Adventures in Christmasing
World famous daytime TV talk show host Parker Baldwin (Kim Fields) is a woman who likes to be in control of the situation. Naturally this need for control and precise planning stems back to her dead mom, because if we've learned one thing from watching these movies, it is that no one has it rougher than somebody's mom in one of these Holiday Romantic movies because 90 percent of the time they are dead. Cancer, car accidents, serial killed... Dead. Thus Parker is quite upset at her producer (Jonathan Silverman) when he springs a sudden guest on her, that she didn't have time to prep for, in famed adventurer Finn Holt (Adrian Holmes). We know Finn is an adventurer because he repels from the ceiling into Parker's set, because that's some stuff that only adventurous dudes do. Finn's schtick is taking celebrities on dangerous adventures, so imagine Parker's surprise when her producers arrange for her to go on a Christmas adventure with Finn. Parker REALLY doesn't want to do this but this network she works for could give less of a damn about what Parker wants. I don't know what Parker's standing is at this network, but if Oprah doesn't want to a thing, or Joy Behar doesn't want to do something, or Ellen doesn't want to do something, I guessing they don't have to do it.
Finn on the other hand is really excited to do this as he has plans to go snow mountain climbing and fight bears and stuff. So they jump in the Heli along with Finn's two man crew and get to adventuring, and adventuring the certainly do. I should mention that the night before Parker was to embark upon said adventure, she took a bubble bath with some rather strategically placed soapy suds while she did her research on Finn. I would say they were exploiting Kim here, but since Kim is like an Executive Producer on this joint, it would be Kim exploiting Kim, and self-exploitation is okay in my book.
Parker and Finn hit the ground running on this adventure of theirs. They hike for miles, they forage for food, and they successfully go fishing. Unfortunately a random bird stole one of their fish, which Parker ran into the river to chase down, which seemed like a strange thing to do since birds can fly and voluptuous talk show hosts cannot. Parker ended up getting all wet which isn't good when one is camping in freezing weather, so they set about getting Parker dried out, they create homemade tent things, and sit around the fire telling stories about family. Except Finn. He's holding something back.
Eventually they stumble upon a cabin, which isn't adventure cheating for as Finn tells us, it's on the land so it's part of the land, which still sounds like adventure cheating to me, by I'm not a famous adventurer so what the heck do I know? But this is where Parker and Finn start to truly plant the seeds of love. Parker decorates the cabin for Christmas, Finn opens up about his dead dad, and Parker opens up about her dead mom. Inspired by Finn and drunk with adventure, I guess, the next morning Parker decides to wake up early to do some breakfast foraging, and that's where everything goes sideways. She gets lost, a frantic Finn goes to find her while forgetting take his survival pack, which is inexcusable for a survival expert, but love does tend to cloud the brain. Parker falls into the river, again, Finn messes up his leg, but he finds her just in time fend off an angry wolf even though that wolf looked like it wasn't really trying to bother nobody.
They also endure a vicious thunderstorm which forces them to take shelter in a cave and get some rest before heading back out, or they strip to their underwear to help Finn heal his leg in a magical warm spring. I can't remember which came first. I think the underwear stripping came first, which would then lead to the cave, which would then lead to an honest to goodness sex scene. Sort of. I knew Parker was obviously dreaming this, and it was going down in a filthy cave, and they were dressed for a Packers game in January while this was happening, but it was still a sex scene in a Holiday Romantic movie. Until this glorious dream was interrupted by the cave almost collapsing on them. Adventure!
Eventually these kids make it to safety, Parker is air lifted back to civilization to do her show, but with a new outlook on life and her heart open for love, if Finn just walks on in to claim that spot. Finn, however, doesn't like it when his heart gets exposed and decides to make a run for it. But his bestie tells him that you can't run from love, or something, and he heads back to the studio, with Parker heading out to the street looking for him, and they find each other again and start making out in front of a live studio audience, on a filthy city street. At Christmas.
While the Christmassing might have been a little low on this one from VH1, I will admit it was high on the adventure. And music. Lots and lots of original Christmassy songs in this one. Original in that I've never heard them before, but then I tuned out of listening to popular music around 1992 so these songs could be smash hits and I wouldn't know either way. I don't know if you will actually like these songs, but they are there for you. Back to the adventuring, from rock slides to severe hypothermia, there was plenty of that. Along with a fully clothed sex scene with people wearing parkas, and you just don't see that too often in our Holiday romance movies.
Thus due to all the adventuring in the wilderness, the vomit worthiness of this adventure was on the low side. You can't bake cookies in the woods, so there was none of that, no snowman building or snowball fights, I don't recall seeing mistletoe but they were in the wild so maybe I missed that one. We did get some hot cocoa drinking in the woods, and some caroling in the woods, our couple near missed kissed a couple of times, Parker's dad was providing the old guy wisdom, though Parker and Finn are kinda pretty old already so I don't know how much old guy wisdom they really needed, and while there were no children in this movie, much less orphan kids, a 43 year old Kel Mitchell did his best to fill that role as Parker's little brother, with the eight or so words he spoke in this movie. Kel deserves better. Kenan has a sitcom, movies and SNL, Kel gets 8 words in a VH1 Christmas movie. What's up with that?
That nonsense aside, Kim Fields and Adrian Holmes work well together, as they should as they have both done this holiday movie thing numerous times, and numerous times together. So if you want some adventure in your Romantic Christmas movie, and a middling amount of actual Christmas, I guess this one isn't too bad. Two Vomits!
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