The TV channels seem to start showing Christmas films earlier and earlier each year. Movies 24 started before Halloween with a pair of new features. First up was A Christmas in New Hope, which I was wary of as the lead character Victoria (Katrina Bowden) is an aspiring influencer! She is also the single mother of child with Downs Syndrome, so I was expecting it would be very sentimental. My fears were mostly realised, though it was not as terrible as the premise suggested.
The Christmas Brew has a more standard plotline with a female business consultant (Kaitlyn Lunardi) is tasked with acquiring a small craft brewery for a large organisation, but when she goes there, she falls for the owner (James Liddell) and realises that her company wants to close the brewery down. Although it is set at Christmas, there is nothing Christmassy about the predictable story. However, Lunardi comes across as much more relatable than most company women are in these movies.
Stop me if this sounds familiar, but in A Very Vermont Christmas, Katie LeClerc fights to save her family business by creating a seasonal beer whilst starting a relationship with an employee of a big beer firm who she starts to suspect may have nefarious motives. It is remarkable how Hallmark manages to recycle the same plots time and time again, and, in this case, how the seasonal story and snowy setting made it engaging.
In A Christmas Castle Proposal, commoner Olivia (Rhiannon Fish) and Prince Alexander of Torovia (Mitchell Bourke) travel to his homeland for Christmas with his family. Clashing cultures between their families lead to various mishaps. This is strictly for idiot Americans who fawn over anyone from a royal family.
Two brothers, played by Matthew and Joey Lawrence, accidentally schedule their weddings for the same Christmas, leading to a bitter rivalry in Marry Christmas. It is always pleasing to see Joey Lawrence as he has good comic timing but he has so little to work with in this silly story.
A Christmas Less Travelled must be the worst title of the season. An old audio cassette of her dad’s voice sends a woman on a journey to retrace her family’s most memorable moments. Candace Cameron Bure is nearly 50 but she is still playing ‘young’ single women in these films. This has the distinction of a different plot but her romance with Eric Johnson does not convince, and being from the Great American Family channel, it eventually becomes a Christian propaganda piece.
Ratings out of 10:
A Christmas in New Hope: 3.5
The Christmas Brew: 6
A Very Vermont Christmas: 6
A Christmas Castle Proposal: 3
Marry Christmas: 3.5
A Christmas Less Travelled: 3
The Great Christmas Channel generally shows films made a few years ago that have already been shown on other channels. Christmas at Plumhill Manor, though is their owner company’s first attempt at producing a movie. In it, a rising New York architect finds unexpected romance after she inherits a stately manor in the English countryside. It is a tired old plot, a definite American view of what life in England is like and a very unlikable lead character.
Rating out of 10: 4
Netflix is now firmly in the Christmas movie market. In Meet Me Next Christmas, Christina Milian stars as Layla, who desperate to attend a Christmas concert by an acapella group, Pentatonix, and to meet the man of her dreams. This starts really well and I enjoyed Layla’s various mishaps whilst trying to procure a ticket. But it runs out of steam towards the end with too many broadly drawn supporting characters and way too much time spent with the dreadful group.
Christmas movie stalwart, Lacey Chabert, makes her Netflix debut in Hot Frosty as a widow suffering from loneliness until a snowman, Jack (Dustin Milligan) comes to life and the pair have a connection. Obviously this makes little sense, and even within the parameters of the film, it does not add up. For example, the snowman is clueless about human life but is able to speak fluent English. The central romance is hard to buy too as Jack comes across as creepy, but there are a lot of redeeming factors. Chabert is her usual warm self, but also brings an extra layer to her performance as a grief stricken woman, Katy Mixon Greer is funny in her limited screen time and Craig Robinson is a hoot as an over zealous town sheriff.
Ratings out of 10:
Meet Me Next Christmas: 5.5
Hot Frosty: 6