Christmas In The Spotlight (2024) & Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story (2024)
"Deck The Halls with Swift and Kelce,tra-la-la-la-la...la-la-la-la"
Thus spoke the Lords of the Lifetime and Hallmark channels currently flooding us with their annual onslaught of Christmas romances......
And what romance captured the Zeitgeist more than that of Pop Princess Taylor Swift and football star Travis Kelce?
No wonder the streaming-TV magnates salivated over high ratings and advertiser dollars at the thought of cashing in on America's Official Lovebirds.
So they presented us with their very own sanitized-for-your-protection versions.......
But only one of them, the Lifetime 'Christmas In The Spotlight' had the nerve to actually depict characters blatantly modeled after Swift and Kelce.
The Hallmark Film, officially sanctioned and endorsed by Kansas City Chiefs with real Chiefs notables in cameos, took a tamer, respectful route. It simply grafted a standard, generic Hallmarkian couple into a background steeped in Chiefs lore.
No surprise here, really. The Lifetime movie is way more fun and fascinating to watch......it takes a full plunge into what we've all contemplated: how does a romance work between a worshipped pop star and a popular jock? What the hell would they even have in common, other than public adoration?
(We haven't figured that out ourselves. But ain't love grand?)
So the road to love-dovey-kissy-kissy becomes just as bumpy and hazardous as we imagined. And the script, unfettered with Hallmark limitations, freely doses its dialogue with Swift song name drops. No doubt Swifties everywhere squealed and chuckled at every Taylor meta-quip that made its way into the plot.
The Hallmark movie holds weightier issues on its mind......the power of fandom faith to carry on through subsequent generations. Here, the resident cutie-pie represents the third generation of an extended family of Chiefs fans.
We didn't bother to sort out the large cast assembled to play various parents and grandparents......except for Ed Begley Jr who looks and sounds like he's heading for big goalpost in the sky.
The leads are bland, the Christmas-y feels are minimal, but as you might expect, there's a ton of Chiefs stuff in the plotting and on display. Outside of Kansas City, you can make out the sounds of millions of yawns.......(or did Hallmark not realize that football team love is fiercely territorial?)
Best moment: For a mushy sentimental finale, the all the family's generations address the crowd at a fully packed Chiefs game. Finally, coach Andy Reid yells at them to get off the field.
Bravo, Andy. We would've loved it better if you'd just sent Travis Kelce to physically shove 'em all back into the bleachers.
As this blog's designated referee between these two movies BQ calls a penalty on 'Holiday Touchdown'....boredom. 2 stars (**).
We immediately award on additional star to "Christmas In The Spotlight", bringing it up to 3 stars (***). At least this movie's team did an actual fictional copy of Kelce-Swift and even eked out a bit of fun with it.
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