The Santa Stakeout
Tanya (Tamera
Mowry-Housley) is a fresh faced rookie detective in what I think is supposed to
be Denver, and she loves her some Christmas.
Sitting across from Tanya is Ryan (Paul Campbell), a grizzled veteran
detective and he does not love Christmas.
These two do NOT get along. I
mean Ryan ate all the candy in Tanya’s advent calendar, which in any universe
is a dick move.
There’s a situation
going on in this version of Denver in that somebody is pulling off a string of
art heists, and the Captain (Peter Bryant) needs his top two detectives on the
job. Ryan, because of his grizzled
experience, and Tanya because of her amazing attention to detail. Like observing in the dossier three large
color pictures of the same guy dressed up as Santa at all of the
robberies. This seems like an amazing
attention to the obvious to me, but who I am to argue with the captain?
The guy in these pics
would be Mr. Miller (Pantoliano), who is better known as Mr. Christmas because
he brings the Christmas spirit like no other, but it also turns out that Mr.
Miller also has criminal record so Tanya and Ryan think they might have their
man. As it so happens, there looks to be
a lot of strange activity going on at Mr. Miller’s house so Tanya and Ryan secure
the rental house next door to Mr. Miller to blatantly and obviously spy on him,
in the form of a stakeout, which they wanted to be clandestine, but circumstance
forces them out in the open and now they have to pretend to be a couple of
newlyweds new to the neighborhood.
Shenanigans shall ensue.
To get closer to Mr.
Miller and his activities our fake newlyweds join up in all the Christmas
festivities. The Christmas potluck, the
caroling, lots and lots of Christmas beverage drinking, tree decorating, more Christmas
sing-a-longs, and a little bit more Christmas beverage drinking. Also, the strangest thing starts to
happen. These two cops start talking to
each other and realize they have more in common than they realize… like
love. Or something. They do a lot of talking to each other so we
can’t even begin to scratch the surface there.
Still, there’s a case
to crack, and the more they hang out with Mr. Miller the more they are leaning
towards this gentle old man, who quite honestly can barely walk upright, simply
can’t be the perp propelling down ceilings, Mission Impossible style, and
stealing art work, until they catch him red handed. Kind of.
Yes, Mr. Miller has history of stealing stuff, but that was like fifteen
years ago, when he was a young man, in his fifties. He’s changed!
And that suspicious stuff they found in his house? It was actually to help the homeless! Which seems like a front to me, but just the
ex-cop in me. Note, I was never a
cop. Digging a little deeper, it looks
like Mr. Miller was FRAMED! And our
crack detectives have busted this case wide open, AND fell in love in the
process. Somehow. Somebody pour me a Christmas beverage.
So, as a police
procedural, Santa Stakeout is pretty terrible.
For starters our cops aren’t staking out Santa at all, which was
somewhat disappointing because I really want to see Santa be investigated, Tanya
and Ryan’s police procedures are ass, they pretty much violated every civil
right this poor man has, they constantly ignored obvious evidence, and most of
the heists happened right under their noses, because they are terrible police
officers.
But we all know that
solid police work isn’t important in a movie like this, despite the fact the
main characters are police officers… no… the important thing is that Tanya get
a man at the end of this movie, and you know what? She does!
Our job here is to observe how closely this movie sticks to the
Hallmarky conventions in getting to this point.
It’s above average, quite honestly.
We had two nice opening and closing Christmas numbers with lots of
Christmassy type canned music playing in the background, plenty of decorating,
a plethora of Christmas beverage drinking, a touch of cookie baking, a tree shopping scene,
and even some ugly Christmas sweaters.
What was missing was a breakup of our couple before getting back
together in some way, a snowball fight, even though it was pointed out to me
that there was a tinsel fight, which I don’t think is a thing, putting Joe
Pantoliano in cuffs does not replace closing the cookie factory or whatever, and
unfortunately it was missing my personal favorite trope… orphan kids. There were actually zero kids in this. Gotta have orphan kids.
With veterans Tamera
and Paul Campbell on board, along with a somewhat bored but still wonderful Joe
Pantoliano, the season is off to a fine start.
Three Vomits!
Lisa's Take
Summer turns to fall. The leaves change, the temperature cools, PSL takes over everywhere…and right when children are about to go trick or treating Hallmark rolls out the big red snowy carpet for Christmas! It seems like forever since my last write up (was it Christmas carousel? Who really remembers) And so we’re psyched to have Santa Stakeout start us off this year. And in a prior write up by Chris, it was asked “Is Christmassy a word?” Well, according to this movie TOTALLY A WORD. And you know what else is a word and is the opposite of Christmassy? That would be Scroogy. Which apparently spell checker doesn’t think is a word, but for the purposes of this movie is a thing. Poor Ebenezer Scrooge, he is forever tied with being a miser as opposed to his story of redemption. Like instead of being a scrooge referring to a cheapskate, it could have referred to someone who’s seen the error of their ways and changes for the better. But alas, we aren’t here to discuss the etymology of words. We’re here for some forced upon Christmas cheer!
So we see that our friend had expectations of this 2021 Christmas Movie opener. Pro tip, best to check all expectations, however low, at the door when watching these types of movies. Someone expected joy at seeing Joe Pantoliano as Santa, the anticipation, the potential! I mean if you have this guy in your cast and he’s not investigating the crime, there’s a high probability he’s committing the crime. Don’t need to pay super attention to details in crime scene photos to think “THIS GUY HAS TO BE A SUSPECT” I’m not saying he DID it, just saying one needs to take a hard look at his alibi. Also is Joe really the face of Mr. Christmas? Sure, he loves to decorate. He is head of the Christmas Committee. And plays a Santa for hire, but he doesn’t wear the suit to neighborhood Christmas events. Nor does he wear an ugly sweater, which seems a non starter for someone called Mr. Christmas. We can assume had there been kids at these Christmas events, he would have been dressed up. As mentioned by Chris there were hardly any kids, which does beg the question why would adults be doing all this caroling, baking, hot chocolate drinking, if not for the kids? The presence of children was felt, but no actual children were needed for filming.
And while Mr. Pantoliano seems interestingly cast as a possibly thieving Santa, Paul Campbell as the Scroogy Detective Ryan seems typecasting of the guy, having seen quite a few of his other Hallmark movies. Although eating the advent chocolate doesn’t really make you miserly, it makes you a terrible person. Like we must know, what possessed you? You had to break open the little calendar doors, it’s not just candy sitting in a jar there for you to take one. Knowing full well that chocolate was intended for a specific day, where’s the decorum we ask? We believe Lucifer himself might think taking advent calendar candy was a bridge too far. But Mr. Campbell seems destined to play guys who seem a little lost but with the help of Christmassy Tamera Mowry, a better version of himself will be found. He may be a little more Scroogy than we thought after all. The transformation starts with some Santa Coffee. I feel like they told me the ingredients, but I still don’t really get what Santa Coffee is. Asking for Santa Coffee at your local coffee shop, what would the barista produce? Extra points to the movie for inventing what I think is a completely fake drink. As opposed to the eggnog or make your own cocoa stand that we get later in the movie, these holiday drinks we understand and seek out if only to complete the bingo card. Why don’t more places do flights of hot chocolate?
Then there is the surprise that Detective Ryan can bake, which during this stakeout comes in handy. When not looking out the window directly at your suspect with glaringly obvious binoculars and the camera set up literally centered in the window, what else are you gonna do to pass the time? There’s only so much solitaire one can play, and gingerbread cookies do taste so much better. And if Detective Tanya was surprised by the baking skills, wait till the dinner party! Which she gets them matching ugly sweaters to wear, and they twin (triplet?) with neighbor Stanley. I don’t think Stanley, the other Mr. Christmas, would have viewed it as an ugly sweater. Its just a festive Christmas Sweater to him, which just laugh off that awkwardness. Now time to add piano playing to the secret skill set as Detective Ryan Decked the halls while Detective Tanya not so discreetly checked Mr. Christmas’s office upstairs. You know, complete invasion of privacy and total disregard for the law, all for the case.
In terms of crime solving, I’ve watched way more Hallmark Mysteries than I care to admit to, and gotta say this follows in the grand tradition of terrible sleuthing. I mean the painting was stolen as they were in the next room, it wasn’t like their sole purpose for being at the party was to prevent a robbery or anything like that. The fact it was a painting stolen and not the Fabergé ornament should be of little significance, the goal should be to have zero items stolen one would assume. And for someone who’s supposed to be a chiropractor, Detective Ryan is literally home all day. As a pretend chiropractor, should Detective Ryan being giving adjustments that he has no qualifications to perform on Stanley? For that matter, I forgot what fake job Detective Tanya has but they are both home all day, available at any time for charades. So besides very overt surveillance at home, they followed Mr. Christmas to see what questionable associates he was meeting up with. How did that go? Spoiler, they lose Mr. Christmas. And there were zero cars involved in this pursuit. So tune in to find out who framed Santa, because of course Hallmark can’t really have Santa be a thief. Leave with pearls of wisdom like “Everyone’s a reindeer at heart. What reindeer are you?” This question may start more questions, but we’ll just leave it at that for now. You pondering what reindeer you would be.
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