Christmas At The Chalet | 2023 Christmas Movies

It’s time for the second Teri Hatcher movie of the season. This time it is Christmas At The Chalet from Lifetime.

Lex Riley (Teri Hatcher) is a former journalist who has recently gotten divorced. She decides to spend Christmas at a chalet in Aspen with her son, her ex-husband, and his new girlfriend. However, when she arrives, her room reservation did not go through. So Lex agrees to be a “Chalet Girl” in exchange for a room. She spends her days doing the chores required to keep the chalet in order while vlogging the entire experience.

I wish more things happened in these movies. It’s difficult to have a good opinion when nothing occurs. Lex seems to have fun doing all of the chalet chores - making beds, settings tables, helping cook, etc. And it seems like her followers are loving the things she’s vlogging about. So why is anyone upset that she’s doing it? (I mean, it’s because they think it’s beneath them but, c’mon, that is a tired reason. Think of something interesting.) That is the big problem with the movie. There is supposed to be conflict. The only conflicts are her husband and son being grossed out by her working and the usual miscommunication between Lex and love-interest Eric (William deVry). Neither of these conflicts are interesting. It would have been more interesting if Eric was against her vlogging her entire job or if Lex got hurt skiing or something. Like most of this year’s Christmas movies, it’s just dull.

Rating: Are you sure there’s not another hotel nearby?

How To Fall In Love By Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

It would be great if Christmas movies would actually decide on a title. Roku’s How To Fall In Love By Christmas is also listed as How To Fall In Love By The Holidays, depending on where you look. It makes it difficult to actually find the title when you want to watch it. Especially when there are other movies with a similar title.

Nora Winters (Teri Hatcher) is the CEO of a lifestyle magazine. When the reader numbers start dropping, the board of directors partners with a dating app to try to win over younger readers. They insist that Nora, herself, use the app and write a column documenting her journey to love. To help get the younger demographic, they hire photographer Jack (Dan Payne) to take pictures along the way.

We have seen this storyline before. A newspaper or magazine writer has to write an article or column about falling in love around the holidays. But they can’t just write about it, that would be dishonest. No, they have to actually fall in love. That isn’t usually how the writing world works but whatever. It’s supposed to be interesting. (I don’t think it is.)

What is interesting here, though, isn’t the tired romance storyline. It’s the B plot with Nora’s sister, Adley (Rachel Wilson), running their late mother’s bakery and charity almost entirely by herself. I would love to have a movie that showed her story. Sure, she’s already married with a kid so she doesn’t need that romance plot. Or does she? How wonderful would it be to show how a woman running a business and a charity included her husband in her life? It wouldn’t be about just appeasing him. It would be about how they work together to keep everything running while the “successful” sister runs off to take care of whatever she thinks is important. That would have been so much more interesting.

Rating: A tired and overused 10-step program

Christmas On Candy Cane Lane | 2022 Christmas Movies

Candace Cameron Bure’s Full House/Fuller House co-star, Andrea Barber, has joined her on Great American Family. It’s not particularly surprising since Bure is an executive producer on Christmas On Candy Cane Lane. I wonder how many people Bure is trying to convert to GAF….

Ivy (Andrea Barber) is the daughter of the Christmas maven, Muriel. After Muriel’s death, Ivy struggles to keep up with her mother’s standards.

Why does Great American Family love having movies that do nothing? It wanted to be a comedy. After all, it kept sticking Barber in slapstick situations. But then they wouldn’t let the joke land. They would just whirl off into another moment to try to make it romantic. At the same time, it wanted to be a mystery. Someone is messing with the candy cane decorations across the street. But we can’t focus on that too much because it takes away from the main characters. What we end up with is a movie that has a good premise but is trying to hard to be too many things. It’s almost like the writers had “Yes and” syndrome and didn’t know where to stop.

No, don’t watch this one. Even if you’re going for the “I love Kimmy Gibbler” route, Kimmy got way more jokes than this movie is willing to give. Christmas On Candy Cane Lane isn’t even worth turning on while you do chores. I think this is the first movie from Bure’s production company and it shows. You guys have been in entertainment forever. Do better. Also, I would love to credit more of the cast but they aren’t listed on the IMDb. What is up with that?

Christmas She Wrote | 2020 Christmas Movies

Around the time Christmas She Wrote aired on Hallmark, Danica McKellar dropped some TikToks showing the behind-the-scenes magic of making a Hallmark Christmas movie. I don’t know if this changed what I thought about the movie but it definitely changed how I watched it!

Kaleigh (McKellar) is a romance columnist in New York. She goes home to Pineberry, CA when the newspaper’s new managers fire her. Realizing they made a mistake, the newspaper owner sends the new editor, Tripp (Dylan Neal), to Pineberry to hire her back.

Hallmark and Lifetime tend to rotate the same group of actors through all of their Christmas movies. Danica McKellar has done her fair share of these. (I gave up counting at six.) Thankfully, she is a delight as an actress. She makes even the worst script enjoyable to watch. Dylan Neal, on the other hand…not so much.

Normally, when we get a story about a writer, they are looking for a big scoop or they need to write their next big article. Having her get fired is a nice change of pace. The story can focus more on Kaleigh as a person instead of making her character solely about her job. Her job is important to her but it’s not the end of her life.

Tripp, meanwhile, isn’t as rounded of a character. He isn’t the type that is sighing and groaning about having to follow orders but he also isn’t particularly personable. I don’t quite understand why everyone in Pineberry likes him so much. The writers even throw in a past boyfriend to compete for Kaleigh’s heart but he is barely in the story so he’s not really competition.

Is it worth watching Christmas She Wrote? Absolutely. I think Danica McKellar’s bright star can outshine all of the problems in the movie. I look forward to seeing what Christmas movie she is in next year.