Steppin' Into The Holiday | 2022 Christmas Movies

I didn’t realize how much I missed Cheri Oteri’s comedy until I watched Steppin’ Into The Holiday. She may not be the lead of the movie but she is definitely the best part.

Billy Holliday (Mario Lopez) is a former Broadway star who just got fired from his hit TV show, “Celebrity Dance Off.” As he returns home, he reconnects with Rae (Jana Kramer), the daughter of his former dance teacher. Rae now runs the local studio and is running into problems trying to organize her winter recital. Billy steps in to help and the two fall in love.

To be honest, there were only a couple of times I found myself interested in Steppin’ Into The Holiday. One: The scenes with Billy’s manager, Dallas, (Cheri Oteri), and her dog, Shakira. Two: The scenes where the kids were dancing. Sorry, Mario, you looked ridiculous in most of your dance scenes. Even Billy’s nephew, Junior (Enzo Rodriguez), didn’t look great in the dance scenes. I’m talking about the kids that were dancing during the recital. There were some good dancers in there.

Other than those couple of times, I found the movie to be the same middle of the road fare we always get. It wasn’t terrible. Mario Lopez is rather charismatic so that helps. But it wasn’t great either. It always feels like he’s trying not to overact, which makes him overact. Jana Kramer is fine but she isn’t really given any room to be present. She’s there to dance and make googly eyes at Mario Lopez. Shrug.

If you decide to watch it, and I’m not telling you not to watch it, do it for Cheri Oteri and Shakira. They seriously are the best parts of the movie, even if they only have like three scenes.

The Noel Diary | 2022 Christmas Movies

Usually, Netflix Christmas movies are a little more put together than movies that are on a cable television budget. The more money you have to throw at something, the better it is, right? Well…maybe not.

Jacob Turner (Justin Hartley) is a famous mystery author. When his mother passes, he has to go back to his hometown to clear out her house in order to sell it. As he is working, he meets Rachel (Barrett Doss). She is looking for her birth mother who may have worked for Jacob’s parents. Together, they set off to find the truth in their histories.

The Noel Diary is probably one of the slowest movies I have ever watched. A majority of it is filled with Rachel reading a diary while Jacob drives them to his estranged father’s house. Rachel makes a giant leap of logic assuming the diary was written by her birth mother, Noel (Essence Atkins). This is a romantic drama so of course she’s right but Rachel didn’t know her mother’s name or what she did. All she knew was that her mother once lived at Jacob’s mother’s house. Anyway, we don’t get to see anything Noel was going through. We only get to see the writing in the book.

We don’t even get deeper scenes when Jacob finally meets up with his father, Scott (James Remar), who he hasn’t seen in decades. There’s a Christmas tree decorating montage while poor Rachel and Jacob’s dog, Ava, freeze in the car. (Seriously, why does Rachel keep agreeing to stay in the car? Girl, you are going to die.) This is where we should get some good emotional backstory. Scott knew Noel! Instead of trimming trees, we should have gotten loads of stories from Scott. About Jacob’s deceased brother, Ben (Baylen D. Bielitz). About Rachel’s mother, Noel. About what Jacob’s mother, Lois (Monica McCarthy), was going through. But, no. We get Christmas decorations and a small conversation about Noel. Sad.

Normally, I don’t like spoiling movies. Even the crappiest of Christmas movies doesn’t deserve to get spoiled. However, I feel obligated to tell you that there is no payoff in The Noel Diary. All of those things the movie leads you to want, you don’t get. It is extremely frustrating to sit through an hour and forty minutes for nothing.

So, in the end, I can’t recommend watching this one. The pacing is too slow and we don’t get anything out of it. I almost wish for a sequel so we can get those things this movie promised us. But I don’t think we’ll get either. Netflix really failed on this one.

#Xmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

When I saw that there was going to be a movie this year called #Xmas, I took a deep breath and hoped it wasn’t going to be as stupid as it sounded. It probably could have been titled better.

Jen (Clare Bowen) owns her own interior design business with her sister, Ali (Anna Van Hooft). However, business is not going well. The women enter a contest run by mega-influencers, Zoe (Lillian Doucet-Roche) and Charlie (Sebastian Stewart). They pretend that Jen is married to her friend, Max (Brant Daugherty), and they have a baby, who is really Ali’s baby. When they become finalists and the influencers come to visit them, everything begins to fall apart.

I was slightly relieved as soon as I realized that this movie wasn’t going to be about an app or a software developer. However, that relief was negated as soon as Jen opened her mouth. This seems to be another instance of women writers that hate women. Jen is constantly negative about everything. I get that she’s supposed to lack self-confidence and is constantly doubting herself but why would she open an interior design business? This is the personality of someone who needs a boss. Not someone who can run their own successful business. It’s probably the reason their business was failing in the first place and I don’t understand why anyone would continue to be around her.

In addition to the self-misery, Jen is also mean to a lot of the people around her. While her mother, Liz (Karen Kruper), is fairly self-centered, Jen is absolutely vile to her every chance she gets. Then there is Max. Jen expects him to put his career aside just to live near his friend. She doesn’t want to be romantic with him, she just doesn’t want him to leave her. I think I might hate Jen and, no, she isn’t worth the redemption arc.

There isn’t a lot to make this movie worth watching. I enjoyed Van Hooft’s performance and Max tries his hardest to be the best character in the movie. In the end, I can’t recommend watching #Xmas. Maybe if the big redemption cycle started earlier in the movie so we could see her actually apologizing to everyone. (No, there are no apologies to be had.) But as it stands, it’s a movie about an awful woman being awful to everyone around her. I see enough of that in real life.

Baking All The Way | 2022 Christmas Movies

I don’t think I will ever understand the Christmas movies where someone is looking for The Perfect Recipe for something. Food is subjective. What you think is Perfect might be Complete Trash to someone else. There is no The Perfect Recipe.

Julia (Cory Lee) is a celebrity pastry chef looking for the perfect gingerbread recipe for her newest cookbook. When she asks for submissions from the public, she gets a basket of cookies from a Wisconsin bakery owned by Kris (Yannick Bisson). His bakery isn’t doing so well financially so Julia offers to help him increase his sales in exchange for his gingerbread recipe.

There isn’t a lot to say about Baking All The Way. It is a fairly typical bakery movie, except that we don’t get to see any actual baking happening. We see them brainstorm some gingerbread-themed treats for their 12 Treats Of Christmas special but we never see them making any of them. (Well, we see him rolling out some dough. That’s it.) It would have been nice to see some actual baking happening in the bakery, even if it was a montage of screwing around in the kitchen.

Otherwise, Baking All The Way is a fine movie. There’s little to no chemistry between Lee and Bisson. They seem more like colleagues so the romance at the end is a little jarring. I would rate it as another movie to turn on while you do something else. But maybe you could get some recipe ideas despite not seeing any actual baking. That might be a plus.

Christmas At The Drive-In | 2022 Christmas Movies

Danica McKellar is one of the actors that left Hallmark for Great American Family after last year’s Christmas season. Let’s see if the switch changed the tone of the movies she’s doing now.

Sadie (Danica McKellar) is a property lawyer who left her big law firm in Chicago to teach in her hometown. When she hears that her high school boyfriend, Holden (Neal Bledsoe), is selling his late father’s drive-in theater, Sadie takes up the fight to keep the drive-in open.

Well, Christmas At The Drive-In suffers from the same problem as McKellar’s Hallmark movies. She is a wonderful actress stuck with a rather terrible script. For example, all of Sadie’s ideas to save the drive-in consist of “throw more Christmas at it.” I don’t know that putting up more Christmas lights will bring more patrons to the theater. Some of the other ideas were wonderful: the food truck and moving the Christmas tree sales to the drive-in. However, a lot of the ideas revolved around simply adding more decorations.

Thankfully, McKellar was paired with Bledsoe this time around. He’s not the best of the romantic male lead actors but he was able to hold his own against McKellar. Their pairing made Christmas At The Drive-In a little more watchable.

Do I recommend watching it? Eh, if you are a McKellar fan, definitely. She is the bright spot in the movie. Maybe get a bowl of fresh popped popcorn and pretend you are at your own personal drive-in while watching. It might not make it any more interesting but, hey, popcorn!

My Southern Family Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

A new Christmas tradition has been brought to light in My Southern Family Christmas. The Louisiana Cajun tradition of Père Noël. A boat towed by alligators sounds both interesting and terrifying.

Campbell (Jaicy Elliot) is a travel journalist. When she finds out that her long lost father, Everett (Bruce Campbell), is going to be the new Père Noël in Sorrento, LA, she decides to write an article about the southern traditions in order to get to know him better. But will she ever tell him that she is his daughter?

This is yet another movie that could have been solved with a conversation. Granted, I know it is an awkward and difficult conversation but one that should have happened in the beginning. Last year’s My Christmas Family Tree handled this type of situation much better. (Though that movie was about an orphan. Campbell still has her biological mom.) I think My Southern Family Christmas would have benefited from having Campbell and Everett knowing about each other and sharing all of their family traditions together. Instead, Campbell was just super awkward around him all the time.

Hm. My Southern Family Christmas also falls into that “not good but not bad” section of movies. If you are interested in Louisiana Christmas traditions, this might be worth watching. Otherwise, it’s just kinda boring. Maybe turn it on while you’re baking a meat pie or something.

A Show-Stopping Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

During the Christmas season, lots of theaters put on productions of A Christmas Carol. That is part of the plot of Lifetime’s A Show-Stopping Christmas. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see a lot of the play itself. Only the production part.

Riley (Jamie Perez) is the director for a local production of A Christmas Carol. The theater owner, Regina (Maureen Keiller), wants to sell the theater to a condo developer. Riley teams up with Regina’s nephew, soap opera actor Sam (Thomas McDonnell), to keep the theater open and alive.

A Show-Stopping Christmas was annoyingly boring. There are tons of way that they could have made a theater buy-out interesting and the writers went the completely opposite way. Even worse, they made Riley a sort of kn0w-it-all. Every time someone had an idea to change Regina’s mind, Riley would either have something to make it better or a completely different idea they would use instead. It would have been nice to see the other characters be useful.

I would toss this movie into the Do Not Watch pile. It is tedious and boring and annoying. There are better adaptations of A Christmas Carol. Once where the play actually matters to the plot of the movie. This one is just…blah.

When I Think Of Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

Hey, guess what? It’s another movie about singers! When I Think Of Christmas isn’t only about one singer though. We have three singers in this one!

Sara (Shenae Grimes-Beech) is a New York lawyer who has returned to her hometown to help her mother, Anna (Beth Broderick), move into a smaller home while celebrating the holidays. At one of the town festivities, she finds out that her ex-boyfriend and ex-singing partner, Josh (Niall Matter), is producing the town holiday concert. Will they spark a new love for music along with reigniting their love for each other?

When I Think Of Christmas is an interesting movie. There are a couple of conflicts that keeps the audience interested in staying tuned instead of just the big conflict with the main couple. Yes, I said main couple. This movie also has a secondary will-they/won’t-they couple! And each of the main characters have multiple conflicts. Does Hallmark want our brains to explode?

Here’s a quick rundown of the conflicts: Sara and her job, Josh and his job, Sara and Josh romantically, Anna and Sara’s history, and Sara and her romantic interest George (Mark Humphrey). While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a conflict, there’s also a big plot point about Anna and Sara remembering their deceased father/husband. We don’t normally get this much going on in a Hallmark movie. It’s nice to have stuff going on outside of romance. I know, I know. Romance is supposed to be all we think about. I don’t think I can roll my eyes any harder.

With all of that said, the script isn’t fabulous. There are a few weird things that no real human being would ever say to another but I will allow it this time. I will call When I Think Of Christmas a watchable movie that most people will enjoy. Go forth and sing thee thine carols!

The Hip Hop Nutcracker | 2022 Christmas Movies

Way back in 2016, we went to see the live production of The Hip Hop Nutcracker. This year, Disney+ has released a movie version of the stage show.

Maria-Clara (Caché Melvin) is upset that her parents, Mom (Allison Holker Boss) and Dad (Stephen “tWitch” Boss), aren’t getting along. Thanks to some magic from Drosselmeyer (Comfort Fedoke), Maria-Clara goes back in time with the Nutcracker (Du-Shant “Fik-shun” Stegall) to the night her parents fell in love to figure out how to get them back together.

I loved The Hip Hop Nutcracker stage show. It is an innovative way to bring life to a ballet from the 1890s. They obviously had to make some changes in order to bring it to the small screen and make sure the audience understood what was going on. One of the biggest changes was adding Rev Run from RUN DMC as a rapping narrator. Usually the dancing speaks for itself in The Nutcracker. No one talks the audience through the plot. While I, personally, would have preferred leaving out the narrator, I understand that the point is to bring the show to the masses who may need a little extra help to follow the plot. Thankfully, Rev Run helped write his raps so he was able to put his own flavor in the role. It worked out well.

The best part of Disney having a hand in the movie version of The Hip Hop Nutcracker is that they have the money to bring in some big-wigs in the dance community. We have Stephen “tWitch” Boss and his wife, Allison Holker Boss, as Dad and Mom, Tiler Peck as a ballerina toy that Drosselmeyer brings to life, JabbaWockeez as Snowflakes, Mikhail Baryshnikov as the King of Snow, and Alex Wong as a Candy Cane Dancer. It was truly amazing to see these talented dancers perform on the small screen. I gasped every time a new routine appeared.

I definitely think The Hip Hop Nutcracker is something worth watching. If you are someone who is bored by classical ballet, this will bring you the story in a new, refreshing way. And you’ll get to see some of the best dancers perform without leaving your couch. Then maybe, if the tour is coming to your area, you’ll want to go see it live. It really is a wonderful show.

Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special | 2022 Christmas Movies

I normally don’t do holiday specials or things like that in my Christmas reviews. However, I was really looking forward to The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special so I felt I needed to review it.

Kraglin (Sean Gunn) tells Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Drax (Dave Bautista) about a time that Yondu (Michael Rooker) ruined Christmas for Peter (Chris Pratt). Wanting to make Christmas special for Peter this year, Mantis and Drax travel to Earth to bring back Kevin Bacon as a present.

Most of this holiday special is Mantis and Drax cavorting around Los Angeles looking for Kevin Bacon. There were some really funny moments. The aliens stumbling onto the Chinese Theater, where tourists frequently flock to get pictures with people dressed up as characters, and ending up with a ton of people wanting to take pictures with them? Pretty epic. I also loved Mantis yelling at Drax every time Drax tried to use violence as a solution to a problem. She was usually rather meek in previous movies so it was nice to see her be a little more forceful.

One of the things I didn’t like about the special is that it felt like I was missing something when it started. Well, it started as an animation, which I didn’t expect but when it changed over to live action, I felt a little lost. We have watched all of the MCU films/shows to date so there is no reason for me to feel like I’m missing information. The other thing I didn’t like was the look of Groot (Vin Diesel). I’m not exactly sure how old he’s supposed to be but the treeman looks like he’s been taking steroids or something. His torso is bulky but his head is way smaller. I don’t like it.

If you are a fan of Guardians of the Galaxy (GoG), obviously you’ll watch the holiday special. You might be a little lost if you haven’t watched GoG vol 2, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. But if you are up to date on all of the MCU movies, this should be a good time for you.