Christmas Above The Clouds | 2025 Christmas Movies

There have been a wide variety of adaptations of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Back in 2020, Hallmark gave us A Nashville Christmas Carol. Then in 2021, they had Boyfriends of Christmas Past. And this year it’s Christmas Above The Clouds. At least they gave us a break in between adaptations this year?

Ella Neezer (Erin Krakow) is the CEO of a travel company. She demands her employees work just as hard as she does. Unfortunately, that means she makes them choose between their families and their work, just as she did when she broke off her engagement to Jake (Tyler Hynes) when she started moving up the corporate ladder. It wasn’t until now, on a flight to Australia with her assistant Bobbi Cratchet (Emily Tennant) and, surprisingly, Jake, that her mentor, Marlene Jacobson (Gabrielle Rose), visits her from beyond the grave to inform her about the impending visits from three Christmas spirits. Will they be able to bring empathy and love back to Ella?

Could it be? Is it possible that we have THREE decent Christmas movies this early in the movie season? Maybe my expectations were low because, this story is told so many times that it feels rare to find a good adaptation of it. But, yes, Christmas Above The Clouds gave us an interesting take. Sure, it’s not anything new and Jake does feel a little tacked on but Krakow makes a very good Scrooge character and I found myself enjoying the three spirits. It might not make the best movie list but I didn’t regret watching it either!

Rating: 4 Christmas Spirits out of 5 - OK, there aren’t five Christmas spirits but the rating still stands!

Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story | 2024 Christmas Movies

I swear that Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story was marketed as a Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce movie. It’s not. Maybe I misunderstood because Donna Kelce is in it and it’s, obviously, very about the Kansas City Chiefs. I feel bamboozled.

Alana (Hunter King) and her family are big fans of the Kansas City Chiefs football team. They even own a shop that sells Chiefs merchandise. This year, they are finalists for the Fan of the Year award. Derrick (Tyler Hynes) is a member of the fan engagement team for the Chiefs. He gets assigned to meet the family to judge whether they should win the coveted title.

Sadly, I got very bored during this movie. King and Hynes never really seemed to connect with each other. Ed Begley Jr. as Alana’s grandfather felt very old, which made me sad. (As a side note, Richard Riehle plays Alana’s other grandfather. He is approximately the same age as Begley Jr. but doesn’t feel anywhere near as ancient.) They kept dropping Donna Kelce in to say random unnecessary lines. There just wasn’t anything fun or interesting here. I suppose maybe if you are a Chiefs fan since they showed Andy Reid and some retired players. But I’m not sure that was enough to save this.

Rating: Tackled at the 5 yard line

Three Wiser Men And A Boy | 2024 Christmas Movies

In 2022, Hallmark gave us Three Wise Men And A Baby. It was such a hit that they released a sequel this year - Three Wiser Men And A Boy. Can lightning strike twice?

The brothers - Luke (Andrew W Walker), Stephan (Paul Campbell), and Taylor (Tyler Hynes) - are back to spend Christmas at their mother, Barbara’s (Margaret Colin), house with her new boyfriend, Roy (Christopher Shyer), and former-baby-now-kindergartener Thomas (Miles Marthaller). When the director of Thomas’ school Christmas play steps down after some brotherly shenanigans, the three are forced to direct the play themselves. Each of them will have to overcome their own personal issues before they can bring success to their favorite boy.

Surprisingly, this is a sequel that works very well. While most of the issues the brothers had before were “how do we take care of a baby” type of problems, this time their issues are more personal. Taylor’s video game company isn’t doing well financially, Stephan has a girlfriend that wants him to propose but he is having anxiety around everything, and Luke is having trouble handling being older with more responsibility. It was nice to see the boys grow as people. A lot of movies don’t let their characters actually mature. That isn’t to say the boys are “mature.” They still spend plenty of time playing games and being goofballs. But they do acknowledge that their lives have changed and they need to accept the change. I kinda want another movie in the series but I’m not sure where they would go from here.

Rating: I’m ready for Three Wisest Men!

Never Been Chris'd | 2023 Christmas Movies

Never Been Chris’d is a different sort of Christmas romance movie. Let’s jump right into it…

Naomi (Janel Parrish) and Liz (Pascal Lamothe-Kipnes) have been best friends forever. When they come home for the holidays, they bump into their high school crush, Chris Silver (Tyler Hynes). Will reconnecting with him change their lives forever?

So, yes, this is a Christmas romance movie. However, Christmas (and Hanukkah!) play a very minor part. As a matter of fact, the romance itself plays a minor part as well. Instead, Never Been Chris’d is more about the friendship between Naomi and Liz and how they can grow as people without growing apart. Chris is more like a catalyst for them to speak up for themselves instead of being the end all life goal.

To be honest, the fact that female friendship takes precedence over romantic love makes me enjoy this movie a lot more than I normally would. I mean, both Naomi and Liz are kinda terrible characters. Somehow they are both extremely selfish yet not willing to stand up for themselves at the same time. But I am a big sucker for a movie where the women don’t really need the man to progress their lives. We could easily take Chris entirely out of the movie and very little would change. It is quite refreshing. Especially for Hallmark.

Rating: Best Friends Forever, no man needed

Time For Him To Come Home For Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

As I predicted last year, we got Time For Him To Come Home For Christmas from the Blake Shelton series of movies. This is the fifth movie in the series, based on one of his songs, and the third that I have watched. I wonder where they will go after they do Time For Her.

Three days before Christmas, Elizabeth (Holland Roden) gets a mysterious voice message intended for someone named Madeline. As a former investigative journalist, she tries to track down Madeline in order to reunite her with the caller. Her estranged best friend, Josh (Tyler Hynes), helps her figure out the mystery.

Of the three Time To Come Home movies I have watched so far, this was the best. The mystery was definitely better than the previous ones and I think Hynes and Roden were a perfect duo. They easily pulled off the difficult relationship that Lizzie and Josh have. And we got just enough flash backs to understand their history and all of the misunderstandings that came between them. For once, this was an understandable conflict. Yes, it could have been solved with a conversation but, given the situation, it would have been an extremely difficult conversation to have at the time.

I also liked that Lizzie and Josh weren’t the only romance in the movie. The relationship between Madeline (Meghan Gardiner) and her mysterious caller (Steve Bacic) was not only fraught itself but it also intertwined with Lizzie and Josh in a way that I wasn’t expecting. These layers upon layers of characterization is what I want in a movie. I know not every Christmas movie can have that but I would love to see more that do.

So, yes, go watch Time For Him To Come Home For Christmas. Hey, it even ends with a singer. You know, the trendy job to have this Christmas season.

Three Wise Men and a Baby | 2022 Christmas Movies

Hallmark took three of their Christmas leading men and cast them all in one movie as brothers. Three Wise Men and a Baby is the updated Christmas version of 1987’s Three Men and a Baby. Does it live up to the awesomeness of the original? Maaaybe…

Luke (Andrew Walker) is a firefighter. A few days before Christmas, a baby is left at the firehouse with a note asking Luke to look after him. So Luke brings the baby home to his mother, Barbara (Margaret Colin), and brothers, Stephan (Paul Campbell) and Taylor (Tyler Hynes). When their mother has to leave town to care for her sister for a few days, the brothers are left home alone to take care of the baby and prepare the house for Christmas. Chaos!

I was pleasantly surprised about how much I liked this movie. It was written by Paul Campbell and Kimberley Sustad (who makes a cameo appearance as an ER doctor), who also wrote 2020’s Christmas By Starlight. They were able to make each of the brothers completely different people while still allowing them the room to be brothers and have an emotional connection. I loved how the brothers interacted, especially with the baby. Oh, and their Nutcracker dance is to die for.

Yes, I think you should watch Three Wise Men and a Baby. The romance is kinda tacked on at the end but I think that makes this movie even more special. It isn’t about romantic relationships. It’s about repairing past family traumas and reconnecting with brothers. These are things that the holidays really should be about. Not finding your True Love.

An Unexpected Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

An Unexpected Christmas could describe almost any of the Christmas movies released by Hallmark or Lifetime, right? Something unexpected happens and then, bam!, it’s Christmas. It’s a dumb title. Let’s move on.

Jamie (Tyler Hynes) broke up with Emily (Bethany Joy Lenz) six months ago but he never told his family. The plan was to tell them after they had a nice Christmas together. But the family accidentally runs into Emily at the train station. It turns out that she is in town for a work assignment. Now Emily has to pretend that she is still dating Jamie in order to keep the peace.

While I dislike the title of the movie, An Unexpected Christmas was actually a decent flick. Unlike a lot of lead actors, Lenz and Hynes seem to enjoy being in the same room with each other. It makes their love/hate relationship easier to enjoy. A different set of actors could have royally screwed this up. I’m glad they didn’t.

There isn’t a lot that I didn’t like about the movie. Her job was a little annoying but I don’t think any of the Christmas movie script writers put a lot of thought into the jobs of the lead characters. They just want careers that absolutely INSIST that work be done on Christmas Eve or have projects that are so important their bosses call them literally every single day so they KNOW how important the project is and it NEEDS to be finished right now. Yes, there are jobs that have deadlines around Christmas but I don’t think any of them are quite as harsh as they are in the Hallmark/Lifetime movies.

So An Unexpected Christmas isn’t a must-see movie. But, if you are looking for something to waste some time on, it won’t make you hate yourself for watching it. There are some cute parts and there are some cringey parts. That is the life of a Hallmark movie.

On The 12th Date Of Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

I think maybe the newest trope of this year’s Christmas movies is “women like sugar.” Of the seven movies I’ve watched so far (including this one), five of them have specifically given their lead female characters “I LOVE SUGAR” traits. It’s annoying.

Jennifer (Mallory Jansen) and Aidan (Tyler Hynes) are social media scavenger hunt game creators. The two of them get thrown together on a new project after Aidan’s usual teammate suddenly goes out on paternity leave. What is the project? A “12 Dates of Christmas” scavenger hunt for a local hotel that will take participants all over the city of Chicago.

Amazingly, Hallmark has given us another movie that doesn’t actually focus on the romance between the two main characters. (Granted, the first movie was on their Movies & Mysteries channel….but it’s still Hallmark.) This time around, the plot does center more on Jennifer and Aidan trying to figure out 12 date-related Christmas clues for their scavenger hunt. Technically, this means they are on a bunch of “dates” together but they aren’t really dates so it’s forgivable.

In my opening paragraph, I talked about this year’s newest sugar trope. However, there is a second sort-of-trope that is popping up this year. And that is military families. This is my third year of watching (way too many) Hallmark/Lifetime/Netflix Christmas movies. I don’t remember any other year having so many military members or families as main characters.

• The Christmas Doctor - Dr. Zoey was in the military before she became a traveling doctor.

• Christmas in Vienna - Mark the diplomat had a father that was in the military so they moved around a lot when he was a child.

• Deliver By Christmas - Josh’s wife was in the military and she was killed when she was deployed.

• On The 12th Date of Christmas - Aidan’s father is in the military so they moved around a lot when he was a child.

Again, out of seven movies so far, four of them have main characters connected to the military somehow. I’m not against featuring military characters or families in Christmas movies. But they don’t have to be in every single one. I hope that this isn’t going to be the trend for the rest of the season. It will be a bit of a mood-killer.

As for this particular movie, it’s kinda cute. Seeing Jennifer and Aiden try to figure out where to send the scavenger hunters was interesting. It was a little annoying that Aiden kept poking fun at Jennifer for not being a “native” of Chicago but he legit said that he grew up on a bunch of military bases around the world and only came to Chicago every Christmas to spend it with his grandfather. I would argue that he isn’t a native either.

I’m a little surprised that, like many of the other movies this year, 12th Date isn’t particularly terrible. (Maybe my movie nemesis, MarVista, has gotten out of the Christmas movie game….) I would say that this would be a good movie to have in the background while you’re baking cookies or decorating your tree. It doesn’t require a lot of attention but it is worth a watch.