Holiday Hearts
So my Excel Christmas movie randomizer algorithm fell a little short with it's first two choices this year, not that those were bad movies, in fact, as far as this genre goes, they were pretty ok moves, but they were missing some of the key elements we've come to expect from our Hallmarky Holiday Christmas movies. So the Randomizer conjured up some Ashley Williams and some Paul Campbell. You think these two old vets of the Holiday Romance game are going to show up in a Christmas movie with no cookie baking or no snowball fighting? I don't think so baby.
Peyton (Williams) is a hard working accountant for her parents little resort in this little town, but this is the year she fulfills her true dream as an event planner. Which sounds a like surgeon telling me her true dream is to be a street corner musician, but we're going to roll with it. The issue is there is an awful lot of planning Peyton has to do to prepare for the families annual Christmas party blowout, in addition to her accounting duties, compounded by the fact that she's totally drawn a blank for a theme for the towns biggest party of the year.
Across town we have Ben (Campbell), a hardworking family physician at his dad's hospital who is heading to Honduras for the holidays, but not for fun in the sun but to do some Doctors Without Borders type stuff, because he's a good guy. Thing is, back in the day Peyton told her long time friend Ben about her true feeling for him, but apparently he couldn't handle that and scooted out of town the next day. I mean he was leaving anyway, be he didn't tell Peyton bye or acknowledge those feelings or nothing! Dude has been back in town for a year, after being away for over a decade and hasn't even stopped by to say hello to Peyton. This town has no stop lights so I thinks at some point they would've bumped into each other, but whatever.
But on this fateful day, Ben was heading to the airport for his Honduras interview while Peyton was heading to parts unknown when a magical reindeer runs in front of their respective cars causing them to swerve and run into snow, and now they have to acknowledge each other, and because Ben's car won't start Peyton agrees to drive him to the airport. BUT NOT SO FAST!!! Ben gets a call that another old friend has fallen off a ladder and he is needed back at the hospital. Not sure what homeboy would've done for medical care had Ben gotten on that plane, but whatever. So Peyton drives Ben back to the hospital so he can tend to his old friend Ford (Matt Hamilton). Ford's going to be laid up for a while as we wait for the surgeon to repair his severely f'd up knee, but thing is Ford has this cute as a button daughter, Lily (Peyton Lepinski) and needs Ben to look after her, considering his wife, her mother, was brutally murdered a couple years back. We assume.
Ben doesn't want to look after the little cutie, but with Peyton's help, they are going to make this the best Christmas ever for little Lilly. Which is not going to be easy because it looks like Lily's dead mom only lived for Christmas before she was killed. That's cool though because that means that Peyton and Ben can spend lots and lots of time together, baking cookies, drinking cocoa, making snowmen, having snowball fights, doing whatever needs to be done to help Lily enjoy the season. Plus they help Peyton think of a theme for the party... Winter Wonderland! So Peyton needed help to think of THIS? Jeez Peyton, maybe just stick to accounting.
So this is where I tell you everything is great between these two until it's not, but that doesn't happen here. Sure, the fires of love have been adequately stoked, they've reconciled the previous situation from back in the day, mainly Ben's fear of commitment, but since he's going to Honduras, love simply cannot be. but what if Ben realizes he simply can't live without her, what if she comes to Honduras with him! And leave this sweet Event Planning gig she just got? Not happening. Besides, men don't get what they want in these movies, they acquiesce. Ben realizes that home is where Peyton is. Screw those poor people in Honduras who desperately need medical care. They be aight. The party goes off like a charm, event planning is Peyton's true calling, Lily misses her dead mom just a little bit less and Ben and Peyton are making out in the snow. At Christmas.
So with long time vets Williams and Campbell on board, not to mention the highly recognizable Canadians playing Peyton's parents and sister, and also not to mention the director, because I'm fairly certain this movie had to have had one, it's no surprise that 'Holiday Hearts' manages to be a very watchable Hallmarky Romantic Holiday movie. Oh, and shout out to the kid actor too, about as good as kid actors get that one. Plus her mom was dead which made her half orphan, and considering her dad was laid up in a hospital bed for the entirety of this movie, I was halfway expecting him not to survive his knee surgery so that Peyton and Ben could get her, but they let him live. Not a decision I would've made.
The vomit worthiness was solid, much better than the last couple of these movies I've seen but still not as good as you would expect from a movie starring Paul Campbell and Ashley Williams. Cookie baking, snowball fight, snowman construction, lots of hot cocoa drinking, Christmas tree decorating, a blow out Christmas party to close the show... not too bad. But we were missing that near miss kiss, no mistletoe, no ugly Christmas Sweaters, and while we did decorate the Christmas tree, you kind have to shop for said Christmas tree to truly set off the effect, and we also didn't have any caroling. As you can plainly see, we still came up a little short on this one.
Still, the algorithm did better this time. I think for the next couple of movies we're going to skip the algorithm and watch a couple of movies released this year, just stay slightly relevant in this Holiday movie game.
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