...and after the goofiness of Santa’s Summer House, we’re back to the Kabuki-esque shores of Hallmark Hell. This one was picked out by Alonso Duralde, and, well, it’s not much different from the other four films I watched from Hallmark. Granted, I have to give it credit for having the person gaslighting our heroine, Paula (Kimberly Sustad, who is the most Lauren Graham-y a person can be without actually being Lauren Graham), actually admit to doing it.
Paula works for an auction house in St. Louis and is seeing a Businessman Who Loves Business--okay, he’s an assistant attorney general for the State of Missouri, but he otherwise behaves just like a BWLB--who proposes just before she heads off to a weekend with her aunt Jane (Kathie Lee Gifford). Cue a series of...comedic misunderstanding and coincidences that leads Paula into the arms of inn keeper and Official Hunky Hunk O’ Destiny Gary (Paul Campbell, who looks disturbingly like Joel McHale with Christian Slater’s facial features grafted to his face)...with a little gaslighting from Jane and Gary’s assistant Dorothy (Dolores Drake).
I fear that a sort of malaise is setting in with me, as these films are beginning to blend together. I refer to these stories as ‘kabuki-like’ and I’m not joking; there are certain things that happen like clockwork in the scripts that I could set my watch to them. There’s a weird staidness and chasteness to the films--the most romantic these things get up to is that last-minute kiss between our protagonists in the third act. There’s dialogue that is more expositional than anything else, and ‘banter’ that seems like it should be light and funny, but really come off as stilted.
What bothers me the most, especially in the case of this film, is the presumed Predestination of the plot. While there is an attempt at a conflict in a last minute appearance of the Businessman Who Loves Business at the aunt’s home for a surprise visit, there is no pretense that Paula is conflicted. I will freely admit to laughing at the moment when Paula tearily tells Gary, “I should have told you when we first met...but I’m in a relationship,” as it felt at turns both manipulative and inconsequential. Hell, these two are meant to be together, the movie seems to say; look at how furiously God is winking at them!
As I was live-tweeting this film, some of my tweets were liked by Squire Rushnell, the author of the books (supposedly based on true stories; we see the real Paula and Gary at the very end of the film) this film and its sequels were based on. I don’t think he understood what I was saying in those tweets. He seems like a lovely person who truly believes in what he’s writing, but I don’t think he realizes how unsettling this film can be. With its bare bones characterization, its plot on rails and its fetishization of the trappings of a certain holiday, it’s kind of off-putting. It’s barely a story; it’s a dramatized ritual. I do respect that, unlike previous films in The Labors, there is more than lip service paid to the religious aspects of Christmas....but I think I would respect it more if it leaned into it instead of dancing around it.
This is not as bad as Christmas Connection or A Shoe Addict’s Christmas*, but it’s still dwelling there at the bottom of Christmas sludge like the others.
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I’m beginning to despair at the saminess of all these films. I think I need something...unusual. Which is why I invite you to join me next time for A Christmas Melody. Yes, this is another Lacey Charbet joint....but it co-stars and was directed by Mariah Carey, so this might be weirder than normal!
*-I should mention that My Nemesis Candace Cameron Bure shows up in a tag claiming she loves watching ‘heart-warming movies like this.’ The warmth of these movies is...negligible at best.
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