A Christmas Proposal
All right CBS, I see you. You guys want to get in on some of this Hallmarky Holiday Romance movie action while putting in as little effort as humanly possible, I see you. You checked the studio lot to see who was hanging around and might have a week or two to blow and you found Jessica Camacho from All Rise in craft services and Adam Rodriguez from Criminal Minds getting his midday workout in and they both agreed to lend their talents to the project. Not to mention the added bonus of the both of them being of Puerto Rican decent so you guys instantly have a Christmas movie with a bit of cultural diversity. Did you take advantage of this ripe cultural gold mine? No, of course you didn't other than the one time somebody said 'Buen Provecho!' at dinner. Just used some generic-ass random script floating around, and I'm not mad at you for this. I see you even packed up Adam and Jessica and shipped them to Vancouver in July just so this movie could have that authentic Hallmarky generic feel, with other actors in peripheral support who we are familiar with, solely from watching these Canadian produced movies. I see you CBS. Well done. Not the movie per se, but the effort or lack thereof, well done.
Maria (Camacho) is hard a working pretty much everything. She's a professional chef by trade but homegirl will do whatever to make those ends, with the ultimate goal of owning her own international food truck. On this cold snowy Seattle day, she's a rideshare driver who has just picked up Julian the prickly lawyer (Rodriguez). It's a long drive to Julian's family home, but Maria doesn't mind because she's going get a nice surge charge, even though they will largely ride in silence because Julian just wants review lawyer stuff and not speak to the bubbly Maria.
Thing is Julian doesn't really want to go home for the holidays, but his old man is naming a successor to take over the family law firm, and he has to make an appearance to let his father know he's a better choice for the job than his jerk off brother Bennett (Andres Soto). Unfortunately Julian's lawyer bestie Manny (Jamie M. Callica) gives him the unfortunate news that his father is leaning towards Bennett to take over, which Julian obviously does not take well. He texts his family that he has a big surprise for them this holiday, and lets Maria know that this surprise is that he's leaving the firm and plans to take his clients with him. Maria tells Julian he should sleep on that before making any rash decisions, but he tells Maria to mind her own f'n business, which she does, and drives off after dropping off her fare.
But Julian left his phone in the car, so Maria circles back to return it, the family sees Maria and assumes she's the Big Surprise Julian has for them. She tries to tell them such is not the case, but once Julian sees how his family is taking to Maria he decides to roll with it. He pulls Maria to the side, makes the offer that if she pretends to be his girl for the weekend, he will fund her food truck dream. He's doing this because his dad is big on family and Bennett is married with children where Julian is not. Maria says she's not going to lie to these people but Julian, ever the lawyer, has creative language ready already that isn't quite lies. Just call them liberal interpretations of the truth. Alternative facts.
Once Maria agrees to this nonsense, it's time for our fake couple to do fake couple stuff to fortify their fake love. Go out on fake dates, have real dinners, get know one another to solidify their stories, drink real hot cocoa, and just have a great time together. Not only that, the Diaz family just LOVES Maria. She makes them a gourmet dinner, has deep conversation with Julian's smoking hot sister Daphne (Bianca Caroca) about how she should approach her family about her life plans and her chosen sexuality, she helps mom cook for a benefit, she helps Julian close a big deal, and she and Julian almost kiss after watching the Nutcracker. The cool thing about this near miss kiss is that they were like in the middle of the street and almost got run over by a car causing them to near miss to avoid dying. Don't think I've ever seen that before.
I mean things are going so great, what could possibly go wrong? I mean these 'I have a fake girlfriend / boyfriend' tales never ever get exposed, do they? That is if by 'never' you mean 'all the freaking time'. We have a glorious gala to attend, our beautiful star is at the top of the stairs in her beautiful gown taking everybody's breath away, though as a caveat the air in the room was already pretty darned thin because the hot gay sister was already in that room in an equally beautiful gown. Probably should've cast a slightly less hot actor in my humble opinion. Anyway, the gala goes gloriously, Julian and Maria have serious sparks flying, dad makes the announcement that Julian is his man to run the company but then Julian has to ruin everything by giving Maria a blank check. Admittedly, that was the deal and it all happened just like they both had hoped, but dang Julian, it's not about money any more, it's about love bro! Worst still, the jerkoff brother sees the blank check and puts it on blast exposing the whole thing. Ashamed and broken hearted by the guy she's know for three days, Maria flees the ball like Cinderella and heads back home with her bestie Brooklyn (Luisa D'Oliviera).
The next day, Christmas Day, despite the unfortunate shenanigans of the previous night, Maria tells Brooklyn she's not going to let it get in the way of pursuing her dreams. Then she's interrupted by the sound of that Nutcracker song from her window, I know it's called 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies', but the Nutcracker Song takes fewer words. Anyway, she looks out her window to see a brand new food truck with a big red bow on it. Julian obviously still doesn't get it, and she walks out to let him know this. But he does get it! The food truck is just a little bauble, think of it as just as big ass necklace, what he's there for is to give her what she really deserves, and that is true love. The family she bamboozled is also there in support and Julian and Maria start making out. At Christmas. Buen Provecho! I guess I could ask how Julian, late on Christmas Eve, found a food truck, bought the food truck, found somebody to airbrush the logo on the food truck and transport the food truck, but we're not going to ask such silly questions.
So if you're a fan of the Hallmarky Romantic Holiday movie genre and you want your movie to travel down a familiar path, then there's no reason you shouldn't like this one as it plays out all of the required beats like a broken record. A holiday loving heroine meets a holiday indifferent curmudgeon who is eventually won over by the heroine's charm, until love is lost, until love is bought back again. The vomit worthy checklist is pretty solid as we had hot cocoa sipping, no cookie baking but Gingerbread Christmas tree making which was certainly fresh and unique, and come to think of it, I think we did bake cookies. Our heroine had not one, but two dead parents, we had a near miss kiss, some caroling in the background and a snowfall. I think in one of the scenes that fake snow fell in Jessica Camacho's mouth and while the woman is certainly a pro, I could see the fear in her eyes as she couldn't wait to spit that crap out. There was a screen shot online of them shopping for Christmas Trees, but that scene never made it into the final cut for some reason. Time I guess. This also means they didn't decorate a tree since we didn't see them buy a tree.
I would think an entertainment behemoth like the Central Broadcasting System could maybe do a little better? Maybe step it up a little bit from the standard Hallmarky Holiday Romance movie, but that's what I get for thinking. I'll make sure not to do that again.
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