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

The Holiday Proposal Plan | 2023 Christmas Movies

So, um, I don’t have an opening for The Holiday Proposal Plan. The title tells you what is going to happen. Let’s just get on with it.

Sonny (Tatyana Ali) is a travel columnist. When her best friend, Bree (Whitney Able), worries that her boyfriend, Jarod (Geovanni Gopradi), isn’t going to propose to her, Sonny teams up with her ex-boyfriend, Kip (Jesse Kove), to make the proposal happen.

The writers tried to make this plot more interesting by basing the entire scheme to get Jarod to propose around a worldwide vacation that Jarod and Bree were supposed to take. However, they just barely touch on any of the various traditions they were celebrating AND they chose all of the traditions that revolved around getting engaged or “choosing your prince.” If I was Jarod, I would have known what was up on day one and left. Not to mention, why would you want to get engaged to someone who doesn’t want to get engaged to you? Jarod and Bree obviously needed to work some things out. I don’t think they needed four friends to plan out engagement activities to hint that they should get engaged. This plot would have felt less icky if it were the guys planning all of these things in order to have a “cool” proposal while the women tried to figure out which of the guys wanted to propose. (Yes, Sonny and Kip are broken up in the beginning but they also bring in Jonathan (Mike Heslin) and Victor (Michael Sasaki) who are a couple but I don’t think are married.)

Rating: Even the worldwide trip sounded boring

The Secret Gift Of Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

I think The Secret Gift Of Christmas is the only personal shopper Christmas movie this year. There were a few last year and it makes me wonder if this is going to be an ongoing job trope for Christmas movies or if they will run out of steam.

Bonnie (Meghan Ory) is a professional personal shopper. She gets hired by Patrick (Christopher Russell) to handle all of his Christmas shopping this year. As she learns more about his friends and family, Bonnie gets closer to Patrick himself.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to think of this movie. While Bonnie was a great personal shopper, she did seem a little too into outward appearances. Which is weird because she was able to pick the perfect gifts for her various clients’ recipients and they were all very thoughtful gifts. Once Bonnie got over things like how Patrick dresses, the movie got a lot better. I found myself hoping that Bonnie and Patrick would get together, even though they were definitely going to get together. It wouldn’t be a Hallmark movie if they didn’t.

Rating: I’ll take the Music On Ice tickets!

Heaven Down Here | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re back to Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel, which isn’t normally very religious. Heaven Down Here has changed that.

Imani (Krystal Joy Brown) is a single mother working as a waitress as a diner. When she gets called in at the last minute on Christmas Eve, she spends the night with a group of lonely people stuck in the diner due to a major snowstorm.

Heaven Down Here was such a slow movie. Since it was about the connections between people and their families, there were a lot of flashbacks. In addition, every person had a story to tell on top of it. Movies that are based on songs really don’t have anything substantial to keep the plot driving forward. Instead, we’re stuck with a bunch of separate stories smashed together in a diner setting. And the stories were so slow that this movie felt about an hour too long. I wanted better for it.

Rating: I might have braved the snowstorm to get away from these people

Yes Chef! Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

As we’re heading toward the end of the Christmas movie season, Lifetime only has a few more movies on their docket. Yes Chef! Christmas is the beginning of the end.

Alicia (Tia Mowry) is a self-taught chef who gets nominated to compete in The Kringle Cook-Off. Her mentor is Logan (Luke Humphrey), a self-involved chef that doesn’t like Christmas. Together, they try to come up with the perfect Christmas meal to submit for the contest.

Tia Mowry has become something of a Christmas movie staple. While her movies aren’t always amazing, they do usually cover interesting topics. The plot of chefs trying to figure out a Christmas theme isn’t new but the subplot of Alicia trying to find her birth parents made the story a little more interesting. As is typical with Lifetime movies, I would have preferred a little more time spend on the subplot but these type of movies rarely want to dive deeper into that territory. In the end, this movie is fine. There’s nothing awful about it but there’s nothing to keep the audience going either. A good background noise movie.

Rating: Can I have just a little sweet potato casserole?

Peppermints and Postcards | 2023 Christmas Movies

Great American Family isn’t known for great movies. Peppermints and Postcards may be their one saving grace this year.

Cara (Ella Cannon) is a divorced mother without a boyfriend, unlike her ex-husband. Her 9-year old daughter, Megan (Amelia Harrison), writes a letter to Santa asking for her mom to find love. When the letter gets uploaded to social media, it goes viral. Chet Williams (Christopher Russell), a local television reporter, picks up her story and broadcasts it to the country. Will Chet be able to help Cara find love for Christmas?

As I said, Great American Family doesn’t usually put out great movies. And this movie isn’t great but it is rather good. It’s much better than the stuff they usually put out. Russell is charming as Chet and Cannon is sweet as Cara. The dates that Cara goes on are pretty realistic, especially for a Christmas movie. This isn’t something I would watch more than once but I enjoyed the time I did spend on it.

Rating: But where are the peppermints?