After watching Last Chance For Christmas, it was time to continue to clean out my DVR by watching A Gift-Wrapped Christmas.  Directed by Lee Friedlander (who did such a great job with Babysitter’s Black Book), A Gift-Wrapped Christmas was actually the first Christmas film to air on Lifetime this year.  It premiered on November 28th.

A Gift-Wrapped Christmas tells the story of Gwen (Meredith Hagner), who I immediately envied because not only does she have a great attitude towards life but she has a really kickass job as well.  She’s a personal shopper, which means that she gets paid to do something that I do for free.  In fact, she might be the greatest personal shopper of all time.  All she has to do is take one look at a client and she immediately knows what is needed.  She currently lives with her older sister (Beverly Mitchell) and her husband and she’s single.  She’s also almost always cheerful, without being annoying about it.  I wish I could pull that off.

One day, her agency tells her that she has a new client.  His name is Charlie Baker.  Oh my God! I thought, the Governor of Massachusetts!?  Seriously, who wouldn’t want that job!?  However, it turns out that it’s a different Charlie Baker.  This Charlie Baker (played by Travis Milne) is a business executive who sucks at giving gifts and thinks a black suit is appropriate for every occasion.  Charlie is also a widower, raising his precocious son, Owen (Anthony Bolognese) on his own.  Charlie does have a girlfriend but it’s obvious to everyone (but him) that Victoria (Anna Van Hooft) is cold and manipulative and is more in love with money than with Charlie.

So, Gwen takes one look at Charlie and his boring office and his boring gifts and she says, “Nope, this is all going to change.”  At first, Charlie is resistant and even refuses to consider wearing a purple suit.  But Gwen refuses to give up.  She continues to buy stuff that encourages him to broaden his worldview.  Charlie starts to loosen up and act like a real human being.

And don’t think that Victoria hasn’t noticed and isn’t thinking, “No way I’m going to lose my man to a personal shopper!”

When I first watched A Gift-Wrapped Christmas, I tweeted some pretty snarky things about it but I think I may have been a bit too upset over the prospect of not getting to see any Lifetime melodramas for a month and, as a result, I was a bit too quick to judge A Gift-Wrapped Christmas.  On a second viewing, I discovered that the film had a lot more charm than I initially thought.  At the very least, Meredith Hagner and Travis Milne are both adorable and how can you not love a movie where the secret to happiness is shopping?

A Gift-Wrapped Christmas is an almost stereotypical Lifetime Christmas movie but, thanks to the chemistry between Meredith Hagner and Travis Milne, it’s still an enjoyable dose of holiday cheer.