Author Archives: Dazzling Erin

I Watched A Christmas Reunion (2015, Dir. by Sean Olson)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Amy (Denise Richards) grew up in the small town of Chestnut, where her Aunt Linda (Catherine Hicks) owned the local bakery and hosted the annual Christmas cookie contest.  (Yum!)  When Amy grew up, she moved away from Chestnut and got a job in New York at an advertising firm run by Don Dupree (Parker Stevenson).  When Aunt Linda dies, she leaves half of the bakery to Amy.  Aunt Linda’s last request was that Amy restart the annual cookie contest.  The only problem is that the other half of the bakery has been left to Amy’s ex-boyfriend, Jack (Patrick Muldoon).

Sometimes, I wish that I lived in Hallmark Christmas movie because I would love to be able to just take off from my job and open a bakery in a small town.  That would be a dream come true for me.  I baked my first batch of Christmas cookie when I was six!  (Mom helped.)  Everyone said they were the best they had ever tasted!  I think I could have won that cookie contest!  Now, I wish I lived in Chestnut but I know that Chestnut is not a real place.  It’s just somewhere that we all wish could be real.

I enjoyed A Christmas Reunion.  It appealed to the romantic baker in me.  Not only did Denise Richards and Patrick Muldoon spend a lot of time in the kitchen but they also outsmarted the crooked lawyer (Jake Busey) who wanted to sell the bakery to a Starbucks.  I laughed when Busey gave them a contract to sign and said, “Just sign where the red flags are,” because his whole character was a red flag.  A Christmas Reunion may not take place in the real world but it would be nice if it did.

So, I Watched Christmas Crush (2012, Dir. by Marita Grabiak)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

When Georgia Hunt (Rachel Boston) was in high school, she was the queen of the school.  She was a cheerleader, a member of the Glee Club, and a member of the Speech and Debate team.  She was voted Most Likely To Succeed.  Ten years later, Georgia is the unappreciated assistant to a haughty fashion designer and she feels like a failure.  While visiting her mother (Marilu Henner), Georgia discovers that her class reunion is coming up.  Georgia decides to go because she wants to win back her high school boyfriend, Craig (Jon Prescott).

I could tell that this movie was made back when Glee was still a big thing because there’s a whole subplot about the former members of the Glee Club getting back together and performing three numbers at the reunion.  When Georgia wasn’t performing on stage, she was in the old practice hall and singing a song with her best friend from high school, Ben (Johnathan Bennett).  The Glee Club stuff felt really tacked on but I was happy they went with the Glee stuff instead of having Georgia try to do something stupid and put on her old cheerleader uniform and lead everyone in a cheer.  But then Georgia went ahead and did that anyways.

I had some issues with this movie.  A major one was what school holds a class reunion a week before Christmas?  What type of high school would still have ten year-old graffiti in its bathroom?  Georgia somehow opens up her old locker and finds the key to the principal’s office that she hid in there during her senior year and we’re just supposed to accept that no one else has noticed that key in ten years time.  (If I went to my former high school tonight and spent hours studying all the lockers, I would still never be able to remember which one used to be mine.)  Also, there were a lot of flashback scenes to when everyone was supposed to be a teenager but there wasn’t much effort made to make anyone look younger.  My biggest problem was that Craig treated Georgia like crap in high school and at the reunion but she still kept chasing after him even though Ben was obviously in love with her.  I didn’t have much sympathy for Georgia.  She just seemed pretty dumb about the whole thing.

Christmas Crush shows that you can’t go back to high school, no matter how much you might want to.  It’s always better to live in the present.