One thing that my wife and I share is watching Hallmark Christmas movies. But…but…but…she won’t watch them before December. Me? I’ve got a bit of FOMO so I like to check them out as they air.
Usually I’ll sample a bit and if I like it, I’ll suggest we watch it together (I should note that I’d never watched these before meeting her, and I don’t think watched them before either. We jointly discovered these, somehow).
We’ve gone back through the years, looking for ones that we’d like. A Biltmore Christmas, Ghosts of Christmas Always, and Cranberry Christmas make that list, as do more recent fare like The Santa Summit, Much Ado About Christmas, Merry Christmas Ted Cooper (less for the romance than just his bad luck), and T’was The Date Before Christmas.
But this year? I just don’t know.
We’re only half way through November and I’ve already mostly given up on this year’s movies. So far, Hallmark has released a dozen “Countdown to Christmas” movies, just a bit more than a third of their cohort of new movies for this Christmas, and there’s only two or three I’d consider worth my wife’s time.
Who’s Coming for Christmas? and Adopting St. Nick both had different premises where the B-stories (or C-, D-, and E- stories in the case of Who’s Coming for Christmas?) were as compelling as the central romance.
In Who’s Coming for Christmas?, a single woman, who recently moved to a new town, decides to invite seven strangers to have Christmas Eve dinner with her. It’s a cute story with some of the most annoying cinematography I’ve ever seen. But the plot won over the visuals, and also, I’d like to see if my wife is as off-put by the bizarre focal depths used in some scenes.
Adopting St. Nick has been getting a lot of flack online for its apparent use of AI. Honestly, I didn’t notice in my skimming, which is a bad sign: You don’t want to become inured to AI’s infiltration of the arts. But the premise of a school student adopting an elderly person for the holidays was interesting, and I have a soft spot for Amy Groening, so we’ll watch this one.
Then there’s ‘Tis the Season for Setups. This one may make the cut. The male lead reminds me of Brendan Fraser, which is a plus. It has some great second unit cinematography, shot in real snow, which is a huge plus for me (as a Canadian living in the tropics, real depictions of snow count for a lot.) Clydesdales pulling a sleigh through the snow (see image above) pretty much gets my upvote.
I am a Tom Cavanagh fan, and I hear he does well in What If Christmas, but I didn’t get more than fifteen minutes into the film before passing. The immaturity of Lori Laughlin’s character was grating. And it’s just a tired trope, done much better in The Family Man.
Speaking of tired tropes, Forgotten Holiday just sounds like a rehash of too many films from a decade ago. I didn’t even start it.
I had Mr & Mrs Christmas playing in the background, and the few times I locked into it, I thought “no, thank you.”
I don’t know how many NFL tie-in movies Hallmark has made. We haven’t watched any of them, and this year won’t be an exception. Same for the Disney tie-in. I’m also hearing that some of the films I chose to skip had seriously blatant product placement, almost as if they were Laura Linney’s character in the Truman Show.
I also didn’t bother watching the one about the bowling lanes. I hear on Reddit that I didn’t miss much (although I do disagree with the consensus on some others, so who knows).
The Nights Before Christmas is the Groundhog Day trope, which I know has been done to death. And yet, I might just look in on this one because apparently I’m a sucker for that trope.
Just skimming through the remainder of the list, there’s not many that jump out as worth the time. A Danish Christmas, Merry Memories, Holiday Unplugged, A Season of Promises, and My Christmas Cowboy are all automatic passes, just from reading the descriptions.
Maybe thirty-four movies is too many. Maybe spending more time on original ideas would be better than mass producing stories that are so similar to previous years’ efforts. Still, Return to Santa sounds like it could be fun.
The whole list is here, if you want to check out what’s planned or maybe disagree with me.