Nantucket Noel | 2021 Christmas Movies

To be honest, I was expecting the female lead to be named Noelle. Thankfully, naming Nantucket Noel after the location’s Christmas festival was a better decision.

Christina (Sarah Power) owns a toy store on the wharf of Nantucket Island. Oscar Bittlesman (Bruce Dawson) has purchased the property to develop in memory of his late wife. When Oscar’s son, Andy (Trevor Donovan), and granddaughter, Wink (Payton Lepinski), arrive for the holidays, Christina’s world is turned upside down. The wharf is where her mother first opened the toy store but the building is falling apart. Falling in love with Andy doesn’t make her disagreement with Oscar any easier. Will she be forced to give up her mother’s legacy?

File another movie into the “Just OK” bin. Mostly everything was fine. However, the movie felt like it needed at least another half hour to really tie up all of the plot points. Instead, it shoves all of the endings into about 15 minutes. (And that is being generous.) I looked at the time when they were wrapping up Oscar’s personal storyline, which felt forced to begin with, and there was only one commercial break left. That meant the only thing that should be left is the Big Kiss. But we still had the toy store location, the Molly’s restaurant location, plus the Big Kiss, and maybe giving Wink’s mom a conclusion to deal with. Well, the locations get one whole line in the script and Wink’s mom is never heard from again after the second act. The girl really went from not wanting to leave her mom’s side to “Hey, we can live here forever. That’s cool.”

If they had taken a little more time wrapping up story lines, I think I would have actually liked the movie. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about it. Too much time was spend with Oscar and Christina bickering. Especially since they just kept saying the same things over and over. They could have easily resolved the bickering and moved that conflict into a series of conflicts. Maybe have Oscar agree to think about not destroying the wharf (ending that fight) but then pointing out to Christina all of the issues with the buildings, creating fresh new conflicts to deal with. Instead we get something akin to a childish argument where neither side will give any leeway. I’m sorry, Oscar. You claim to be a big businessman but there is no way you got as far as you did without having to give in at least a little bit.

Nantucket Noel is a decent watch. I think most people would be able to overlook the small issues in the script. Besides, Payton Lepinski is pretty cute as Wink. Even if Wink is a stupid nickname for a kid.

Dancing Through The Snow | 2021 Christmas Movies

Hey, Lifetime. If you are going to call your movie Dancing Through The Snow, I’m expecting dancing. And I will be very disappointed if there is no dancing.

Michael (Colin Lawrence) is a single dad to daughter, Lily (Bianca Lawrence). When he begins dating Lily’s ballet teacher, Olivia (AnnaLynne McCord), Lily has a difficult time emotionally dealing with her father’s first relationship after her mother’s death.

At it’s core, this movie wants to be about the relationship between a father and daughter after the death of the family matriarch. After all, that is why they cast a real life father and daughter in the roles of Michael and Lily, right? Unfortunately, Dancing Through The Snow doesn’t really connect the way it should. Bianca doesn’t have the acting experience to be able to fully bring Lily to life. As a result, her character is very flat. She acts the same way whether Lily is supposed to be happy or sad or jealous. It makes it difficult for the audience to think she’s nothing more than a brat. And, sadly, the main plot of the movie kinda revolves around her.

My second big problem with the movie is that the title implies there will be dancing. There is a little bit of dancing - a video of Lily and Michael dancing to the Nutcracker Suite goes viral, we see Olivia doing some stretching, and at the very end of the movie, two firefighters do a little bit of dancing with two young girls dressed as ballerinas. Oh, and Michael and Olivia slow-dance in her studio with their outside shoes on. (Hey, networks, take a note - DO NOT WEAR OUTSIDE SHOES ON DANCE FLOORS.) That is the entirety of the dancing in the movie. Hallmark did a much better job last year with Christmas Waltz. Do better, Lifetime.

I went into this movie wanting to like it and it highly disappointed me. You would do better watching last year’s Christmas Waltz on Hallmark or the Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker documentary on Netflix. Leave Dancing Through The Snow off your Christmas list. It is not worth watching.

The Princess Switch 3: Romancing The Star | 2021 Christmas Movies

Guess who’s back. Back again. Yep, it’s Vanessa Hudgens in yet another Princess Switch movie. This one is The Princess Switch 3: Romancing The Star. I’m not sure if the title is supposed to be a play on the 1984 movie Romancing The Stone but if it is, I’m not sure how many people will get the reference.

Queen Margaret (Vanessa Hudgens) and Princess Stacy (also Hudgens) are co-hosting a Christmas charity event. The Vatican agrees to loan them the Star of Peace, a relic that was once carried by Saint Nicholas himself. When the Star of Peace is stolen, the lookalike royals turn to Margaret’s cousin, Fiona (also Hudgens), to help them steal it back.

While there is a little switching going on in this movie, it is almost completely focused on Fiona. Both Margaret and Stacy dress up as Fiona for different reasons. Margaret to distract one of Fiona’s old boyfriends while Fiona helps her childhood friend, Peter (Remy Hii), steal back the Star. Stacy to attend Fiona’s hearing to review whether the community service she must complete thanks to her actions in The Princess Switch 2 has been enough or if she needs to serve more.

On one hand, I kinda hate the Fiona character. Not only is she a terrible person but, in this movie, both Margaret and Stacy do a horrible job impersonating her. I’m not sure why anyone believed they were the blonde bombshell. On the other hand, this movie gives Fiona a sad childhood back story. We see why she is how she is, though it didn’t make me feel particularly sympathetic toward her. It seems that Peter was in a similar situation to her and, while he has a bad side too, he is a better person than Fiona.

Where most Christmas movies focus on the romance part of the story, The Princess Switch 3 is more of a heist movie. They spend a lot of time planning the heist and preparing for the heist and then executing the heist. Everything else is a minor sub-plot. It did make for a nice change in the Christmas movie scene. I just wish it didn’t involve Fiona and her two stupid lackeys.

If you have already watched the other two movies in the series, you’re going to watch this one. Even if I tell you not to, I know you will. I wish the movie had a little more depth to it but it is what it is. It’s not a terrible movie. A little annoying maybe, but not too bad. And it does leave a little door open for a fourth movie. I just hope they leave Fiona at home for that one.

A Holiday In Harlem | 2021 Christmas Movies

The commercials for A Holiday In Harlem never made the movie seem particularly interesting. They weren’t wrong.

Jazmin (Olivia Washington) is an executive that helps small businesses grow. When she accidentally causes her grandmother, Mama Belle (Tina Lifford), to get injured, Jazmine has to take over planning the annual holiday festival for the neighborhood. Thankfully, she has her childhood friend, Caleb (Will Adams), to help her.

I wanted to like A Holiday In Harlem. I want Hallmark to have more people of color in starring roles in their Christmas movies. Sadly, this one is just as boring as all of their other movies. And it’s a combination of bad writing, uninspired acting, and a fairly green director to blame.

First, the plot. While the plot is mostly dull, there are a few things that could have been worked on a bit more to bring them to the forefront. There’s a subplot about Jazmine’s parents, who had broken up when she was a child, getting back together without telling her. The script gave us some sly hints that the big reveal was coming up but then it fizzled into nothing. Sure, her parents were holding hands and whatnot but, otherwise, they barely seemed to like each other. It would have been nice to give them a little more to do to show us that they are rekindling an old romance.

In addition, this big holiday festival. All of the events that we were told were going to big, important pieces of the festival, were anything but. I think there were only two outfits shown in the fashion show and the basketball toss was little more than Jazmine yelling into a microphone while kids threw balls around. Spoiler: Everyone gets the same type of gift so I’m not really sure why it mattered if the kids got the basketball into the hoop. It would have been nice to see the kids that did get it in get something extra. That’s the whole point of a game. Maybe every kid gets a gift but if you get a basket, you get a candy cane or something. Either way, the festival wasn’t very festive.

Second, the acting. None of them felt like they actually wanted to be there. This was supposed to be a journey of Jazmine going from not wanting to go home for the holidays to remembering how much she loved her community and family and wanting to celebrate with them. Instead, she seems just as unenthused about being at home at the end as she did in the beginning. And she’s not the only one. Everyone has this underlying boredom in what they are doing. I think everyone would have had a better time sitting at home instead of doing festival stuff.

Finally, the directing. Normally, I don’t harp on the directing a lot. But this one is particularly bad. Too many scenes are people just standing there talking at each other. There should be more movement in the scenes. We don’t even get a stereotypical “walking down the street drinking cocoa together” scenes. The characters all just appear at different functions. No outside establishing shots at all. For all we know, Mama Belle’s house is really really big.

If you can’t tell by now, I’m telling you not to watch A Holiday In Harlem. Unless you are curious whether Denzel Washington’s daughter can act. (She plays Jazmine.) Then maybe give it a watch and wonder why her dad didn’t hire an acting coach for her.

One December Night | 2021 Christmas Movies

Wait, wait, wait. Hallmark got Bruce Campbell to star in one of their movies? How in the world did that happen?

One December Night tells the story of the rock duo Bedford & Sullivan, made up of Steve Bedford (Bruce Campbell) and Mike Sullivan (Peter Gallagher). They had a falling out twenty years ago and now they are preparing for a televised reunion concert. However, they don’t get along very well. It’s up to their kids, Jason (Brett Dalton) and Quinn (Eloise Mumford), respectively, to convince them to do the show. Can they put the past behind them to save their future?

I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this one. Both Bruce Campbell and Peter Gallagher are amazing actors. (You should absolutely see Gallagher in the first season of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.) But this is still Hallmark. They know how to ruin what should be a good thing. Thankfully, One December Night is just as good as I hoped.

Besides the fact that all of the actors bring their A-game on this one, I think this may be the first music-related Hallmark movie that actually has music in it! And it’s a lot of music! The sub-plot of the movie is about Quinn’s new client, Addison (Jasmine Forsberg), trying to get a foothold in the industry. She sings no less than three songs on her own. Bedford & Sullivan perform two songs themselves. That’s FIVE SONGS. Most music-related Christmas movies barely have one! I love it!

On the bad side, the lip synching is pretty terrible. The songs sound beautiful but the sounds we hear don’t match up with the lip movements very well. It’s so bad that I thought my recording of the movie was out of synch. Even the ADR (where actors re-record their lines in a studio when the actual recorded audio is no good) doesn’t line up right. While it can be annoying, it is a minor annoyance.

Fans of Bruce Campbell and Peter Gallagher should definitely watch One December Night. They are definitely my favorite part of the movie. My second favorite is Jasmine Forsberg’s singing. She has a lovely voice. If you are down for any of that, watch it. If you are looking for the romance, skip it. The romance definitely takes a backseat to the brotherly relationship of the men. We don’t get a lot of that and we honestly could use more. Normalize male friendships!

A Picture Perfect Holiday | 2021 Christmas Movies

Ugh, Christmas puns. It’s the worst part of the Christmas movies. See, it’s A Picture Perfect Holiday because they are photographers! Get it? Groan.

Gaby (Tatyana Ali) is a fashion photographer looking to nab a permanent position at a fashion magazine. For some reason, Leila (Dina Meyer), her former teacher and a current editor at the magazine, sends Gaby on a Christmas Photography Retreat to try to make her photography more emotional. When Gaby arrives, she finds that the cabin she booked has been double booked. She will have to share the house with wildlife photographer, Sean (Henderson Wade). The two photographers teach each other new things about their art and fall in love along the way.

Well, I will give this movie one thing - it has photography. And we actually get to see some of the photographic results! But that is probably the best thing about the movie. Gaby and Sean are very boring people. She likes black coffee, he likes hot chocolate. She doesn’t like Christmas, he lives for it. She doesn’t eat breakfast, he likes cooking large elaborate breakfasts. We have seen this so many times.

This movie should have been about Dani (Paula Andrea Placido) and Amelia (Rivkah Reyes). They are a lesbian couple waiting for the perfect moment to propose to each other. It would have been awesome to see all of the almost-proposals since neither of them know the other is planning on proposing. To see the look on Amelia’s face when Dani starts to propose but gets interrupted by something or to see each of them trying to find the perfect spot without letting the other one know what they are doing. That would have been much more interesting! But, no, we’re stuck with Dull and Boring.

Is A Picture Perfect Holiday worth watching? Not really. This is yet another ‘turn it on and do something else’ type of movie. I do want a sequel about Dani and Amelia’s wedding though. Maybe they can make it a sort of anthology of them telling stories and showing pictures of their life story. That would be cool.

My Christmas Family Tree | 2021 Christmas Movies

Ah, the orphan plotline. It can be used to make such a feel-good Christmas movie. Or it can make you feel sad and lonely. Let’s see where Hallmark went with My Christmas Family Tree.

Vanessa (Aimee Teegarden) was orphaned when she was nine years old. Now an adult, she takes a Family Tree DNA test. A few days before Christmas, her test returns a paternal match. Has she found the family that she has dreamed of?

I know, this sounds like it would be a schmaltzy movie where everyone adores everyone else. On the contrary, My Christmas Family Tree adds the right amount of skepticism to the love fest. Sure, her new father, Richard (James Tupper), and his family accept her into their family immediately, Richard also shows a bit of doubt that Vanessa really is his daughter. Even Vanessa has some doubt. I think that it offsets what could be a terribly cheesy scenario.

To be honest, I found myself enjoying the movie. I loved the way that Vanessa didn’t try to force her way into the family. She was just nice to everyone. When the kids were having a difficult time, she would talk to them like they were real people, which is a rarity. Most people treat kids like they are idiots or dolls they can play dress up with. Vanessa is there when they need someone and she doesn’t talk down to them. It’s the way people should act around children.

The romantic part of the story is actually the sub plot. Vanessa isn’t there to find her one true love. She’s there to find who her family is and where she comes from. The romantic love is the cherry on top of the happiness sundae. Sorry, Kris (Andrew W Walker), you’re kinda irrelevant here.

I would recommend watching My Christmas Family Tree. Especially if you are looking for a movie that is sweet but not syrupy, full of love but not overly romantic, and has just the right amount of Christmas. Good job, Hallmark.

Open By Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

Sometimes I don’t understand how Hallmark picks which movies to go on which channel. You would think that movies with a “mystery” type of plot would go on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. But they don’t. Open By Christmas is an example of that.

When Nicky (Alison Sweeney) comes home for Thanksgiving, her parents tell her that they are selling her childhood home to move into a smaller house. As Nicky helps them pack, she finds an old unopened Christmas card in one of her high school textbooks. The card professes love for Nicky but it doesn’t have a signature. It’s up to Nicky and her best friend, Simone (Erica Durance), to figure out who slipped the card into the book so long ago.

This really could have been a good Christmas mystery movie. But instead of spending the majority of the movie trying to sleuth out who wrote the card, they spend more time focused on Simone’s fiancé, Jeremy (Michael Karl Richards), surprising Simone with a new house. They spend so much time on it that you would think that Simone is the main character in the movie. (And, seriously, who surprises someone by buying them a house? Don’t do that. It’s financially awful.)

As for the mystery itself? We only get a few hints as to who the writer could be. Thanks to the message in the card, Nicky and Simone surmise that the writer was on the basketball team. Nicky’s mom did some online searching and figured out that the person that wrote it is left-handed. Finally, Simone’s future mother-in-law actually recognizes the handwriting! But it doesn’t actually lead to the correct answer. It would have been nice if there was some more detective work shown. After all, it’s supposed to be the main plot of the movie!

Alas, the movie promises a lot but delivers little. This is yet another movie that is fine as background noise but if you actually pay attention, it’s lacking in substance. I know that Hallmark churns out a lot of movies. It would be nice if they could hire some good writers for once.

An Ice Wine Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

Lifetime finally jumps into the Christmas fray this year with An Ice Wine Christmas. Let’s see if they start off strong.

Camila (Roselyn Sanchez) is one of the top sommeliers in Philadelphia. However, her heart really lies with the Ice Wine Festival and harvest in her hometown of Evergreen, NY. When Camila finds out that Henry (Richard Fitzpatrick), the owner of the vineyard, is retiring, she does everything she can to make him change his mind. Henry turns to Camila’s sister, Beth (AnnaMaria Demara), and scientist Declan (Lyriq Bent) to figure out how to predict the annual frost in order to harvest the grapes for the ice wine. Whose prediction will be correct - Camila or Declan?

I don’t think I understand why wine-making ends up in Christmas movies. Are they trying to hone in on the “moms drink a lot of wine” trope? Newsflash: Drinking wine and making wine are two different things.

Anyway, An Ice Wine Christmas tries to throw a couple of different plots together and I’m not sure how well they work. As always, there is a Christmas festival to plan. They make it sound like this is both an annual event and an event that hasn’t happened in awhile. They also make it sound like Henry planned the whole festival himself in previous years but now it’s too much work for a committee of 6 people. Please pick one. Either way, the movie spends the least amount of time focused on the festival as possible. There are vague conversations about decorations and Camila convinces Declan to fix the town’s bell….because he can weld? I feel like you need more skills than just welding to fix a giant bell. Even when the festival is going on, they are like “Hey! Here’s Ice Wine! It’s delicious! Christmas!” What is the point of the festival if it isn’t going be festive?

But the main plot in the movie is trying to figure out when the frost will come so they will know when to harvest the grapes. And, apparently, they need tons of volunteers to come out in the middle of the night to pick the harvest. Now, as I have said, Henry has been doing this for years. He knows how to predict the frost. He has been doing it successfully the entire time and he taught Camila how to do it so it is something that can be taught. So why, all of a sudden, is Henry like “Nope, we gotta find a new way. This won’t work for Beth.” WHY? (Well, so they can bring in Declan and he can fall in love with Camila, duh.)

Finally, there’s the “Teaching Christmas” plot. Declan’s family doesn’t celebrate Christmas in a traditional way so Camila takes it upon herself to teach him about the spirit of Christmas. Except she doesn’t really teach him anything. She tells him some stories about her past Christmases but there’s nothing that would make someone be like “I get it! Traveling the world for Christmas is a trash idea. We should all be at home decorating trees and cookies together!”

I want to classify An Ice Wine Christmas as “not bad, just boring” but that doesn’t feel right. No, it’s not a bad movie. Yes, it is boring. I think the reason it’s boring is the reason it doesn’t belong in that category. They want to do too much but don’t focus on anything. There’s a festival but all we really see from it is a silent auction, a few Christmas lights, and ice wine. A festival should have more festive things. Add some carolers or a children’s choir (no, there are no children in this movie) and it would have upped the enjoyment of the festival. Even the ice wine harvest is dumb. Why is your most important harvest of the year completely relying on volunteers showing up? Shouldn’t you have employees - even temporary seasonal employees - to do this?

Ah, just skip it. There isn’t anything worth watching here. Unless you are really curious about ice wine, I guess.

Father Christmas Is Back | 2021 Christmas Movies

I know that British comedy is different from the rest of the world. But just because you put John Cleese in the cast, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically a comedy.

Father Christmas Is Back is about the Christmas family coming together for the holiday. Caroline (Nathalie Cox), her husband Peter (Kris Marshall), and their two children (Amelie Prescott and Oliver Smith) are hosting this year. Coming to visit are Caroline’s three sisters: Joanna (Elizabeth Hurley), Paulina (Naomi Frederick), and Vicky (Talulah Riley) plus Joanna’s new boyfriend: Felix (Ray Fearon). Then there’s the women’s mother: Elizabeth (Caroline Quentin), their uncle: John (John Cleese), their absent father: James (Kelsey Grammer), and James’s girlfriend: Jackie (April Bowlby). They are all staying at the ancestral castle of Peter’s family. Comedy ensues?

Somehow, I think the writers were planning on this to be some sort of black comedy. Because there definitely isn’t any sort of actual comedy here. Everything seems so serious all of the time. Maybe we were supposed to laugh at the fact that Paulina has been working on a thesis for the past 10 years on the reason the Beatles broke up? Maybe we were supposed to laugh at Vicky’s promiscuity? Or maybe we were supposed to laugh at how terrible Joanna was to everyone around her? Seriously. Tell me where the funny parts were. I think the only reason this got classified as a comedy is because the tone isn’t serious enough to make it a drama.

Overall, the acting wasn’t terrible. Granted, I’m not a huge fan of Kelsey Grammer so I would have liked it better if they had cast someone else in his role. And I would have liked them to use John Cleese’s comedy skills more. He’s a comedy legend and they barely gave him any lines beyond making fun of James abandoning his family.

Oh right - the main plot point - the REASON THIS MOVIE IS NAMED WHAT IT IS - is because James abandoned his family when the girls were fairly young. And now their father - JAMES CHRISTMAS - is back. I can’t groan any louder.

But that plot point isn’t played up for laughs or anything. It just is a fact of the movie. Well, I guess there is one slightly funny part where James and his older brother, John, attempt a fist fight but the never actually touch each other. Yeah, don’t slide past that fact - Kelsey Grammer and John Cleese play brothers. I still can’t groan any louder.

Unless you are a super fan of one of the actors in this movie, skip it altogether. There is no other reason to watch it. I wish there was because the acting is quite good. It’s the rest of it that sucks.