So nice to find out that we're not alone in our strange, weird, beyond-all-rational-explanation obsession with those most guilty of guilty pleasures.......the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.
Beloved Daughter pointedly asked us, during a viewing of this latest entry in the vast Hallmark holiday canon, "why don't they ever do a Hallmark Christmas movie about two Wal-Mart employees who find love during the holidays.....or two Target cashiers?"
Blasphemy! Sacrilege!
Another question B.D. posed....."can't they ever kiss before the last 2 minutes of the movie?"
Blasphemy! Sacrilege!
Let us quickly review the carved-in-stone commandments of these movies.......which are configured and rigorously executed by Hallmark with the absolute rigidity of Haiku poetry and Kabuki theater.....
Pay no attention to the First Boyfriend.......Hallmark worships that milestone of romantic comedy......the un-triangle. Our adorable leading lady may start out with a perfect studmuffin, high-powered attorney/CEO/fiance/boyfriend, but that doofus is doomed for rejection......(at about the 1 hour, 45 minute mark of the 2 hour running time, depend on him to receive his walking papers.) It's the other guy who'll get the long awaited final smooch, exactly 2 minutes before the credits roll, the small town doctor/shopkeeper/widower-with-cute-young-kid....)
The Hallmark Christmas Movie Princess.......as scientifically engineered as the Stepford Wives......hovering between 28 and 33 years old, a hard charging professional(doctor/lawyer/business exec, no struggling Wal-Mart salesfolk allowed)......with a secret mushy heart-of-gold that will take about 1 hour and 45 minutes for the small town doctor/shopkeeper/widower to thaw out....
Hallmark towns and their weather.......Though the films may open to views of sprawling cityscapes, fear not.......the action will soon transfer to Quaint-Little-Town, consisting of one main shopping street adorned with carefully arranged small decorative piles of snow. Speaking of the snow, in Quaint-Little-Town, it perpetually comes down in Currier And Ives postcard flurries....(very similar to the Upside Down in 'Stranger Things'). Even if the script calls for a raging snowstorm that closes all the roads and forces our romantic couple to spend an evening together on separate couches, the snow depicted will never look like anything more than a dusting......
Lovable Old Farts and diversified BFFs.......these characters make up the remainder of the populace of Quaint-Little-Town........Grannies, Grampies, Aunts and Uncles with a twinkle in their eye and one foot in the grave.......the LOF's, naturally, in their infinite wisdom, spend all their time encouraging the finale get-together of our romantic couple. In the casting of the couple's various best friends, Hallmark sometimes allows a few black and Asian actors to sneak in........(but in their chirpy cheerfulness, they tend to remind us of what happened to the black victims in "Get Out")
The 9:58 Kiss We used an 8pm starting time as a guideline......in a 9pm start, the kiss would occur at 10:58, and so on and so on. You get the idea. In a Hallmark Christmas Movie, you can compare this rule to crossing the streams in 'Ghostusters'.......to violate it would mean the end of all life in the Universe as we know it. Our Hallmark romantic duo must never, never lock lips until 1 hour and 58 minutes of their story has elapsed. They're allowed to come close before that pivotal time period......but no touchy-touchy. And when the kiss does arrive, no tongues and certainly no moves such as the Hallmark Princess jumping up to wrap her legs around her guy's waist so he can carry her back to the Christmas Cottage......(hey, we can dream, can't we?)
Variations to avoid......Yes indeed, sometimes Hallmark lets their writers and directors off their very short leash to deviate from the standard template. We personally don't care for these allowable sub-genres; The Contest ones......where our guy 'n gal meet while competing with each other in various Holiday competitions.....ice sculpting, tree decorating, cookie baking.....yawn. The Royal Romances......where one of our duo is a Royal, complete with forbidding King and Queen who disapprove of their choosing a commoner.......double yawn. The Santa ones......the absolute worst of these sub-genres, where it turns out that one of our romantic leads is Santa's son/daughter/niece/nephew/whatever.......and the old guy himself shows up to put things right. Yuk, avoid at all costs......
Despite all the snark we just indulged in, we have to say that there's nothing more
Holiday-ish and soothing than wrapping presents with a Hallmark Christmas movie playing in front of us. Call us crazy, but we find them as shamelessly comforting as cup of hot chocolate that we've dumped 3 packages of chocolate powder into. Probably not the healthiest thing in the world.....but what the hell, it's almost Christmas,,,,,
Since they're so precisely mass-produced, the cinematic equivalent of a Hickory Farms sampler package, we'll assign one rating to all Hallmark Christmas movies (with the exception of those variants we can't stand).......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)).......now pardon us while we stop in to another Quaint-Little-Town.....we heard there's flurries in the forecast....
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