(no subject)

[impy]

Jingle Bell Bride is... well. It's not bad but it's not great, either. Both leads were likable, actor wise, but Jessica is one of those SUPER driven career characters who only slows down because she's literally stranded in a podunk Alaska small town for about a week. She's a wedding planner and flies to said Alaskan town to con Matt (who helps grow this out of season flower) out of enough blooms to support a celebrity wedding so she can get a promotion and then move to London.

Despite never seeing her sister and niece even though they live nearby and feeling like shit about it before she even leaves town. Sigh.

Matt's nice and just snarky enough to make you root for him, but he's also Hallmark nice, which means they've sanded away any rough edges and left just the tiny bit of a backstory involving him coming back to Alaska to help his aunt after her husband dies... and then they dole out the fact that he was also running away from New York because his marriage imploded.

They lean too hard on Jessica's career and her blowing everyone and everything off for her job, which she actually seems to enjoy (the job, not the blowing everyone off) and so things always feel a little lopsided. I think part of that is they don't introduce the idea of Matt having an actual life, not just a job, back in New York until a little too late, so it feels very off balance, like someone forgot that the end goal wasn't to have Jessica move to Alaska and make the town sign now say 113.

tl;dr version: Like the actress, didn't like the character all that much and this was definitely HER movie sooooooooooo... meh. The kids were cute and kept in limited quantities.

Comments

[luxken27]

Ha, I love these little mini reviews of Hallmark movies! These are not something I naturally gravitate towards but I've certainly read enough book versions to know the beats and when they may be enjoyable to me.

[impy]

I have a serious soft spot for holiday movies. Mums reads the books and I watch/half watch the movies. Lifetime movies are almost always better than Hallmark but Hallmark's easier to find. Also, I don't spend half the movie waiting for a brutal murder in the Hallmark ones but Lifetime spent decades conditioning me to expect just that. :P

I do wonder about the people who are into them hardcore though. Are they like me, thanking the gods that Candace Cameron Bure's outed herself as the goddamn worst AND left the channel to do movies even more saccharine than Hallmark? Is it a mourning process because they lack the senses to tell that she's just horrible in all the ones I've seen? Who knows but sometimes I wonder!

[luxken27]

I'm almost afraid to ask. I didn't realize there was much lower for Candance Cameron to sink (I mean, her brother is already scraping the bottom of the barrel), or that there was a place more saccharine than Hallmark...

[impy]

GAC decided that if Hallmark was going to have gay people and obviously not white people, well, someone had to think about the VALUES and MORALS and swooped in to lure away CCB, Danica McKellar and a few other Hallmark steadies. CCB gave a recent interview that made her look like an insensitive ass at best and a hateful troll and GAC backed her and then some. It was/is... oof.

I think I watched a couple of their movies last year, by accident because they absolutely hide who made them when you're looking at the movie info on your streamer of choice, and the ones I watched were not great. To be fair, a lot of holiday movies aren't great, and I'm still only pretty sure one of them I remember enough to look up anyway.

I read an article at some point that explained why a lot of Hallmark people jumped ship, prior to GAC going full "we make movies for conservative white people because they're the real minorities!" and it was basically GAC would offer them full creative control and a shit ton of money. Not sure if any of the ones who were trying to walk the line and do both channels are reconsidering things after the latest implosion.

And now you know without having to ask! I'm sorry?

[luxken27]

Well, I was curious enough to have a look after I feared asking, so this comes as no surprise to me. I think she had to convert to a super conservative version of Christianity when she got married, and this is just par for the course of the crap she's been spouting ever since. I was surprised to see that Danica McKellar was the first to ink a deal with GAC and I don't think she's a jackass, so I'm more than willing to buy the idea of creative control + shittons of money. Apparently Hallmark didn't actual tie its stars to exclusive contracts before GAC swooped in to grab them, hence why a bunch of them decided to follow the money.

I found this link on CinemaBlend about who left and who's staying. Its a regular soap opera.

(Also, why does anybody care what Jojo Siwa thinks about...anything?)

[impy]

Yeah, her views have been super skewed for awhile now. I think awhile back she got everyone all confused with her wives should be subservient to their husbands shtick. I'd forgotten that GAC is now technically GAF but since GAF sounds like a hairball waiting to happen I'll ignore that fact.


I'm trying to remember if DM said something extra dumb awhile back or if it was just being lumped in with CCB, but I do remember raising an eyebrow and thinking umm...? at one point.

Guessing JoJo's clout is mostly for Gen Z mebbe? I did cackle wheeze at her latest round of dragging CCB though, but I also admit that I never actually looked up anything beyond headlines because my interest wasn't that high. :p


Oh, and I think this was about the time I realized that the Hallmark movie type arena is one of the few areas of Hollywood where the women tend to far outrank the men in terms of who gets paid more. I tell you, I can only imagine how things to look to the obsessives. Are there obsessives? There must be. I've found blogs in the past and the way people get heated on FB whenever a new headline pops up.

It's such a weird rabbit hole to fall down.

[luxken27]

From what I can see, Danica McKellar has been trying to distance herself from CCB's comments. Apparently GAC is aggressively going after the ~Christians~ in Hollywood, so they are definitely making a brand choice. Good thing we don't have to watch their schtick if we don't want to.

I don't "get" JoJo Siwa, so I'm always very confused when she's touted as Someone We Have to Listen To. Nothing against her, I'm just old. I don't know most of the celebrities these days.

I'm sure there are Hallmark obsessives. Just the CinemaBlend articles alone hint at it, what with the actors having their own fan followings (some of whom have stopped following due to the switch to GAC). It seriously reminds me of the soap opera news sites - people get crazy wrapped up in what is essentially fiction. As my coworker is fond of saying, it ain't that deep, LOL.