A Christmas Dance Reunion
And so it has begun in the year of our Lord of 2023. We want to thank Lisa for starting us off properly this year a few days ago with 'Take me Back for Christmas' which began year EIGHT of us randomly picking Romantic Holiday movies and having deep, socially moving discussions about them and their overall effect on society as a whole. Such as asking if there's enough cocoa or mistletoe. Things that are important.
This year, I'm doing what I did last year and that is use my spreadsheet randomizer which has well over a thousand Christmas movies in it, and allow the universe to choose which movies I will watch on any given day. I thought it may be difficult to honor my Christmas movie responsibilities this year as I now have this YouTube channel which focuses on another of my passions, that being a grown ass man playing with toys, so go check out the Discount Action Figure Dude and like and subscribe and get yourself entered to get free stuff in process! But then I realized that I owe it to the people! This is important work we do here. That nonsense aside, now on with the show!
Lucy (Monique Coleman), is a high flying big city lawyer, city unknown, who is back home to spend Christmas with her mom Virginia (Kim Roberts) who is shockingly alive! No worries though, her dad is totally dead. They didn't say how he died so we are going to go with murder, as we always do. As an aside, for those who care about this kind of thing, Lucy does things to a pant suit which literally has those pair of pants crying for mercy.
Anyway, Lucy has gotten a post card that her old childhood Christmas hangout, the Winterly Hotel, is shutting down after this year so she and her mom decide to pack up and spend one last Christmas in that wonderful place they used spend every Christmas at with her murdered dad.
Lucy is at the Weatherly for all of 30 seconds when she sees him, him being her old dance partner from back in the day, Barrett (Corbin Bleu). Apparently they were teenagers when they last saw each other, but these two were staring at each other with an hunger and a longing usually reserved for a soldier returning home after being away at war for a decade. The Weatherly has been home for Barrett, who is now a Broadway dancer, and he's here to help his uncle Hank (Roy Lewis) close down for the old hotel for good. But before we say goodbye to the Weatherly, Lucy suggests that they send it off properly, with a Christmas celebration just like they used to do in the old days, complete with the Christmas dance.
Well I hope you like dance because there's a LOT of it in this particular movie. First Barrett does a little solo Gene Kelley style tap number, then in front of his young students he and Lucy do a semi-erotic modern Ailey / Ballet mix for the children to enjoy, then there's a totally choreographed number that Barrett has been working on with some of the guests. Like an old kung fu movie in which everybody in town knows basic kung fu, everybody in this movie, and I mean everybody knows how to dance.
What Barret really wants is to dance with his old dance partner who is reluctant to get back on the floor due to her being away from the dance game for a while and her bad knee or whatever, but with all the planning and coordinating and erotic dancing, the attraction between the two is growing stronger and stronger. But we know something has to happen to put the brakes on the love, or in this case, just slow it down a bit.
So Marlee (Sasha Clements), a childhood friend of both who is in town with her ultra adorable daughter Posie (Vanessa Lauren Fox) is a TV reporter / spectacular dancer, who Lucy asks if she could do a story on the Weatherly to help bring in some customers. Barrett doesn't think that's a good idea because it might not work and then it would only disappoint his sad uncle even more. Lucy does it anyway, Barrett gets mad and stomps away like five year old and love is derailed. For like 45 seconds. Later that night he apologizes for his behavior, takes her back to his cabin where they make out and watch the sun rise. He tells us he's been waiting his whole life to make out with her. That's a long time brother. Love is back on track.
Now it's time for the big Christmas celebration, which is jam packed with folks because that news story about the Weatherly has caught fire, and includes our final blow out dance number featuring all kinds of dance sets, but closing out with Lucy and Barrett taking the erotic dance to the level of ten. Just like Jesus would have wanted. Then they bring the audience on stage to dance with them, with every last one of them being familiar the choreography. Then we find out that due to the celebration that bookings for Weatherly are jammed up, the hotel is saved, Barrett quits his Broadway dancing gigs because now he has a home, Lucy quits her lucrative lawyer practice so that now the two them can now run a failing hotel together. While in love. And they make out some more. At Christmas.
Oh how I missed thee, romantic Christmas movie. Turns out this is a bit of a High School Musical reunion as both Corbin Bleu and Monique Coleman were featured players on those movies. I guess Efron and Hudgens were too busy to stop by for an appearance. No worries, Bleu and Coleman did a fine job as they both can clearly dance and they had more than enough chemistry to carry our simple story. The vomit worthiness of this one was a little on the low side though, probably sacrificed due to the need for more dancing. We had cookie baking and cookie decorating, I saw what I assume was hot cocoa drinking, plenty of dead parents because Barrett didn't mention his folks a single time so we assume they were murdered too, and we did have big Christmas party blow out. There were some kids in this movie, including one in a wheelchair whom I'm going assume was an orphan, because we are pro-orphan kid here on this blog.
But there is a lot missing. No Christmas tree shopping or decorating, no caroling, no mistletoe, no near miss kiss, just right on target kissing, no snowball fights or snowman making, no ugly sweaters no magic... I mean we really came up short on this one. Remember, just because a Christmas movie is low on vomits doesn't mean it's a bad movie, just that it didn't stick to formula all that well.
But if you like watching folks dance, then I think you might just like this movie anyway, despite it's inability to properly stick to the formula. It's good to be back for another year.
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