Day Six - The 12 Gifts of Christmas

The 12 Gifts of Christmas (2015) - Hallmark

Imagine my excitement when I saw that actress Katrina Law was the star of this movie.  I’ve seen Ms. Law in quite a few things, such as the Starz show Spartacus where she was murdering Romans as the character Mira, or the show Training Day where she played a tough cop that was murdering perps who made the mistake of breaking the law, and of course in the Aarow-verse where she murders anybody she so well chooses as the assassin Nyssa Al Ghul.  I could not WAIT to see whose throats were getting slit in this movie ‘The 12 Gifts of Christmas’!   Sadly… nobody got murdered.  Just another Hallmark Christmas movie.

Ms. Law is Anna Parisi, a struggling artist in the big city living in her sister’s basement.  One day at the bakery Anna runs into Marc, the super handsome, super uptight Ad Executive and helps him buy a gift for his assistant, and then a light goes off!  Anna’s mutant power is picking just the right gift, and being as how the whole art thing is stagnant, she decides to dip her toes into the vocation of personal shopper.  Turns out Marc is crazy busy at work has no time to buy gifts, so he grabs a business card of this random personal shopper, who by chance happens to be Anna, and he hires her to buy the gifts for his office and his family.  I think its 12 gifts.  Not sure if that’s ever explicitly stated in this movie.

It was a little rocky at first, Anna ignoring Marc’s gift order for a friend and buying something else, which really upset him… until that gift turned out to be the Best Gift Ever.  Now these two beautiful but boring people are spending all kinds of quality time together, but just talking about gift buying.  That’s it.  For real.  Marc even invites Anna to the company Christmas party, then to go skating with his family, followed by dinner with his parents, which means this is getting serious.  But not really.  Gift buying… let’s stay focused on the gift buying.

But we know something has to happen to break this couple up, even though boy doesn’t even have the girl yet.  This something was kind of lame, but waddayagonna do?  We have to go with it.  Not only does it break up the boy and the girl, it also breaks up the girl with her beloved sister (Melanie Nelson) who allowed Marc to take a picture of the Santa Clause Anna painted.  It’s complicated and has something to do with a flailing ad campaign which they should still lose .  But guess what… even though boy never really had the girl to lose in the first place, he will get her back… on Christmas. 

Things that were curious about this movie… Marc is like SUPER uptight.  He wears his vest and oxygen restricting tie even when he’s lounging all by himself at his own home.  After buying some of the gifts on Marc’s list, he gives Anna a bonus check.  With this check, Anna pays her sister months of back rent, buys gifts for everybody AND puts a deposit down on a dope, big city downtown apartment.  Exactly how big was that bonus?  Donna Mills played Marc’s mom.  Donna Mills is just a tad south of 80 YEARS OLD… yet she looks almost exactly the same as the character I used to watch on Knots Landing when I was a kid.  Look at this family portrait Anna gifts Marc’s family with….

Does that look like a painting to you?  No… it does not.  Anna's not that gifted.

This is the portrait it replaced. 

It looks a little more like it could possibly be a painting, but that woman on the right sure as hell ain’t Donna Mills. 

Anyway, as far as the movie goes, it was a solid vomit worthy endeavor.  Solid Christmas theme, snow on the ground, lots of seasonal decorations in the background, some form of generic sounding Christmas music incessantly playing in the background, Anna had two super cute nieces who did not annoy, though movie was somewhat absent of wise old people.  We know Donna Mills is old… Super Old… Robert Duvalle, Lou Gossett Jr, Judi Dench Old… But she doesn’t look it and she wasn’t spitting any wisdom. 

The only real issue in this completely functional holiday romance, at least from where I was sitting, is that Marc didn’t really look to be all that into Anna.  He tried… he would give long looks as she walked away… but he gave me the impression he was more admiring Anna’s shoes than Anna herself.  And pound for pound, these two are like the best looking pair in all these awful Holiday movies I’ve seen so far, but still... Marc just didn’t seem like was all that interested.  When he said he wanted her to buy gifts, I believe that’s all he wanted.  Anna seemed all in, but we don’t know about Marc, despite the fact they kissed in the end. 

But that could just be my interpretation.  Someone else might translate that look of detached disinterest from Marc as wanting to be all up in that.  I didn’t see it.  Still… a very solid vomit worthy entry to the collection.