A Perfect Christmas List
Sara (Ellen Hollman) is a super successful children's author writing books about A Mouse in a House or something, which I'm sure the Beverly Cleary estate might have an issue with. My bad, actually Beverly Cleary herself because I assumed that Ms. Cleary would've passed by now, but as of this writing she is 104 and still writing stuff. Anyway, Sara gets a call from her dad, Tim the Toolman's best friend (Richard Karn) that her grandma, Richie Cunningham's mom (Katherine Ross) fell and couldn't get up, and that she should come home a little early for Christmas and help out. Problem being that Sara and her mom Sabrina the Teenage Witch's Aunt (Beth Broderick) totally hate each other. No joke, these two people seem like they would be completely okay if one or the other were to drop dead. But hey, Richie Cunningham's mom is sick, so back home she goes.
A few things about Sara. First she drives home in her Chrysler PT Cruiser, which is a car I don't think a super successful anything would drive. In fact many people have said that it's the car of choice for racists. Not me! But many fine people. Then upon seeing her grandma laid up in bed she gives her a couple of her own children's books to read. I mean really Sara? These aren't YA books, but actual illustrated children's books that take all of four minutes to read. How about some Judith Krantz or some Dan Brown, Sara? Something somebody over the age of four might read. Jeez.
Anyway, Grandma knows that her daughter and granddaughter do not get along and devises a list of tasks for them to do to bring them together. Mom was totally against this, until she mistakenly overheard hunky Dr. Brandon (Aaron Hill) tell granny she had a week to live. She's fine by the way, but this spurs mom into action to do this list so her mom can have a few happy final days. This is what it took for her to pretend to be nice to her daughter, impending death.
First task, make cookies. Sara goes to the store to get ingredients, and totally by chance runs into hunky Dr. Brandon, who while cute and all, eats lots of nitrate filled hotdogs, drinks refined sugar lemonade and cooks with bacon butter. And she let him know she finds his food choices unacceptable, as if it's any of her business what this grown ass man chooses to eat. But I think there's more to this than meets the eye. I think.
Next is a Christmas tree heist, then other things such as Ice skating where she meets up with Dr. Brandon again which results in a near miss kiss right there on the ice, only interrupted by Dr. Brandon jumping into action to help an injured child who blocked all that potential action. Still Sara thinks there might be something there and invites him to Christmas Dinner, but he says he's busy. Apparently Sara has never been told this before because she's super hurt and would like to know what could possibly be more important than being with her? But I think there's more to this. I think.
The good thing is that Mother and Daughter are defrosting the ice, Mom letting us know that she was upset that Sara threw away a Harvard scholarship to write children's books and drive a racists ass PT Cruiser, but it's getting better between the two. Culminating in both mother AND daughter putting on slutty Santa suits to raise money for charity, with mom tearing off the bottom of her Santa suit to make it even more slutty to get those extra charity dollars. And then it was off to buy some gifts with those slutty charity dollars and drop them off at an orphanage. Hell yes! Orphan kids! Where they run into Dr. Brandon who volunteers at the orphanage every year, because he used to live there. So those poison hot dogs, fatty bacon butter and diabetes causing sugar drinks weren't for him Sara! They were for the kids! I hope you feel terrible now. And then they start making out. At Christmas.
A Perfect Christmas List was directed by main man Fred Olen Ray who seems to have ditched his old directing career, which consists of damn near 200 movies including classics like Bikini Warriors and Bikini Time Machine, and is now all in with TV Romantic Christmas Movies, of which I've seen my fair share. And despite my man's vast amount of experience there are still those out there who firmly believe he still can't competently direct a film, BUT we will give him credit for this one. We're not saying 'A Perfect Christmas List' is good, and this ION TV film does lack the gloss and rote formula that we see coming from the Hallmark channel, but at least it's watchable.
Part of this watchability comes from a cast that has close to a thousand years of acting experience with Katherine Ross having 900 years of that experience, all of which helped push this somewhat predictable story along. But not sell our lead Ms. Hollman short as she was fine in the role as the hateful daughter, it's just that I also used to watch Spartacus on Starz where she played a warrior slashing the throats of Romans, and with that thought in the back of my head it seemed that at any moment she might completely murder Beth Broderick, which maybe the character had coming. Again, mother and daughter really hated each other in this movie so that might take some getting used to.
Another thing that was a little different about this one, yes she got the man at the end, but it was more a mother / daughter story than a boy / girl one. The boy in this one was more of an afterthought, a conduit to introduce Orphan Kids into the movie and you know I love me some Orphan Kids so we are totally on board with this afterthought of a man.
The other things we expect to see in these movies was a mixed bag of collectibles. We did have cookie baking, a little hot cocoa drinking, not so much a Christmas tree shopping scene but a Christmas tree heist scene, and a near miss kiss. But since this is a SoCal based movie we had no snow men, and no snow fights even though Dr. Brandon did buy a snow machine for his orphan kids at the end. There was also no mistletoe and no caroling, though we did have an impromptu Christmas Jazz jam session featuring some homeless people and some 1920's styled foxtrot dancers? Because that happened. But the movie did manage to be Christmas themed all the way through despite the warm weather location.
We can't give A Perfect Christmas List too many vomits due to it's missing Hallmarky elements and the backseat the boy / girl relationship took, but the mother /daughter angle and the massive number of Orphan kids floating about made it okay with me.
Lol, just watched this movie. It sucks!
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