A Shoe Addict's Christmas

A Shoe Addict's Christmas (2018) - Hallmark

Today we have a movie from the proclaimed Queen of the Christmas movie, one Candace Cameron-Bure.  Observation No. 1... While Ms. Bure might very well be Christmas movie royalty, I would personally give the queen crown to Lacey Chabert, followed by the title of princess being handed to Winnie Cooper.  Candace would be like a duchess or something.  No shame in that.  Observation No. 2... How comfortable is Valeri Bure with his wife making out with all these random Canadian actors in all of these random Canadian filmed movies that Candace has made over the years?  I mean Candace has kissed more Canadian dudes than... well... anybody... legally.  Her brother Kirk on the other hand, in that movie Fireproof, wouldn't even kiss his co-star as his wife had to slip in there for the filming of the final kissing scene.  I'm sure The Russian Rocket (ed. note:  Pavel Bure is the hockey star the Russian Rocket, not Valeri) would tell me, from the comfort of his Hallmark provided gold crusted bidet, that when his lady STOPS kissing random Canadian dudes in random Hallmark movies, that's when the problems really start.

Meet Noelle (Cameron-Bure), a human resources manager at some big time department store helping to get things ready for Christmas.  One night during a snow storm Noelle gets locked in the department store for a few hours, and this is where she will meet her fairy godmother Charlie (Jean Smart) who is here to get Noelle back on track because somewhere along the way, she's lost her way.  Of course the existence of a Fairy Godmother is crazy and Noelle doesn't believe, but Charlie uses the magic of shoes to show Noelle where she made a left turn in the past, when she should've made a right turn to a better life.

That pretty much it as far as a breakdown for this movie goes.  Yes, there's Jake the blandsome fireman (Luke McFarlane) with whom Noelle will be thrust into some kind of uncomfortable situation that will ultimately lead to love.  There's Lorna (Tenika Davis), Noelle's ridiculously tall, ridiculously good looking bestie of color who would literally take a bullet for this woman.  There's her loving widowed dad (Dan Willmott) because dead mom's are almost as much of a staple in these movies as blandsome love interests and POC besties.  But they just serve the purpose of somehow guiding Noelle to a better life or something, which we will get to in a bit.

But first, dig this synopsis of this movie, pulled right off the Hallmark website.. "Noelle, a holiday hater who toils in a department store in which she is accidentally locked on Christmas Eve. There, she meets a woman who identifies herself as Noelle's guardian angel and introduces her to several "ghosts" of Christmases past, present, and future."  Wrong! Noelle does NOT hate Christmas, she loves Christmas.  Noelle does NOT toil in her store, she seems to actually like her job.  There are no 'ghosts', which is probably why they put that in quotes in the first place, and probably most importantly, Noelle isn't really a shoe addict.  She's just a woman who like nice shoes.  Like, I don't know, every woman that's ever lived...ever.  I'm pretty sure Neanderthal woman would stress for hours over the best Sabre-tooth skins to put on her feet to match her Woolly Mammoth outerwear.  I guarantee you.

Synopsis aside, what is Noelle's real dilemma in this movie?  None as far as I can see.  Noelle has a dope apartment, she has a good job and seems to be moving upwardly in this job at a rapid pace, she has great friends, a loving father, an understanding boss and she really does have some nice footwear.  Noelle wanted to be a photographer back in the day, but reality kicked in and she had to get a real job which her good friend hooked her up with.  Note that Noelle is like forty so I'm not sure what she was doing to make ends meet before she got this HR job three years ago but there it is.  The thing is if everybody followed their creative dreams, we'd have a planet full of unemployed artists, actors, dancers, singers, screenwriters and musicians with no HR managers or line workers or cooks or teachers or constructions workers and society would cease to exist.  Nobody wants that so we're glad Noelle got this HR gig.  In fact the only thing that Noelle doesn't have right now, as far as I can see, is a man.  Also note that her boyfriend broke up with her three years ago on Christmas Eve which I guess is relevant.  And looking at Noelle it also seems to me that if she wanted a man, she could get one without too much interference from Fairy Godmothers, but of course these movies aren't really about Christmas, it's about getting a man to fulfill the perceived empty life of the woman, at Christmas, and with that in mind I guess Noelle's life was pretty darned crappy.  Thanks for trying to fix this tragic existence Fairy Godmother.

Now as far as the vomit worthy aspects of this Christmas movie, it's Hallmark so it is completely on point.  Lots of snow including a situation where it actually snows indoors.  Christmas tree decorating, A snowball fight featuring kids who I like to believe were orphans, though we can neither confirm nor deny if they had parents or not, hot cocoa drinking, present shopping, cookie baking, a little magic provided by Jean Smart who also bought some old people wisdom, Christmas music oppressively playing in the background, and Noelle even made a Christmas tree made out of shoes.  The only thing missing was some caroling but that's a minor omission as we can always trust Hallmark Corp. to deliver the required standards to make sure their movies don't stray from the convention they pretty much invented.

As we like to say, if you like these kinds of movies, and you like Ms. Cameron-Bure, and you believe strongly that a woman's worth is tied directly into whether or not she has a man... Then you'll love this movie too!