Every Time A Bell Rings | 2021 Christmas Movies

Every Time A Bell Rings was actually released back in November on Hallmark’s streaming service, Hallmark Now. I thought I was going to miss it since I’m not subscribed to the service but they decided to release it on their Movies & Mysteries channel too. I’m glad they did.

Three adopted sisters - Charlotte (Erin Cahill), Emily (Brittany Ishibashi) and Nora (Ali Liebert) - return home for Christmas after being separated for years. When they arrive, they find their late father has arranged one last Christmas scavenger hunt for them to complete. Will the search for the Christmas Bell reignite the strong bond between sisters?

I absolutely loved this movie. Granted, there were a few blemishes but nothing that took away from the loveliness of the plot. Watching the three sisters not only rekindle their bond but also figure out how they want to live was nice. Sure, the writers had to put in some sort of obstacle for each sister but none of them are terribly important to the core of the story. They could have easily left out each of the conflicts to focus solely on the scavenger hunt and it still would have been a good movie.

It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to actually recommend watching a movie. But this one should be on your list to watch. Especially if you have sisters.

A Fiancé for Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

A Fiancé for Christmas was so close to actually being a good movie. Why did they have to screw it up?

Sawyer (Amanda Payton) is an obstetrician who never has enough time to fit dating into her life. After watching everyone around get her married, she creates a fake wedding registry in the hopes it will make her feel better. Instead, her best friends find the registry and throw her a surprise engagement party. Too embarrassed to confess her secret, she enlists Landon (Adam Gregory), the brother of one of her patients, to pretend to be her fiancé. Soon the relationship becomes more than pretend.

At its core, this movie is so good. I have two giant problems though. One is Marie Osmond’s spastic acting as Sawyer’s mother. The other is, for some reason, they decided to make Sawyer very childish. Not only does she steal food off of other people’s plates, she also excitedly jumps around whenever anyone mentions cookies. In one scene, Landon says she can have a bite of his snowman cookie and she literally shoves the entire thing in her mouth. Who does that?! She also spends a lot of time pouting or pretend crying when things don’t go her way. If they had made her an actual adult instead of an overgrown child, I probably would have liked the movie much better. Remember, this child-woman is supposed to be a doctor!

The sad thing is that I enjoyed the parts where Sawyer and Landon were having fun and going on the pretend dates. But it is extremely difficult to overlook everything else. Sawyer has an unhealthy obsession with food. Everyone else jokes about it but it isn’t funny. I would bet that it’s triggering to anyone suffering from an eating disorder. THAT is how obsessed she is with food. (Side note: Her cat’s name is Tater Tot and she adopts another cat and names him Cannoli.)

I don’t know that I can recommend A Fiancé for Christmas. I want to but it feels irresponsible. My recommendation is to try to read some other reviews and make a decision after reading what other people think. I hope I’m not the only one that has issues with the movie.

Christmas With A Crown | 2021 Christmas Movies

Once Upon A Time there was a movie. And in this movie was a prince. And the prince didn’t have a stupid made up accent. Just kidding, all royals in all Christmas movies have to sound awful.

Cassie (Lisa Durupt) has returned to her hometown in the hopes of attending the winter festival. However, no one wants to organize it. So Cassie takes it upon herself to plan the entire festival alone. Luckily, tourist Nicolas (Marcus Rosner) has offered to help her. What Cassie doesn’t know is that Nicolas is a prince!

How many different ways can I say a movie is terrible? The prince, the queen, and their two servants have terrible accents. I’m not sure who made this decision but royals don’t have to sound like they have a stick up their butt. Nicolas does drop the accent when he isn’t with the royal people so he sounds normal for most of the movie. But the poor queen (who is played by the amazing Teryl Rothery) has to keep her stupid accent the entire time. I hate it.

Oh, but don’t think it’s only the royals that suck. Durupt is also pretty terrible as Cassie. She overacts every single line. I don’t understand why the director didn’t tell her to tone it down. Ugh.

Stay very far away from Christmas With A Crown. There are plenty of royal-related Christmas movies out there that you don’t need to waste your time or your brain cells on this piece of crap.

David and the Elves | 2021 Christmas Movies

We have another foreign Christmas movie brought to us by Netflix. David and the Elves is a Polish family-friendly flick. It is available dubbed or subtitled in a variety of languages. I watched this one in the original language with English subtitles.

David (Cyprian Grabowski) loves listening to the Christmas stories his father, Piotr (Michał Czernecki), tells him. His favorite story is about Albert the Elf (Jakub Zając), who is the most popular elf at the North Pole. But Albert’s magic is beginning to wane. In order to regain his strength through the love of humans, Albert takes a trip to Warsaw. While Albert has fun with David, he learns that he is not as popular with humans as he thought. Can David save Albert before he loses his magic, turns into a toy, and disappears forever?

While I thought this was an adorable movie, I can see how some people might think it’s rather slow paced. There aren’t any big impressive scenes and most of the movie is actually a bit sad. After the move to Warsaw, both of David’s parents spend a lot of time working, leaving David by himself. Albert starts out as a fun-loving elf who just wants to give everyone gifts but he gets very depressed when he learns that humans don’t believe in him. To me, that sadness makes the ending all the more happy.

David and the Elves isn’t a movie for small children. Not because of the content but because I don’t think the movie would hold their interest for very long. Especially in the US. Kids in the 8-10 age range might enjoy it though. They are at that age where the belief in Santa is starting to wane and kids on the playground are starting to make fun of the kids that do believe. And that is where this movie lives - that space in between belief and disbelief. Even if your kids don’t want to watch it or don’t enjoy it, I think a lot of adults will find it enjoyable without them.

Christmas Movie Magic | 2021 Christmas Movies

The most annoying thing about these Christmas movies isn’t that they are terrible. It’s that most of them are so middle-of-the-road boring that I don’t know what to say about them. I can rip apart the bad movies or rave about the good ones. What do I say about all the ones in between? “Yep, that was a movie.”

Allie (Holly Deveaux) is an entertainment writer longing to win a Pulitzer Prize writing hit news stories. In order to get moved to the news department, her editor sends her to a small town to cover the anniversary of a classic Christmas movie. Once there, she meets Brad (Drew Seeley), a local who runs the movie theater. Together, they try to uncover the mysterious love story behind the song written for the movie.

Christmas Movie Magic is another movie that had a great plot that was squandered by lackluster acting and directing. Deveaux and Seeley have zero chemistry together. It was almost painful to see the two of them on the screen. I’m not sure why they were cast together. It’s almost like the casting agents didn’t even audition them together.

As for the directing, there are these weird close up shots that make no sense. Well, no. I understand that they are attempting to mirror the style of an old 1950s movie. They are just doing a terrible job at it. These close ups occur in places where they aren’t needed. It makes the scene very jarring.

However, the elephant in the room is the big Christmas song at the end. It is performed by Seeley and Deveaux but Deveaux doesn’t have the chops to sing with Seeley. He has performed on Broadway and sang for a variety of Disney projects. (He was the singing voice for Troy Bolton in the first High School Musical movie.) What should be a lovely duet between two people who love each other becomes a cringe-worthy tune when her voice comes in. Again, I think the casting agent made a big mistake.

Should you watch this? I mean, if you want to. Christmas Movie Magic isn’t terrible. It’s also not worth all of your attention. So maybe watch it while you play games on your phone or something. That way you can pop in and out of the interesting parts. There aren’t many of them anyway.

Secretly Santa | 2021 Christmas Movies

At first, I thought Secretly Santa was going to be a Cinderella-themed Christmas movie. But they dropped that plotline for a stupid one about an app. Ugh.

Miranda (Alicia Dea Josipovic) and Paul (Travis Nelson) each run an app that helps people choose appropriate Christmas presents for the people in their life. Unbeknownst to them, they meet up at a costumed Santa-themed bar crawl and begin to fall in love. Before they can exchange information, they get separated but Paul has a glove that Miranda left behind to help him find her. Professionally, Paul’s company is planning on buying Miranda’s app and merging the two together. The two of them get tasked with figuring out how to make the app better by learning more about how people choose the perfect gift.

This movie would have been a million times better if they ditched the stupid app story and kept with the Cinderella plot. First off, if you need an app to tell you what the perfect gift is, you need to pay more attention to the people around you. Second, how could an app possibly know the perfect gift without some Facebook-level stalking of your target’s online life? It’s stupid.

On top of the dumb story, Josipovic and Nelson have terrible chemistry. The writers try to give them this flirting by fighting vibe but they don’t come off as flirting. They just come off as mean to each other. They are a terrible couple.

I don’t want to talk about this movie any more. It’s awful. Don’t watch it. I wish I had those 90 minutes back in my life. I wish I didn’t fast forward through the commercials so that maybe one of those would have been worth my time.

My Favorite Christmas Melody | 2021 Christmas Movies

Even though there are no other Christmas movies named anything like it, I kept getting My Favorite Christmas Melody confused with something. I have no idea what but I kept thinking that I watched this already. Maybe all these Christmas movies are starting to drive me insane.

Abby (Mya) is a singer-songwriter. Three years ago, she had a Christmas song she wrote stolen by a popular singer. Now she works writing jingles for commercials. Fighting with writer’s block, Abby decides to go home for the holidays where her mother, Cynthia (Shakura S'Aida), is the principal at the local high school. Cynthia convinces Abby to help the school’s band instructor, Travis (Rainbow Sun Francks), prepare for the holiday pageant.

As a whole, I enjoyed the movie. Mya is a wonderful singer and the movie lets her sing multiple times. While the music is a little cheesy, it’s not bad. It fits perfectly into a Lifetime Christmas movie. I am glad that a movie about musicians allows them time to actually play music.

Now for the bad parts. Abby, and most everyone around her, complains about the jingle-writing gig claiming it’s not “real art.” She’s getting paid to write music! There aren’t a lot of musicians that get paid to actually write music. it’s an annoying complaint.

On top of that, Abby is very salty about the stolen song. Which is understandable but, at some point, she needs to let it go. it’s been three years and she literally snaps at people who like the song. She claims that her manager got a lawyer who said there was nothing they could do. But, judging by the sheer number of lawsuits we have nowadays about songs, there is no way the lawyer just said “Nope. Sorry.” without taking it to court first. Giving them the benefit of the doubt - let’s say the lawyer was right. It’s been three years and the song is massively popular. Stop taking your aggravation out on the people around you. It doesn’t look good.

Despite the annoying business side of the movie, I do think it is worth watching. There are some good lessons about music being more than technique and putting your heart into it. I just wish they would have gotten rid of all the guilt stuff. I think it would have been a better movie if they didn’t keep harping on how her job sucked.

Sister Swap: A Hometown Holiday | 2021 Christmas Movies

I know that Hallmark and Lifetime have annual movie series. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series have two movies in the same year. Sister Swap has two movies this month. A Hometown Holiday came first and Christmas In The City aired a week later. I wonder if they will be any good.

Jennifer (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) runs a successful restaurant in Salt Lake City. Her sister, Meg (Ashley Williams), stayed in their hometown of Hazelwood to help their parents run their bakery. This year will be the first Christmas with the family since their Uncle Dave (Kevin Nealon) passed away. Meg has gone to Salt Lake City while Jennifer and her son, Simon (Jacob Buster), go home to Hazelwood. When they get to Hazelwood, Jennifer and Simon find out that the family is planning on selling Uncle Dave’s movie theater. Will they be able to save the historic theater or will it be sold to a new theater chain that will update everything?

A Hometown Holiday was a sweet movie. Once again, the romance took a back seat to restoring the movie theater. Sure, Jennifer was falling in love with Eric (Mark Deklin) but we didn’t get a lot of those long stares at each other. Instead, they quietly held hands at family gatherings and sat under a quilt together in the cold theater. The romance wasn’t shoved down our throats, which made it feel like it was happening organically. They fell in love because they were spending a lot of time together.

I also like that the movie didn’t forget about Simon. Instead of shunting him off to hang out with a new set of friends, they used him to bring Eric’s daughter, Madzie (Lila Clark), into the family. It was Simon that would ask Madzie what was wrong when she looked sad and it was Simon that comforted her when she was missing her mother. Bringing the kids together like that made this blending of families feel more natural as well. Sure, in real life, I’m sure the teenager would be a snarky pain in the butt and the child would be angry that her dad was “replacing” her mom but this is Hallmark. Kids don’t act like that around here.

Amazingly, I think this may be my favorite Hallmark movie of the season so far. Granted, I haven’t watched the second movie yet. Since we can see the set up for the second movie in this one, I have high hopes for it. Both of the Williams sisters are good actresses. They shouldn’t have any problems carrying the movie. I think the only way they could screw this up is if the second movie is entirely about Meg getting into a new romantic relationship. I don’t think that is the case but I will be very upset if it is.

Based on this movie alone, yes, I think you should watch it. I mean, if the second movie is bad, at least the first was good. We can pretend that one doesn’t exist if we have to.

Kirk Franklin's A Gospel Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

I fully admit that I am not a “church person.” Heck, I’m not even a “Christian person.” A lot of Kirk Franklin’s A Gospel Christmas may have been lost on me. But I gave it a try anyway.

Olivia (Demetria McKinney) was an assistant pastor at her mother’s church. Now she is heading off to be the lead pastor at a new church. But it seems like some of the parishioners don’t really want her there. Can Olivia find her home in this new place?

The reason I say a lot of this movie is lost on me is because a lot of this movie revolves around church politics. Ida (Deetta West) seems to do everything she can to tear Olivia down and make her feel unwelcome. I thought that church people were supposed to be welcoming and helpful. Ida is the type of person that keeps newcomers away from church. Why would anyone go if they’re going to have all of their mistakes thrown in their faces? And what would Ida do if Olivia did leave? Become pastor herself? I don’t think so.

However, A Gospel Christmas does have exactly what the title says. Gospel music. And it is beautiful. If you fast forward through the rest of the movie, which I suggest you do, the songs are absolutely gorgeous. I don’t know who Kirk Franklin is but he supposedly wrote and arranged the songs. I might have to look him up on YouTube or something because if he sounds as good as these songs do, I might find myself loving gospel music.

The parts of the movie that aren’t singing are quite dull. There is a romance stuffed in there but it feels so out of place and tacked on that it is worthless. Besides, the movie is about Olivia’s journey to becoming a woman on her own two feet. She doesn’t need a man for that. I think A Gospel Christmas would have been so much better if it left out the romance completely and only focused on Olivia’s struggles being a first time lead pastor. Someone seriously needs to tell these networks that every movie doesn’t need a romantic plot.

As I’ve already said, I recommend the movie solely for the music. Have it on in the background so you can keep coming back when a song comes on but, otherwise, the movie is not worth your time or attention.

Our Christmas Journey | 2021 Christmas Movies

Our Christmas Journey really shouldn’t be a Christmas movie. It should stand on its own without having to battle against all of the romantic Christmas movies. Especially since Christmas doesn’t play a huge part in it anyway.

Lena (Holly Robinson Peete) is a single mom trying to raise an autistic son, Marcus (Nik Sanchez), and a talented pianist daughter, Mia (Hilda Martin). When the family, along with her mother - Robin (Aloma Wright), and her ex-husband - Rick (Lyriq Bent), goes to check out a facility where Marcus can learn to live independently. Lena has a difficult time letting Marcus leave the nest, much to the aggravation of Rick. Can Lena learn to let go?

This really was a sweet movie. I’m a little sad that it got stuck in the middle of all of the other Hallmark Christmas movies. (This was on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, which doesn’t get as much traffic as the Hallmark Channel itself.) It highlighted the difficulties a mother goes through when she has a child who is different from other children. Lena wants to protect Marcus from all of the harm in the world but at what cost to Marcus? He will need to learn how to live on his own. It can be difficult to let your child do things that you know might hurt them, even though it will help them in the long run.

I don’t want to talk about the movie too much because I do think that everyone should watch it. Maybe even watch it with a loved one. And you might want to make sure you have a box of tissues nearby. Just in case….