The Snowball Effect
As I mentioned, quite a bit actually, the movies I'm watching this season are being randomly picked out of a rather deep pool by my Excel Randomizer. But when this one popped up I decided I needed to watch it. Ignore the universe. Go it alone. Perhaps I was drawn by battling weather people competing against one another to cover the storm of the century while trapped at a lodge. Twister meets Cabin in the Woods starring good looking People of Color! That would've been my pitch. I didn't get that. The Universe punished me for my foolish hubris.
Sam (Landon Moss) is the top weatherman is his small market. He's fun, funny, tall and handsome, and while his ratings are good his actual prognostications, not so much. Tara (Anjali Khurana) is the no. 2 weatherman in this small market. Not fun, not funny, not very tall but still beautiful, she is a hardcore meteorologist whose accuracy in predicting weather trends is off the charts, but this is not resulting in better ratings.
In nearby Boston a viral video is spreading of the top weatherman in that large city having a nervous breakdown on set, and while most normal people would be concerned about that gentleman's mental health, both Sam and Tara see this as an opportunity! They both manage to get interviews, and the station manager wants to fill the job like yesterday and demands they both be in Boston the next day to start the process. Unfortunately the storm of the century is quickly approaching, which they have both have termed the Snowball Effect which has shut down all mass transit forcing the both of them to attempt to drive to Boston.
Unfortunately, the roads are also shut down before they can make it to their destinations and they are forced to detour to the town of Mistletoe. You would think the town of Mistletoe would be all about Christmas, but you would be wrong! And they are forced to share a loft at the Mistletoe Inn, which is closed for the Holidays, but Sofia the owner made room since these two kids are in a bad way. Why is the Mistletoe Inn, named after a famous Christmas poison root, closed for the holidays? What is going on in this town?
Well Sam and Tara are going to find out! Obviously they aren't getting along, or rather Tara isn't getting along with Sam, snipping at him, belittling my man, insulting him for no real reason I can tell, but apparently this is behavior Sam is used to getting from women because he always stays chipper, cordial and polite no matter how mean Tara is to him. Since they can't make the interviews, they decide to do weather related personal stories about Mistletoe, the Town that Cancelled Christmas, send it to the dude in Boston and have him choose from the two. But while Tara is hard at work doing the hard research, Sam the slacker is trying to throw a party to save Christmas. At least that what Tara says because she's mean. Just ask her loyal assistant Mina (Samantha Rose Valletta) whom Tara constantly inconveniences throughout these holidays to carry out mundane tasks for her.
Eventually, they discover the reason Mistletoe cancelled Christmas, which has something to do with a failed Christmas train or something. I can't remember. I do know that the mayor is a modern day Burgermeister Meisterberger who made the ultimate decision to cancel Christmas a few years ago and if somehow they can just make her believe again, Christmas will be resurrected in Mistletoe. Or just vote in a new mayor. It seems that option wasn't on the table.
Well Tara rounds up some Carolers to serenade the Burgermeister at her house, and dang if that doesn't work. And Sam's Christmas party is a big hit! Christmas is saved! They both shoot their weather segments, Mina makes a special trip down to Mistletoe to edit both their segments and send them off to the station manager in Boston who also makes the special trip from Boston to let them know they BOTH got the job! Say what? It's seems that tricky Mina edited the segments as one, and now Boston has a two-man weather team on air. Something I'm fairly certain no other market on the planet earth has. Oh, and then Sam and Tara start making out. Not quite sure why they're doing this. Nothing in this movie happened to lead me to believe that these two were into each other. At Christmas.
My friends, I try to watch these things for you without distraction. I'm not looking at my phone, I'm not folding laundry, I may occasionally fast forward through a montage or two but I try to stay locked in. You see there's a chance that somebody may read this nonsense and choose to watch or not watch based on what I may have written. It's unlikely, but it could happen. I have to admit, the Snowball Effect was a tough one for me to stay focused on. So while all these Hallmarky Holiday Romance movies are basically the same, some are better in this area, some are better in that area, but The Snowball Effect, unfortunately, is better in no area. The performances aren't great, but neither are they terrible because terrible at least gives one something to talk about. The romance part was so undercooked that I was stunned when they started lip locking at the end, even though I knew full well it had happen. The story, which should've been simplicity itself, save Christmas, still managed to be completely scattershot. They had carolers, but it looked they were being forced to sing at gunpoint. And having two weather people on the screen at the same time is simply something I don't think is going to work in the long run, but that's really neither here nor there.
The special effects weren't very good either. Special effects you say? Were there CGI monsters in this movie you ask? No, but we were supposed to be in the middle of the storm of the century and there was obviously no snow so our actors had to be green screened into snow, and it just didn't look good. And when they weren't green screened into snow, all we can say is the City of Mistletoe has the best snow removal team of all time.
Our vomit worthiness scale was also pretty darned low. No cookie baking, no ugly sweaters, no near miss kisses, no cute kids, no wise old people, no dead parents, no orphans, no Christmas tree shopping, no mistletoe in the town of Mistletoe for goodness sakes, and for the snow storm of the century you would think somebody would hold a snowball fight or build a snowman. But of course there was no snow for real. I think Sam might've decorated a fake Christmas tree and we did get some Christmas Carols, but again, they sang like they were being held hostage.
And now I feel terrible. Because the last thing I want to do is crap on UpTV which is all about bringing people up, giving some joy in between commercials for ninety or so minutes, and here I am crapping on their crap Hallmarky Holiday Romance movie, which admittedly it totally deserves, but still. I'm sorry.
Comments
Post a Comment