For many people, a familiar pastime in the weeks leading up to major winter holidays is gathering with family members and watching holiday movies, be they in a theater or on television. This year, such plans will have changed for individuals not living with the people they often spend time with during the holiday season, and curfews and lock-downs have forced movie theaters to close. However, this shouldn’t stop us from enjoying holiday movies with friends and family.
During the month of December, therefore, the Falls Free Press will present “The 12 Films of Christmas,” focusing on new holiday movies for the year 2020—a year that can do with plenty of spirit. We will review each film, whether naughty or nice, and let you know where to watch it.
There’s a common thread among Hallmark holiday movies—a thread so common in fact that it lends itself to watching for the usual attributes of these films. Multiple versions of Hallmark movie Bingo cards circulate on the Internet, and Hallmark themselves have even acknowledged the fun with their own Christmas movies version of Monopoly. While watching The Christmas House, one of Hallmark’s newest holiday films in its “Countdown to Christmas” for 2020, I even found myself earning three Bingos in a row on the particular card I was using.
Incorporating a slew of bad holiday faux pas in a 2-hour movie does not mean it rates as low as one thinks though. After all, aren’t such faux pas the hallmark of Hallmark holiday movies?
In The Christmas House, a family is brought back together for the holidays when their parents (played by Sharon Lawrence & Treat Williams) want to bring back their famous Christmas house, decorating the entire house and lawn with an abundance of trees, lights, garland, inflatables, and enough tinsel that viewers might think a portion of the pixels are broken in the television. This family tradition goes back to when their sons were young, before growing up and moving out of state.
Mike, played by Robert Buckley (most recently in the CW’s iZombie), is an actor playing a lawyer on a long-running television show called Handsome Justice, but, before leaving for the holiday, he learns that the show may be canceled. His brother, Brandon (Jonathan Bennett), runs a bakery, while he and his husband, Jake (Brad Harder), are awaiting good news about adopting a child.
Arriving at home, Mike runs into a past girlfriend, Andi (Ana Ayora), who also happens to be helping his parents sell their house. This news hints that not only are the brothers home to celebrate their last Christmas there, but that their parents are facing relationship issues since retiring.
The movie is made up of three settings: The home in the present, their mom’s repeated flashbacks to when the boys were young at Christmastime in a rather under-decorated home (based on how it is constantly described by characters), and the final product setting, involving more yard decorations that had been assembled an hour prior in the story. For the final scene there are many questions as to how filmmakers afforded to create the lavish set—both inside and out—as it looks more like multiple spaces in a department store Christmas walk-through than a house that an entire community could reasonably find their way through without tripping over each other—especially when they have also chosen to make this an open house for buyers on the same night.
In most movie reviews, the conclusion would be reported, or at least hinted. As mentioned earlier, though, this is a Hallmark movie, and rarely does one end with every character burned alive. That said, each worry throughout the film turns out perfect for all characters, except the unusual magic store owner who also happens to be a part-time DJ with only one Christmas record single: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love. For him, not only does he lose his bid on the house twice, but he is so completely unconnected with the world around him that he doesn’t realize a supposedly popular television star shops from him, nor that said star has made the realtor he’s meeting the best person in the profession locally.
For fans of Hallmark holiday movies, The Christmas House is worth adding to an afternoon binge next to the fire with plenty of Bingo cards to go around.
The Christmas House is available to watch on the Hallmark Channel and on the Frndly TV service.
