Every year, I embark on my Hallmark journey. It’s been a long arduous…FIVE YEARS?! I’ve been doing this for five years, which says a lot about the trajectory of my life. Some years have been leaner than others when it comes to recaps, but I actually do end up watching these terrible films. To show you that I’m serious, I’m going to blast through each movie and give you the gist. I’m going up until the Thanksgiving Bomb, so stay tuned for part 2 after me barely making it through part 1!

Off I go to stare into the abyss and recap it.

CHECKIN’ IT TWICE

Hallmark Heroine and real estate agent Ashley arrives into the airport of her small hometown for Christmas. Her boyfriend/real estate agent partner wears a business suit and is a jerk. They break up on the phone. Hallmark Hunk (YMMV) and hockey player Scott arrives at the same small town with hockey stick in hand and also breaks up with his girlfriend on the phone. He has been traded to this hick town and is unhappy with that. Scott sucks at being friendly with the Fighting Trout team and Ashley is equally sucky at telling her parents she’s single. Scott is angry that he’s a 32-year-old rookie, but the coach sees Scott’s potential not as a pro player but as a peewee hockey coach. I am reminded of the film The Mighty Ducks and put that on instead…

Hotshot lawyer Gordon Bombay is caught drunk driving and, thanks to his connections, is only sentenced to leading a motley crew of children to peewee hockey victory. This ultimately leads to three films featuring Joshua Jackson…

Scott almost gets cut but it turns out he’s going to the big city: Boise, Idaho. Never has a man been so excited to go to Boise. Ashley lands a big client in New York. Both have gotten their big breaks. However, they have fallen in love with Christmas and each other, so they decide to coach peewee hockey and sell real estate, I think in New York? They kiss. FIN.

Dead family member count: 0 (Scott’s absentee father doesn’t count)

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

UNDER THE CHRISTMAS SKY

Hallmark Heroine Kat gets into car accident and can’t go into space. She’s sad about it. She meets a somewhat curmudgeonly man named David who has a kid in a wheelchair. They are forced to do a Christmas in space exhibition together. She gets her wannabe graphic designer brother to put a Santa hat on the sun to really sell the event. There is a curling montage scene where the two leads start falling in love (Hallmark decided to try something that isn’t ice skating so kudos to them). After Kat comforts David’s daughter when a kid crushes the girl’s space ornament, he chews Kat out for the crime of soothing his child. On the day of the big exhibit, she is offered a job with a space company in Chicago by a man who is impressed with the Santa sun drawing. David makes her feel guilty for talking to the guy at all. Because she kissed David earlier, Kat doesn’t take the job and stays in her current one. They spend Christmas together with her whole family. They kiss. FIN.

MINI THOUGHTS

• There is a B story where the woman’s brother hooks up with someone. They weren’t interesting enough for their own movie.
• There are a lot of Canadian O sounds in this film.

Dead family member count: 1, Scott’s wife

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

CHRISTMAS BY DESIGN

Hallmark Heroine Charlotte runs a luxury design house. Her assistant enters her into a competition to design pajamas for festive shut-ins. Because of a burst pipe in her studio, Charlotte is forced to go home to design her winning concept. She meets a bizarre mechanic named Spencer who keeps remarking about “small towns vs. big cities” and is the hottie of this one-horse town. They spend time together and he becomes her mannequin for the pajamas. After montage bonding, Spencer decides to tell Charlotte how he really feels. However, he overhears a private phone call where she calls him a bumpkin but then says she thinks she loves bumpkins. He starts being mean to her. Charlotte drives to the big city to present her design to the competition but pulls out when she realizes the event will make her late to the town Christmas party. She makes it to the event and apologizes to Spencer for his being a baby. Charlotte receives a phone call saying that she won the competition because “she gave up her dream to be with her family” and the company “can’t stop thinking about the coveralls.” They kiss. FIN.

Dead family member count: 2, Charlotte’s dead father and Spencer’s dead wife

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

MYSTIC CHRISTMAS

This movie is about a woman named Juniper who loves seals and traveling. She goes to her friend’s hometown to engage in an awkward movie-long back and forth with her friend’s brother Sawyer and also take care of a stranded seal. It’s all so boring that I had to restart the movie to figure what the hell it was about. Juniper learns to be less introvert-oriented and stay in one place for more than a year, Sawyer finally goes traveling around the world, and the seal is successfully rehabbed and is released from its Hallmark prison. Let me tell you that seal is adorable. It flops on the floor and everything. Juniper and Sawyer kiss. FIN.

MINI THOUGHTS

• There’s a light reference to climate change which is interesting.

Dead family member count: 1, Sawyer’s dad. It might be more if you count the stranded seal’s family.

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

JOYEUX NOEL

Grammar Nazi Lea and grumpy journalist Mark traverse sexy France to track down the truth behind the love story of some horny teens from the 1970s. Lea is also a hopeless romantic who somehow finagles a trip to Paris to uncover the mystery of who penned some love letters she found. Because she’s only a copy editor, actual journalist Mark gets roped into her free trip to Paris. Apparently, the only way to find out what happened to the two lovers is to do everything the love letters discuss such as going to a Christmas market and dancing. This what they are referring to when people say, “investigative journalism.” Turns out the female partner of the mystery lovers got cold feet and ditched the guy. Mystery solved! However, the film does a rushed voiceover to give us a happy ending: the young man from the letters married someone else and had a whole ass family. Mark and Lea hook up. FIN.

Dead family member count: 1, Jane’s dad.

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

FLIPPING FOR CHRISTMAS

If you thought I didn’t pay attention when it came to Mystic Christmas hold onto your hats because I have no clue what this film is about. There’s absolutely no seal to save it either. Some lady named Abby needs to flip an inherited house because her sister has too many kids and wants to use the money from the flip to create an extension for their newly widowed father to live. Some grumpy guy named Bo is involved through some means and wants to make the place a B&B. I don’t know what legal claim he has to the place so someone should have just booted him the hell out. Bo and Abby montage their way into love. I genuinely don’t know how they solve the house flip problem and this other problem that cropped up but whatever, they figure it out and Bo and Abby kiss. FIN.

Dead family member count: 2, Abby’s mom and Grandpa Frank.

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

NEVER BEEN CHRIS’D

I was going to make this a long form piece, but it was so underwhelming that I couldn’t do it. Naomi and Liz are two best friends from high school that started a successful app. They go back home to deal with their overbearing mothers and manage to run into the popular kids from high school including super hunk Chris Silver. Both girls kind of have a thing for him, but it’s Naomi who ends up getting Chris’d. Liz just gets to become besties with one of the popular girls. Chris turns out not to be vegan which is a huge issue. It’s more of a red flag than his asking Naomi to commit to a long-distance relationship after three dates. The relationship between the girls begins to unravel, but it’s all fine because they make up during the Jingle Ball dance. The girls sell the app. Naomi and Chris kiss but more importantly, Liz and Naomi hug. FIN.

MINI THOUGHTS

• I just learned the lead man is my age and Jesus I’m having a crisis now. I think I discover this fact every year.

Dead family member count: 1, Naomi’s dad

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

THE SANTA SUMMIT

Three teacher dorks who are “on the wrong side of 30” get together for the annual Santa Summit which is like SantaCon but with less accidental nudity. They all have dude problems so going to the event will help them get their groove back. On the flip side, two guy dudes in Santa suits talk about their feelings and using the Santa Summit for networking. Before anyone is drunk, one of the girls drops her wallet. It’s found by one of the two guy dudes and Missing Wallet Girl has herself the longest meet-cute in history. However, they lose each other amongst the multiple Santas and embark on a quest to find each other again. Glasses Girl has a Glasses Guy she likes from school and spends the film debating if she should tell him she loves him. She eventually does and they kiss to a Christmas song by Cher!? Everyone crosses paths with the Meet-Cute Guy except for Missing Wallet Girl. They finally meet up at the end of the film and kiss. Grumpy Girl also sort of finds a guy but is grumpy about it. They both are singers and do a fun sing song at the end of the film. Hold on a sec… I kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda liked this one? It gave me shades of a crap 90s Christmas film.

MINI THOUGHTS

• The Missing Wallet Girl gets mopey about not finding the guy and she gets reality checked by a random dude in a reindeer costume which was refreshing.
• The guy in a reindeer costume who has some solid delivery.

Dead family member count: 0

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

EVERYTHING CHRISTMAS

Everything Christmas is a terrible name for this film because it’s a whole lot of nothing. I have started it three times because I can’t focus due to its generic-ness. Hallmark Heroines LORI JO (!) and Tori are on a road trip to Yuletide Springs, a horror theme park that celebrates Christmas all year long. The women are stalked by multiple men they meet along the way: one that Lori likes, one that Tori likes, and a bearded one who is absolutely Santa. This has “gruesome double murder” written all over it, but this isn’t on the Lifetime channel.

I’m bored.

Oh man I’m so bored.

This sucks. Someone end the film.

Every ends up in Yuletide Springs and Lori Jo experiences heartbreak after shattering her dead grandma’s ornament when trying to put it on a Christmas tree. She finds an exact copy of it after Santa guides her to it. Does that mean Santa preordained that her ornament break? Who’s to say! Lori and the guy she likes kiss. FIN. Not only does this movie suck, but it also feels SO unfinished. Also, Santa isn’t Santa? He’s just some illusionist named Chris Rondstadt. OR WAS HE?

MINI THOUGHTS

• After getting lost and finding a bunch of magical trees, everyone guesses that the bearded man is Santa. In the real world, this would be a horrible case of group hysteria.
• The secluded magical tree place would’ve been the perfect location for Santa to have committed a quadruple homicide.

Dead family member count: 1, Lori Jo’s grandma

Image that best captures my feelings about the film:

With that, I end this rake of films. Good timing because the last one really tested my will.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

• Two films had magic: one legit, one questionable. The legit one (the world turning black and white which I’ll cover later) was better.
• More Christmas movies should feature seals.
• Expected a lot more out of Never Been Chris’d.
• All the women are in their 30s. Hallmark likes 28, 32, and 35 for their Hallmark Heroines ages, I’ve noticed.
• Apparently, Cher has released a Christmas album and she’s letting Hallmark use the songs!