Homegrown Christmas
Homegrown Christmas (2018) - Hallmark
Before she puts on the orange jumpsuit and gets to the business of breaking rocks at Alcatraz, Lori Loughlin made herself a Hallmark Christmas movie. I think her scandal hit around the same time this movie dropped, so Hallmark must've been in a bit of a quandary deciding on whether to air a family movie headed by convicted felon, but it made it past their censors thank goodness. We could have a whole separate conversation about this situation, like wouldn't it be easier to make a generous donation as opposed to bribery? Or is USC the type of school that someone really needs to bribe someone to get into? Or at the end of the day isn't Aunt Becky just a mom trying to do what's best for her kids? Have you seen those kids? They need all the help they can get. But we're not here for any of that, for we are to discuss Homegrown Christmas with you, which is basically like any other Hallmark Holiday movie you've ever seen just with different looking people in it.
Ms. Loughlin is Maddie Finley, a New York business woman who has just sold her shoe company for mad dollars and with time on her hands for the first time in 20 years, she's heading back home to Smalltownville USA for an extended Christmas stay.
There are issues that she must deal with however, such as how to handle Carter (my main man Victor Webster) who broke her heart way back when and how to cope with seeing him for an extended period of time. Then there's her sister Hallie (Kate Isaac) who seems to hate her guts, though her mom (Gwnynth Walsh) assures her that this is not the case, though it sure does look like it to us. There are other issues floating around but the main one is Carter, a woodworking savant who chose not to go to NYC with his true love twenty years ago because my man lacks the confidence. For real. You would think a 6'5" ruggedly handsome dude cut from granite would feel a little better about himself, but Carter is self doubt personified.
Fortunately for love, these two middle aged kids are putting on the High School Christmas Gala planning party where they get to spend some quality time together, reconnect, work out some differences and find love once again, as dictated by Maddie's ridiculously obtrusive mother. Truth is they never really do resolve any of their differences, but that's not gonna stop love from coming around the second time... at Christmas.
So while Homegrown Christmas has everything you would expect in one of these movies... Mistletoe hanging, Christmas tree acquisition and decoration, snow, a snowball fight, hot cocoa drinking, a cookie baking sequence, incessant canned generic holiday music, a near miss kiss... all of which makes it pretty similar to every other TV Holiday movie you've seen, but it does have a couple of things that do make it different. Not better mind you, but different. For instance, Maddie, our main character, is a fairly terrible person. Her sister hates her... resents her if you must... because Maddie has passively made the poor woman feel terrible about herself for her whole life. As mentioned, Carter is a woodworking savant but he wants to keep it a hobby until Maddie puts his stuff online, without his permission, and now Carter is forced to make his hobby his job. It's presented as if it's for the best for him, but he was pretty adamant throughout most of this movie that this is something he did not want. Carter also has a niece who wants to go to a design school in NYC, which her mother specifically and passionately forbade, until Maddie goes behind the mother's back and applies for this kid to go anyway. Of course this is eventually presented as if this is for the best, but the fact remains nobody asked her to do any of this stuff. In fact they specifically told her NOT to do any of this. As a side note, this niece and her date won King and Queen of the dance, which is funny since they were the only two high school aged kids I saw at this high school Christmas Gala, thus they won by default. And Wendy Williams showed up in a scene in this movie, so there's that.
So if you can get past the fact the star of this movie is a convict (no problems with that here) and get past that the character she's playing is kind of an asshole (much harder to get past) you have a fairly stock, vomit worthy Hallmark movie on your hands here.
Ms. Loughlin is Maddie Finley, a New York business woman who has just sold her shoe company for mad dollars and with time on her hands for the first time in 20 years, she's heading back home to Smalltownville USA for an extended Christmas stay.
There are issues that she must deal with however, such as how to handle Carter (my main man Victor Webster) who broke her heart way back when and how to cope with seeing him for an extended period of time. Then there's her sister Hallie (Kate Isaac) who seems to hate her guts, though her mom (Gwnynth Walsh) assures her that this is not the case, though it sure does look like it to us. There are other issues floating around but the main one is Carter, a woodworking savant who chose not to go to NYC with his true love twenty years ago because my man lacks the confidence. For real. You would think a 6'5" ruggedly handsome dude cut from granite would feel a little better about himself, but Carter is self doubt personified.
Fortunately for love, these two middle aged kids are putting on the High School Christmas Gala planning party where they get to spend some quality time together, reconnect, work out some differences and find love once again, as dictated by Maddie's ridiculously obtrusive mother. Truth is they never really do resolve any of their differences, but that's not gonna stop love from coming around the second time... at Christmas.
So while Homegrown Christmas has everything you would expect in one of these movies... Mistletoe hanging, Christmas tree acquisition and decoration, snow, a snowball fight, hot cocoa drinking, a cookie baking sequence, incessant canned generic holiday music, a near miss kiss... all of which makes it pretty similar to every other TV Holiday movie you've seen, but it does have a couple of things that do make it different. Not better mind you, but different. For instance, Maddie, our main character, is a fairly terrible person. Her sister hates her... resents her if you must... because Maddie has passively made the poor woman feel terrible about herself for her whole life. As mentioned, Carter is a woodworking savant but he wants to keep it a hobby until Maddie puts his stuff online, without his permission, and now Carter is forced to make his hobby his job. It's presented as if it's for the best for him, but he was pretty adamant throughout most of this movie that this is something he did not want. Carter also has a niece who wants to go to a design school in NYC, which her mother specifically and passionately forbade, until Maddie goes behind the mother's back and applies for this kid to go anyway. Of course this is eventually presented as if this is for the best, but the fact remains nobody asked her to do any of this stuff. In fact they specifically told her NOT to do any of this. As a side note, this niece and her date won King and Queen of the dance, which is funny since they were the only two high school aged kids I saw at this high school Christmas Gala, thus they won by default. And Wendy Williams showed up in a scene in this movie, so there's that.
So if you can get past the fact the star of this movie is a convict (no problems with that here) and get past that the character she's playing is kind of an asshole (much harder to get past) you have a fairly stock, vomit worthy Hallmark movie on your hands here.
Comments
Post a Comment