This is not meant to insult anyone, but Hallmark Christmas movies are not my cup of tea. Sure, they were a cute, guilty pleasure to watch with the moms when this trend first stared WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. But it’s now been twenty years of the same formula being released under twenty-five different titles each year. I get that they are mindless, non-anxiety causing entertainment, but come on! No one needs hundreds of these things. Calm the hell down, Hallmark! Also, when are they going to start incorporating some other December holidays like Kwanzaa and Hanukkah? Where’s “Have a little Imani in Me” or “The Man who came with Dreidel ”? I want one completely based around Yule where the characters fall in love while burning crap and dancing naked in the snow! But no. That’s not Hallmark’s demographic. I’m not Hallmark’s demographic. So… this will probably be painful.
I was already off to a great start when I was only two and a half minutes in when my boyfriend heard the music and dialogue from another room and accusingly shouted, “Are you watching a Hallmark movie?”
I picked Christmas Getaway because it’s about a travel writer (a subject I haven’t explored in this blog yet) and it stars Bridget Regan who I remembered from “Legend of the Seeker”. The plot involves her going to write about an old fashioned American Christmas in a town called Pine Cove. Pine Cove appears to be a mountain town where affluent white people in perfectly fitted winter coats. At the same time, a widower/divorcee (maybe I should have been paying more attention) played by someone named Travis van Winkle has come to Pine Cove in order to give his daughter and mother a special Christmas. I know these characters must have names, but I haven’t learned any except that the single father is Dad.
The movie got an ominous feel when the little girl goes to play outside and her dad calls out that he loves her. He says it like it’s a goodbye! Is she coming back? Don’t go out that door, little girl! Your father has clearly set up rabbit snares to get out of the way! And then he will have all of the Christmas cheer to himself (insert evil laugh). Oh wait, the kid survives.
And then, oh no, the two main characters have been accidentally booked into the same cabin and there are no other places available! Who could have possibly seen that coming? Anyone who saw any other Hallmark movie. That’s who.
The writer tries to start on a book she’s been playing with about her travel experiences and all of the world traditions she’s experienced, however she is distracted by the warm glow of family bonding created by the father and daughter. She decides to use them as the central point of her “old fashioned Christmas” article. They go to cut down their own tree at a farm that let’s people do that. . . without signing a waiver first.
This followed by ice skating, decorating, cookies, making snowmen, gingerbread house building, and other montage worthy events set to generic holiday music. Like one song would stop, then another would instantly began. I started to have retail PTSD. The idea of all this happy memory making is that the writer has worked every Christmas on assignment (which she technically still is so. . . what was the point again?). I guess that she’s with people? But honestly, I’d imagine a travel writer who knows so many traditions from other countries probably got invited to a few strangers’ holidays before that. I seriously can’t imagine that she was in a place like Italy at Christmas and didn’t get awkwardly invited to someone’s house for dinner.
The travel writer’s boss/best friend says that the writer and the single dad clearly have a thing because “you can’t fake chemistry”. This quote made me laugh out loud as it feels like what the director of every one of these movies has to scream at the actors on set.
Eventually all of this jaunty public domain music and holiday sap inspire the travel writer to. . . you know . . . write. Personally, if I had a paid vacation to a cabin the woods with hot chocolate I might get some writing done too. That is, if my allergies don’t try to kill me like the last time I tried writing in a cabin in the woods. I think I did more dreaming about writing in my antihistamine haze, but we saw a bear!
Okay, back to the movie. The writer expresses how shThers feeling inspired to finish the book by settling in one place for a while. Of course, she tells this to the eligible single father before they (gasp) nearly kiss. Side note:They still haven’t kissed! There’s 30 minutes left of this thing? uggggg, but my squirrel instincts want to look at interesting shinies. Bored!
Therefore, let’s wrap this up. Guy loses girl through misunderstanding. Girl decides to get guy anyway through magic of Christmas. I think a car had the safest spin out on an icy road EVER. Blah blah blah. Back to the writing stuff. Turns out the trip was a ploy by the main character’s boss/best friend so she could take a break and get some emotion back into her writing. That was nice, but the rest of unbelievably sap-tastic and I’m going to go throw up now. It will be festive. I promise.
