Day Five - A Christmas to Remember

A Christmas to Remember (2017) - Hallmark

My writing partner asked why Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino would be showing up in one of these Hallmark Christmas movies, to which I ventured a guess.  Other than the woman has to eat, at least on the Hallmark Channel the always lovely Ms. Sorvino, who is a nudge over 50 as of this writing, still gets to play a desirous romantic lead.  As opposed to showing up in a film in the studio system, say like the movie “6 Below: Miracle Mountain” where she’s stuck playing the worried mom of a forty year old dude.  I’m betting the studio movie paid better, but this movie here was probably way better for the ol' self-esteem.

Jennifer Wade (Sorvino) is this realities local New York version of Martha Stewart and she’s having a bad morning.  Nobody is doing anything right and one of her underlings just dropped a turkey on her.  And she’s super mean.  Or at least that what the synopsis says.  I think Ms. Sorvino is probably too nice to do mean, just somewhat annoyed.  And that Turkey looked terribly under cooked.  What Jennifer needs is a break, so her producer Paula (Brenda Chrichlow) makes her Colorado villa available to her for the Holidays.  Even though Jennifer doesn’t like the holidays. 

Unfortunately, after landing, Jennifer wrecks her rental and gets a nasty bump on her head and is found wandering the cold snowy streets by the kindly widowed Veterinarian John (Cameron Mathison), and instead of taking this wounded woman to a doctor or the police, he takes her home.  Something about a snow storm, and cares for her there. 

When Jennifer wakes up, she doesn’t know who she is.  Worst still is that nobody really seems to be looking for her.  No worries because John and his three crazy cute adorable kids have taken to her, and while Jen can’t remember her name, her muscle memory on how to make killer meals and perform arts and craft wizardry are on point.  They’ve even given her a name, calling her Maggie. 

But somewhere, someone out there is looking for her.  John knows this, the local authorities of this small town are on the job, and Paula is now officially worried.  But the problem is, what happens when they find her?  John is in love.  The motherless kids are in love.  Jennifer / Maggie is in love.  Dan the Wise Old Dude (Kevin McNulty) told John that when you care for a bunny rabbit, you have to let it go, to see if it will come back to you.  I have no idea what the f@#k that means.  Neither did John.   Whatever.  Just know that Jennifer will be found, she will regain her memories, she will head back to NYC, but eventually she will have to go back to where her heart is… PoDunk Colorado… for love.

We could’ve mentioned that Jennifer had a boyfriend, but he was a jerk.  How do we know this?  At a Christmas party this boyfriend checked out a woman’s butt as she passed by, and only jerky dudes do this.  Of course in reality this is completely normal and acceptable behavior and the ‘jerk’ boyfriend only checked it out after Jennifer walked away, which is a sign of mad respect.  Not a jerk… but he still won’t have no woman by the end of this movie.

Other than that faux paus, what can we say… ‘A Christmas to Remember’ was straight bringing it.  Yes, it was the same old tired, predictable Hallmark tripe, but it was tripe done right.  You want a Christmas tree shopping scene?  I got one better for you… what say we take the family out in the woods and cut down our own damn tree!  Heck yeah!  You want a cute kid?  We got three of them and they were all so sweet I wanted to roll them in dough, bake them and eat them.  The wise old dude was talking on a level of wisdom that I couldn’t even BEGIN to understand.  There was nothing but snow… everywhere.  There was rarely a moment of silence where canned Christmas music wasn’t playing.  There was a Christmas play with even more edible cute kids.  The Christmas ornamentation bordered on the tasteless it was so obnoxious.

Then of course you had Mira Sorvino probably overjoyed that she gets to be the hot chick and not Josh Hartnett’s mom, and Cameron Mathison bringing the pickup truck driving / flannel shirt wearing / tree chopping / sad-eyed dead wife possessing rugged handsomeness. 

We’re not saying that ‘A Christmas to Remember’ is a good ‘regular’ movie, but it is an outstandingly vomit worthy Hallmark Christmas movie.