that is pretty much overlooked. I think they put in way too many characters. None of them get quite enough screen time to make them real.

Can I recommend Five Star Christmas? I don’t think so. The movie wants to be an ensemble piece but it just isn’t there. Hallmark should stick to focusing on the romantic couple rather than everyone around them.

Dear Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

When I saw that Dear Christmas featured both Melissa Joan Hart and Jason Priestley, I was convinced that this was going to be a terrible movie. Perhaps I judged too quickly.

Natalie (Melissa Joan Hart) hosts a podcast about love. When she goes home to Lake Tahoe for the holidays, she meets up with a former middle school classmate, Chris Massey (Jason Priestley). Even though she is surrounded by stories of True Love, Natalie isn’t sure that it really exists. Will Mr. Christmas show her the way?

There are so many puns in the first quarter of this movie. Yes, even the romantic interest’s name is a pun. Normally, I roll my eyes at puns. Somehow, this movie actually made them funny. (Or maybe I have lost my mind from so many Christmas movies….) I guess that shows that the writing here isn’t terrible. (I don’t know if it’s relevant but the couple that wrote this movie has written the previous two Christmas movies starring Hart.)

On the acting side, there are quite a few heavy hitters here. Besides Sabrina the teenage witch (Hart) and Brandon Walsh (Priestley), we have Ed Begley Jr (who has so many credits, I wouldn’t know where to start), Faith Prince (a Tony award winning actress), and Robin Givens (recently seen in Riverdale). With so many big(ish) names, it would have been difficult for Dear Christmas to fail. Thankfully, everyone pulls their weight to make the movie a joy to watch.

I think that this may be the first Lifetime movie of the season that I am giving a thumbs up to. The channel has had a lot of boring bombs this year but Dear Christmas is not one of them. Grab your Christmas donut and a cup of cocoa and sit down for a good time.

Christmas by Starlight | 2020 Christmas Movies

This movie might actually break a few Christmas movie rules. It at least makes the ‘rules’ interesting.

Annie (Kimberley Sustad) is a family lawyer whose parents own a local cafe. William (Paul Campbell) works at his father’s development company that is planning on demolishing the cafe. She needs him to save her family’s business. He needs her to get his father off his back.

Surprisingly, Sustad and Campbell actually wrote this movie. Usually the actors don’t have such a close relationship with their characters. I think that having the writers (who are legitimate actors on their own) play the main characters was kinda brilliant. They bring a life to Annie and William that most Christmas movies lack.

Christmas by Starlight is quite adorable. Annie has this sort of childlike spark in her while William is the “my parents were distant” businessman. Normally, movies make this ‘childlike spark’ more childish than childlike. Here, Annie does things like wearing Christmas sweaters to a casual business Christmas party, dancing around her living room with her dog, and sneaking off to the coat room to eat a granola bar when William takes her to a fancy French restaurant for a client lunch. Things that a normal human being would do. (Well, maybe not ‘normal’…) Her actions offset William’s lack of Christmas spirit well. Instead of him thinking she acts like a kid, he just thinks she doesn’t know high society stuff.

I would recommend checking out Christmas by Starlight. It’s a cute change of pace from the usual fare.