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Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: Jingle Belle (dir by Peter Sullivan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As our longtime readers know, I’ve never been one for false modesty.  I know that there are things that I do well and I don’t see any reason not to brag about my natural talents.  On occasion, I’ve been told that it can be a little off-putting but so what?  As long as its justified, what’s wrong with a little arrogance?

That said, part of knowing what I can do means being honest about what I can’t do.  And if there’s any job that I would absolutely suck at, it would be writing advertising jingles.  I mean, there’s a reason why none of my poems ever rhyme.  Coming up with pithy one-liners that will make you want to “buy!  buy!  buy!,” just isn’t my specialty.  Fortunately, jingles themselves are no longer as important as they were back in the Mad Men era.  In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of one current jingle and that’s the “Liberty Liberty Liberty Lib-er-ty!” song.

(And everyone hates that!)

Fortunately, Belle Williams (Tatyana Ali), the main protagonist of Jingle Belle, doesn’t have that problem.  Long ago, she abandoned New York for Ohio and she’s established herself as one of the best jingle writers around.  Unfortunately, it appears that she might be losing that magic touch.  As this film begins, she’s suffering from a terrible case of writer’s block.  In fact, when the mayor of her hometown calls and asks her to return home and help write the annual Christmas pageant, her initial reaction is to say no.  However, her boss (Loretta Devine) insists that Belle take the assignment.  Perhaps a trip back home is just what Belle needs to break through her writer’s block.

Belle returns home, planning on helping the town out.  What she doesn’t know is that the Christmas pageant is being directed by her ex-boyfriend and former performing partner, Michael Hill (Cornelius Smith, Jr).  Can Belle and Michael set aside their differences and their complicated personal history long enough to put on a successful Christmas pageant?  And how will Michael the purist react when Belle’s boss tries to turn one of their songs into an advertising jingle?

Of course, you already know the answer to all those questions.  Jingle Belle is predictable even by the standards of a Lifetime Christmas movie.  As I’ve said quite a bit this month, how much you enjoy this film will depend on how much tolerance you have for Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas films in general.  (That’s kind of become my mantra this month.)  Anyway, there’s no surprises to be found in this one but Cornelius Smith, Jr. is appropriately charismatic as Michael and the great Loretta Devine mines a lot of humor out of the role of the demanding boss.

The film’s final message is that small towns are better than big cities and you can write jingles anywhere.  It’s a nice little message but, then again, it does seem like, if you work in advertising, it would be a good idea to live near the hub of the advertising industry.  That said, I’ve never written a jingle in my life so I could be wrong.  All I know is that, wherever Belle lives, she’ll come up with something better than the Liberty Mutual jingle and really, that’s the most important thing of all.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: A Christmas in Tennessee (dir by Gary Yates)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

How do they celebrate Christmas in Tennessee?

With a lot of down home love!

Or, at least, that’s what I learned from watching this Lifetime Christmas movie.

A Christmas In Tennessee is the latest in a long line of Lifetime Christmas movies that make a big deal about where they’re set.  In the past, we’ve had Christmas in Mississippi and a Christmas in Vermont and I imagine that, at some point, we’ll have a Kansas Christmas or an Iowa Christmas.  The thing that these films always have in common is a strong sense of nostalgia.  These are films that tell us, “You can run off to New York, California, or Toronto but your heart will always remain in either the South or one of the smaller New England hamlets.”

In the case of the film, it’s Alison Bennett (Rachel Boston) who attempted to leave town, heading off to the big city so that she could become a big time French pastry shop.  However, when she became pregnant, she moved back home and got a job working in her family’s bakery.  Now, years later, it appears that the bakery is about to go out of business and her daughter, Olivia, is writing letters to Santa in which she begs Santa for money.  Since the town traditionally publishes all letters to Santa in the newspaper, Alison is worried that everyone is going to realize how bad her situation is.

Meanwhile, Matthew (Andrew W. Walker) has come to town.  Matthew is charming and handsome and actually rather nice but he works for a real estate developer who wants to buy the town square.  Matthew is ambitious.  He wants a promotion.  The only way he’s going to get it is to get his hands on that property.  However, to do that, he has to convince Alison to sign over the land to him.  Alison could really use the money but there’s no way that she’s going to betray the town that she calls home.  That’s not the way things are done in Tennessee!

And then …. okay, let me stop to catch my breath here.  There’s a lot going on in this movie.

*breathes*

Okay …. and then, two mysterious strangers stop by the bakery.  One of them has a white beard and a jolly manner.  The other is his wife and is played by Caroline Rhea.  Olivia takes one look at these two strangers and decides that 1) the man is Santa Claus and 2) Santa loves her mother’s cookies!  It’s time to write another letter to Santa.

Well, of course, Olivia’s letter about Santa’s favorite cookies goes viral.  (It even appears as a story on “Buzz News.”)  So, can Alison use her new found fame to save the town?

A Christmas in Tennessee is okay.  How you react to it will probably have a lot to do with how you feel about Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas films in general.  If you like them, you’ll like this one.  At heart, it’s a sweet movie and both Rachel Boston and Andrew W. Walker give sincere performances.  It’s an idealized version of Christmas and who doesn’t love that this time of year?

I look forward to discovering which state we’ll visit next year.

Music Video of the Day: All Alone on Christmas by Darlene Love (1992, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is one of my favorite Christmas song but, unfortunately, there’s not an official music video for Love’s version.

However, there is a music video for Love’s 1992 Christmas song, All Alone on Christmas.  As you can tell from watching the video, this song was actually a part of the Home Alone 2 soundtrack.  The video is full of footage from the movie but it does not include the scenes with Donald Trump.  However, it does feature Macaulay Culkin “producing” the song.  I understand that the grown-up Culkin now performs song about pizza which …. well, I mean, I like pizza so hopefully it’s not as stupid as it sounds.

In the video, Darlene Love is backed up by members of the E Street Band, who all look happy to be freed (if only momentarily) from the tyranny of Bruce Springsteen.

Enjoy!

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: Christmas Lost and Found (dir by Michael Scott)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s become a bit of a cliché that all Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies take place in a small town and feature someone returning to visit relatives for the holidays.  Christmas Lost and Found, however, breaks with tradition.  While it is true that film begins with Whitney Kennison (Tiya Sircar) returning to her former hometown so she can spend the Christmas with her grandmother (Diane Ladd), the hometown in this case is Chicago.

(Of course, in all fairness, I guess we should keep in mind that Whitney left Chicago for New York City, where she found employment as an event planner.  And, from what I’ve seen, it does appear that a lot of people in New York consider almost every other city in America to be a small town by comparison.  That being said, I live in Dallas and I spend my holidays in Fort Worth so, to me, both New York and Chicago are huge metropolises.

Anyway, where was I?)

Whitney is an extremely successful in event planner in New York City but her success has come at a cost  Whitney is so driven to succeed and such a workaholic that she’s running the risk of forgetting about the things that make life worthwhile, things like love and family.

Fortunately, Grandma’s here with her box of ornaments!

The ornaments are several years old, each one representing a different Christmas that Whitney spent with her grandmother.  (For instance, a snow flake ornament represents that Christmas when they got snowed in.)  Grandma gives Whitney the box of ornaments and tells her to keep them safe until it’s time to decorate the tree.  However, the very next morning, Whitney is cleaning the house and the ornaments accidentally get thrown out!

Terrified that she’s lost the ornaments and ruined Christmas foever, Whitney puts off telling Grandma what happened.  However, then the notes start to show up, rhyming riddles that inform Whitney that she’s going to have to go on a scavenger hunt across Chicago to get the ornaments back.  Now, this may sound like the set up for a holiday-themed horror movie but have no fear!  The first riddle says that it might sound like a stunt but promises that it will be fun.

Working with the neighbor, Brian (Edward Ruttle), Whitney goes searching for both the ornaments and, in a larger sense, Christmas itself.  With each ornament that she finds, she’s reminded of yet another Christmas.  The unseen letter writer continues to give Whitney tasks, making her write a letter to Santa Claus at one point.  While Whitney searches for the ornaments, she also tries to figure out the identity of the letter writer.  And, of course, she also has to finish designing a department store display window because …. well, why not?

How you react to this movie will probably depend on how much tolerance you have for Lifetime holiday movies in general.  This is an unabashedly sentimental film and it takes place in a world that’s almost devoid of cynicism.  You have to be willing to accept that someone was somehow able to put together an extremely elaborate scavenger hunt and have it play out without a hitch.  Is the film implausible?  Kinda.  And if that matters to you, you’re probably not into Lifetime Christmas movies.

As for me, I always get sentimental around this time of year so I enjoyed Christmas Lost and Found.  Edward Ruttle was likable as the neighbor and he and Tiya Sircar had enough chemistry to make them pleasant to watch on screen.  And, of course, you’ve got the great Diane Ladd playing Whitney’s grandmother.  It’s hard to think of anyone who could have done a better job with the role.

If you’re not naturally inclined to like these type of movies, Christmas Lost and Found probably won’t convert you.  But if you enjoy sentimental holiday entertainment, Christmas Lost and Found delivers exactly what it promises.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: Hometown Christmas (dir by Emily Moss Wilson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If there’s any lesson to be learned from Lifetime (and, for that matter, Hallmark) Christmas movies, it’s that no one should leave their hometown.

Seriously, everything’s always better in your hometown.  You might find success in the big city.  You might own a nice car.  You might find a huge apartment.  You might even have a well-paying job.  But you’ll never have what you had when you’re living in a small town with good, honest people, some of whom were related to you.

Admittedly, it’s easy for snarky critics like me to poke fun at this idea and the way that it shows up in every single Lifetime Christmas film.  But you know what?  These films have a point.  Every Christmas, my sisters and I get together and we pretty much stay together until the new year.  That’s our Christmas tradition and it’s one that I look forward to every year.  I always know that no matter what’s going on in our own individual lives, we’re all going to be together with the holidays and everything is going to be right with the world.

That’s certainly what I was thinking about as I watched Hometown Christmas, a Lifetime film in which Noelle (Beverly Mitchell) returns to her hometown in Louisiana for the holidays.  There’s not a lot of conflict to be found in Hometown Christmas, but that’s okay.  This is a film in which the nicest people in the world gather in the nicest town in the world and proceed to have the nicest holiday in the world and that’s why the film works.  Save the horror for Halloween.  Save the conflict for …. well, whenever the next election is.  This is a Christmas movie and Christmas movies should make you feel good and happy.

When your name is Noelle, it’s perhaps to be expected that your life is going to revolve around Christmas.  That certainly seems to be the case with the character that Beverly Mitchell plays in this film. One of the nice things about Hometown Christmas is that it never suggests that Noelle had to return to her hometown because she was miserable outside of it.  Instead, Noelle returns because she wants to return.  To be specific, Noelle has returned to stage the live Nativity, a town tradition that was started by her late mother.  Of course, as soon as Noelle returns home, she runs into her old high school boyfriend, Nick (Stephen Colletti).  Nick was going to be a star baseball player but injuries put an end to that.  Things are a little bit awkward between Nick and Noelle at first but it’s not long before they’re working on the Nativity and Nick is proving that he’s grown up a lot since he and Noelle last saw each other.  It’s a sweet relationship.

(Actually, there’s more than just one love story that unfolds over the course of Hometown Christmas.  While Nick and Noelle are getting reacquainted, Noelle’s father (Brian McNamara) is falling for Nick’s mother (Melissa Gilbert).  Meanwhile, Noelle’s brother is newly engaged.)

It was a pleasant Christmas love story and I enjoyed it.  Hometown Christmas is full of the holiday spirit, as any hometown Christmas should be.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: Christmas Around The Corner (dir by Megan Follows)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Claire (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a venture capitalist who lives in the big city but dreams of visiting the same small Vermont town that her mother once loved.

Andrew (Jamie Spilchuk) is the latest in a long line of blacksmiths and he also owns an independent bookstore in the same small Vermont town where all of his ancestors have lived.

Together….

THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

Okay, not really.  Christmas Around The Corner is a Lifetime Christmas movie, which means that there’s not a single crime to be committed.  For that matter, there’s none of the other things that we typically expect from a Lifetime movie.  There’s no seductive nannies.  There’s no duplicitous best friends.  No adultery.  No scheming.  No runaways.  Nope, that doesn’t happen on Lifetime around Christmas time.

Instead, the movie opens with Claire having some sort of major career setback.  I’m not really sure what the exact details were but it had something to do with the stock market and a downward pointing arrow and a party that none of her investors came to.  It was financial stuff, which I’ve never really been able to follow.  What’s important is that Claire decided to get out of New York and spend the holidays in that small town in Vermont.

(Yes, yes, I know.  Vermont.  I hate Vermont but I won’t go into that right now.)

Anyway, Andrew runs a bookstore that also rents out rooms or something like that.  Apparently, when you’re staying at the bookstore, you’re also expected to work in the bookstore.  I have such mixed feelings about that.  On the one hand, I would love to live over a bookstore.  And I probably wouldn’t mind working in a bookstore, as long as I was the owner and could basically spend all day bossing people around and having them rearrange the books.  I mean, that seems like it would be a lot of fun.  However, I just can’t imagine going on a vacation so I could work.

When Claire arrives in the town, she’s really looking forward to the annual Christmas festival but …. uh oh!  The festival has been cancelled!  In fact, due to tough times and bad weather, it would appear that no one in town has the Christmas spirit!  No one but Claire!

So, can Claire get the town to rediscover its love of Christmas?

Even more importantly, can she use her marketing background to show Andrew a better way to run his bookstore?  Of course, she can!  Unfortunately, it may all be for naught because Andrew is thinking about selling the bookstore!

Along the way, Andrew and Claire fall in love.  Can you blame them?  I mean, Andrews’s a blacksmith!  Soot is sexy.

As you might expect from a Lifetime Christmas film, Christmas Around The Corner is more than a little predictable but, at the same time, it’s a sweet movie.  The town looks beautiful and Alexandra Breckenridge and Jamie Spilchuk have a likable chemistry as the two leads.  As anyone who has ever watched a Lifetime Christmas movie knows, these films always have an older voice of wisdom who helps to bring everyone together.  This time, that voice of wisdom was provided by the veteran actress Jane Alexander and she did a good job with her role.  It’s a likable movie, which is really the main thing that can ever be asked of a movie like this.  It’ll make you feel happy and Christmas-y.

Because, after all, Christmas is right around the corner!

Music Video of the Day: Celtic Carol by Lindsey Stirling (2011, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s start this holiday weekend off with another music video from Lindsey Stirling!

In Celtic Carol, Lindsey is an elf who has been locked into Santa’s workshop.  Apparently, Santa is a really demanding boss, which I always kind of suspected.  I mean, if you’ve ever seen Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, you now what I’m talking about.

Anyway, Elf Lindsey manages to get in the Christmas spirit despite having to work.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Snow by ADI (2017, dir by Shir Rosenthal)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ve got snow on the mind.

To anyone who knows me, that should not come as a surprise.  In fact, I put my friends and family through this every year.  Once December rolls around, I start obsessively talking about how much I hope that it will snow.  It always starts out as a cute but, around the 15th, I always start to curse the lack of snow in the forecast.  By the time the 24th hits, I’m usually stamping my foot and making demands.

(Of course, I live in Texas so it’s rare that my snow wish is ever fulfilled.  If it does snow here, it’ll probably be in late January or maybe Febuary.  A few years ago, it did actually snow in Texas on Christmas Day but, even so, it was really more of a light dusting than a real blizzard.)

This year …. well, it’s not even supposed to get down to freeing on Christmas Day.  That’s a shame because we are supposed to get hit by some rainstorms.  So, we’ll get flooded but we wont get any ice or snow.  Oh well.  As long as the sun isn’t shining, I guess I’ll be happy.

Anyway, you may be wondering what all of this has to do with today’s music video of the day and the answer is not much.  The song is called Snow but it’s not actually about snow.  Instead, it uses snow as a metaphor for an intense relationship.  The video itself doesn’t feature a blizzard, either.  Still, I’ve got snow on the mind and this song and video may be as close as I’m going to get before this year ends.

Don’t get me wrong.  Even if it’s not about real snow, I still like the video and the song because Adi Ulmansky is one of my favorite artists.  (Again, I have to thank my BFF Evelyn for introducing me to her music.)  This video was directed Shir Rosenthal, who is also credited with directing the video for Adi’s Dreamin‘.

Enjoy!

(And keep your hopes up for snow in Texas!)