So it seems like the degree and frequency with which I joked here about those Hallmark Christmas movies have been directly proportional to the number of new movies the company has cranked out.
There seem to be more of them every year, and its recent dip in hot water over the TV commercial depicting the bride-to-bride wedding hasn’t slowed Hallmark down a bit.
“If you’re a fan of Hallmark’s Christmas movies, then you’re going to love this year’s lineup as the channel celebrates 10 years of its Countdown to Christmas event,” reads an article at TVinsider.com about the 2019 slate of Hallmark feel-good yuletide fare. “Between that and the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ Miracles of Christmas, there will be 40 new original movies this holiday season across the two channels.”
So we TV viewers have two choices: the hokey-clean Hallmark movies or the “start kissing, then cut to clothing removal, then cut to flailing around in bed” stuff.
At least my pokes at Hallmark have been on the mild side. In a December 2017 Slate article, Zachary Jason rode Hallmark hard and put it up wet for a number of cinematic sins including the movies’ lack of racial and cultural diversity. I have a feeling Jason would still be unimpressed with Hallmark’s 2019 offering A Christmas Princess, which featured a black woman as the lead. It’s a tale that appears to borrow from the real-life Duchess Meghan-Prince Harry pairing and Disney’s The Princess and the Frog: The heroine is a restaurateur, nicknamed “The Princess of Brooklyn,” who caters the prince’s American-venue holiday banquet. I got caught up in the movie a week ago. It didn’t make me lose my dinner, but granted, it would not even quality for a Golden Raspberry award.
Non-fans of Hallmark Christmas movies can at least be grateful that the company hasn’t started on the other holidays. Some imagined cases in point:
A Leprechaun for St. Paddy’s
The setting: A town called Kelly Green
The plot: Bad-natured Melanie, representing one of the biggest vendors of Flanagan’s Department Stores, rolls her eyes at all the corny (in her eyes) public displays of St. Patrick’s Day in Kelly Green. What’s worse, the original Flanagan’s store, located in the town, has some 6-foot-3 dude in the store, portraying the leprechaun and tryna holla at her! Tim Flanagan was forced to play the store leprechaun in his family’s flagship outlet because the pint-sized man who’s played the part for years has quit and there was just nobody else at such short notice! Tim grows on Melanie, whose very non-Irish boyfriend shows up and clowns. Meanwhile, there’s a femme fatale with dyed-red hair, trying to gold-dig her way into Tim’s life and heart. But true love wins out and Melanie and Tim end the movie with a kiss by the store’s fake blarney stone.
Easter Magic
The setting: A town called New Life
The plot: Oh no! The annual Easter Parade and Easter Egg Hunt in the close-knit town of New Life is in peril because a developer bought the park where the two are held and wants to build a fancy hotel. Fred’s the developer’s rep. Judy is a New Life artist and widowed mom whose handpainted bonnet creations and fake eggs are the highlights of the annual event. The two initially butt heads, but then there enter sparks of another kind. Fred’s shallow-as-heck ex-girlfriend appears on the scene, trying to get Fred back — especially since, after all, Fred’s not just the developer’s rep … he’s the well-heeled, incognito developer. But Fred loves Judy, her precocious one-liner-dealing kids, the town and its park, and that’s that. Rather than being deep-sixed, the park will be re-landscaped and made larger, just in time for Easter. At movie’s end, Fred kisses Judy and gives her a “flow globe”: it’s like a snow globe except it depicts a spring scene with tiny flower petals.
A Jack-O-Lantern for Two
The setting: A town called, well, Halloweentown
The plot: Yeah, there’s a nationally known Halloween festival complete with a celebrity Jack-O-Lantern carving contest. Yeah, the two future lovebirds are competing with each other. He’s a noted sculptor, she’s a noted chef; both are known for their carving skills, and the whole town is buzzing about them. Yeah, the contestants have to wear Halloween costumes while carving those pumpkins up. Yeah, an unexpected and last-minute change of costume causes mistaken identity and juices up the climax. And yeah, there’s a Halloween globe.
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 12/22/2019
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