WAR OF THE CHRISTMAS MOVIES! LET THE ONSLAUGHT COMMENCE!

Christmas Reservations (2019)    To hell with peace on earth and good will toward men........it's a UFC-worthy holiday smackdown between the Hallmark and Lifetime channels.........

                Now that ultra cozy TV Christmas movies have been officially anointed as a Pop Culture Thing, this season brings together literally hundreds of Christmas movies competing with each other on completing networks.......

                 And to our everlasting horror, BD (Beloved Daughter) may very well force us to watch all of them.......well, maybe most ot them.......okay, maybe a lot of them......

                   Here's a few handy BQ tips if any of you plan to indulge.......

                   Settle in, calm down.......they're all slow.....minus the 30 minutes worth of commercials, all TV Christmas movies run about 90 minutes. And we're talkin' 90 very, very, very slow minutes.
So don't get antsy waiting for the pace to pick up. It won't.  Doze if you must, but try to wake up for the last ten minutes......when the plot's resolved, the lovers kiss, and the fake snow starts lightly falling.......

                    Everybody's super nice.......get over it.......Unlike real life, where mean-spirited people run rampant and everybody's stressed and pissed off from spending too much for gifts on Amazon, Christmas movie characters appear unfailingly upbeat, happy and brimming with holiday cheer. No, of course they don't  resemble real human beings......not even close.  That's why you only come across these relentlessly angelic men, women and children in Christmas movies.  You want real human beings?  Go watch 'Silence Of The Lambs'.......

                   But they do run into.......uh.....complications.....Christmas movie people usually face some sort of travail ......a mortgage due, a fractured romance, a nefarious corporation scheming to tear down  their Currier  & Ives little town and replace it with condos and office buildings......(in Hallmark movies, this bump-in-the-road plot detail almost always leads to a misunderstanding  that temporarily splits apart our boy-girl cutie couple.)..........Take heart, have no fear.  Always remember you're watching a friggin' Christmas movie......so all will be well......

                  Oops, we almost forget this post is about a Christmas movie.....to kick off our coverage, we defected from Hallmark and wandered over to the Lifetime Channel for "Christmas Reservations".......starring Lifetime's own Holiday star, Melissa Joan Hart......

                  We kind of liked that Lifetime allowed this movie to more freely play around with the traditional tropes of the genre......which over at Hallmark, are carved in stone. ...(as in: NO kissy-kissy between the leads until 2 minutes before the movies ends......)

                   This one's a little more ambitious, with multiple romantic storylines unfolding  at a ski-resort lodge........somewhere toward the end, they even throw in a Bollywood dance number......

                   Does everyone end up with a Happy Holiday at the end? What do you think?

                   We don't know if it makes sense to rate these films......it's like rating a Big Mac every time you eat one.......unlike Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, in a TV Christmas movie you always know what you're gonna to get......

                   Still, we'll get into the spirit, with 3 stars (***) for this one.......(that Bollywood dance definitely tipped the scales.....)

                    If you should try one of these movies and find it impossibly slow, cliched and unreal, then bail out altogether.......cause they're pretty much all the same, like a tray of freshly baked gingerbread men.......

                    Should you find yourself sucked in and warmly comforted........then grab your warmest blanket and 37 boxes of microwave popcorn........consider yourself hooked.