Jacky Lai from 2020’s A Sugar & Spice Holiday faces off with Christmas powerhouse Jake Epstein. Seriously, how does that guy have the time to film so many Christmas movies? Anyway, Candy Cane Candidate had a bit of genre change up going on. Get this…
Julia (Jacky Lai) lost her recent political campaign. To regain her emotional footing, she decides to go home for the holidays. She finds out that her old high school arch nemesis, Parker (Jake Epstein), is running for town mayor. UNOPPOSED! Julia thinks the town should have a choice so she decides to run against him. Will Julia win this time or will she lose again to Parker like she lost the class president election?
Surprisingly, there wasn’t a ton of romance in Candy Cane Candidate. Julia was pretty dead set on running her campaign and Parker wanted to make sure the town’s holiday traditions weren’t trampled all over. Sure, there were a few glances and some flirty moments but they didn’t make up the bulk of the movie. It felt like a bit of fresh air after all of the overt wooing in other movies.
If we want to talk about down sides, which don’t really need to do, I wish that Jacky would have done more about the ecological changes she wanted to make instead of just talking about them. The only thing she “did” was arrange a toy drive claiming that it was recycling plastic toys. It would have been nice to see her maybe making some phone calls to see what would be needed to fix the wonky lights at the high school. Even if she lost the election to Parker, she could have passed that information onto him to try to make it happen.
I do recommend watching Candy Cane Candidate. Even if you only watch it to see the Lai and Epstein Christmas Spectacular, you won’t regret it. They are both charismatic actors that I can’t wait to see more of in the future.