Christmas Hotel
Christmas may be over my little brothers and sisters, but that does NOT mean that we have to stop watching this nonsense! It's a new decade, new opportunities, new challenges and I imagine all kinds of changes will be happening in the months to come, but what will not change is the tried and true formula for the Romantic Christmas Movie. And today for your approval we offer up Christmas Hotel, a movie for all of those who hate change, or in other words, those of us who like people we recognize in stories we all know the ending to.
Ashley Banks (Tatyana Ali) is a hard working, Christmas averse, intensely driven big city working woman who is moving up the hotel real estate ladder, just a few steps away from her dream assignment in Rome Italy. Seriously, she wants this assignment more than anything in the world. But to nail down this deal her boss needs her to close the deal on the companies new hotel in her old hometown of Snowyville USA. Ashley doesn't want to go back Snowyville, but her boss figures she knows the layout and can make the deal happen.
So Ashley arrives in town, puts on her Great Lashes (which she seriously does in her car) and goes to confront the protesters in from of the newly built hotel. A word of advice to future large outlet protesters... if you want to protest the building of some unwanted large structure coming to your town, it's always best to protest during the planning stages, as opposed to after the damn thing is completely built. And we not even gonna get into why building a hotel this large in a town this tiny makes no business sense, but these things have to happen to keep a story moving forward. Anyway, this is where Ashley runs into Save the Last Dance Dude, who was the big brother of her bestie back in the day and who she had a crush on. Save the Last Dance Dude is completely with the resistance, Ashley is on the side of the oppressor, and as such love will not flow on this day. Once inside the hotel, thing aren't going so well. The hotel manager, Moesha's Mom (Sheryl Lee Ralph) informs Ashley that everything is gone all to hell and their world class chef has quit which has Ashley fearing for her promotion. Which she wants more than ANYTHING!
No problem, relief is just a few doors away as she visits her parents Half and Half mom (Thelma Hopkins) and Moesha's Dad (William Allen Young) who bake her cookies and tell it's gonna be allright.
But then things start to fall in place. Snowyville is all about Christmas so why not just make this fancy hotel a Christmas Hotel? Hell yeah! World class gourmet chef bailed? Would you know that Save the Last Dance Dude is a classically trained world cuisine chef? Who immediately took the job with the oppressor once offered? As Malcolm X said in reference to the revolution that never happened, "they walked in with guns, but walked out with brooms". They also need supplies for this hotel, and it turns out Moesha's dad runs a failing hardware store that nobody ever goes to, so his daughter gives him a highly illegal no-bid contract to supply all the lights for the Christmas Hotel. And for all the rest we have Etsy.Com, which Save the Last Dance Dude all but turned to the camera to read the Etsy.com mission statement on the services they provide. Now love is back on track complete with a near miss kiss. It's all great! Roll Credits!
But you know better than that. Something unfortunate happens. Save the Last Dance Dude loses faith in Ashley Banks, Ashley Banks becomes disillusioned with herself, but at least she did get that Rome gig. Did I mention that she wants this more than anybody has ever wanted anything? You know what's more powerful than a lifetime career goal and tireless hard work towards this goal? Giving it all up to work in a big hotel in a town that's too small to support it, that will be out of business in two months... for love. That's what. Now roll those credits.
If you like stories which do NOT remove you from your comfort zone and you know with 100% certainty how they are going to end, you will love this movie. If you like seeing attractive, familiar professionals, who you have seen on television, and if you are like under 30, literally your entire life, you will love this movie. And these are not criticisms my friends because even a cynical, angry, bitter, forgotten person such as myself even found the familiarity of Christmas Hotel somewhat comforting.
It definitely hits all the right Hallmarky beats with lots of snow, oppressive Christmassy music playing throughout, tree shopping, snowball fights, cocoa drinking, cookie baking, near miss kisses and wise old people. And trust me, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Thelma Hopkins and William Allen Young are all old, even if they don't look it. No kids in this movie though. That I can recall. Maybe. But they weren't orphans if they were there, and we are partial to orphan kids. Also, we hope you love blatant product placement.
The main criticism of this movie would be that everything you think is going to happen, is going to happen, exactly when it is supposed to happen. But then if this rote, rigid, overly sentimental exercise in predictable storytelling about a woman who basically throws her life away for love upsets somebody, then somebody should probably stop watching Romantic Christmas Movies I think. And no, I am not talking about myself.
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