A Biltmore Christmas
So Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) is a hard working Hollywood screenwriter tasked with re-writing this world's version of 'It's A Wonderful Life', 'His Merry Wife'. Which, 'It's A Wonderful Life, to my knowledge has amazingly not been remade yet. 80+ years have passed and the powers that be haven't had the stones to remake that classic. I'm not complaining, but it just seems strange. Anyway, the problem with Lucy's script is that her ending isn't a happy one. Mr. Balaban (Tommy Cresswell) the studio head, finds this unacceptable and instead of firing Lucy and hiring someone else, he decides to send Lucy to the famous Biltmore hotel in snowy North Carolina (I think), where the original 'His Merry Wife' was filmed so she can get some happy ending inspiration.
As it turns out, we would learn the reason Lucy doesn't give the movie a happy ending is because happy endings just aren't real. Apparently her mom walked out on the family years ago, and all of her relationships have ended in heartbreak so a Happy Ending can Kiss Her Ass. But maybe the magic of Biltmore will change this. Upon arriving she meets the hotel's curator, Admiral William Riker, who tells her all kinds of critical knowledge about the Biltmore and the magical movie that was shot there, but most importantly, Riker takes her to the room where the hourglass is. The hourglass has a crack in it, which happened for some reason, and then Riker leaves her in the room to allow her to take in the atmosphere. The hourglass is also lying prone instead of upright, so Lucy sets up it straight, exits the room and OH MY GOD!!! She's in 1940's North Carolina (I think) in the middle of the film shoot of My Merry Wife.
Surely this can't be happening, and when she runs into Jack Houston (Kristoffer Polaha), one of the co-stars of the film she is convinced she has lost her mind. After a spirited conversation with Jack, she runs off back in the room, opens the door again and she's back in 2023. Just a small mental blip is what she told herself. But then she finds a few things she grabbed back in 1940 and that was certainly no mental blip, that was the straight up devil's work! She has also surmised that it was the hourglass that is doing this devil's work, so now it's time to head back to the 1940's for some up close and personal research.
At this point a lot of things are going on in this movie. Turns out the original ending of My Happy Wife was supposed to be sad because the films director is sad. Has something to do with his wife leaving him. Also, the two stars of this film, Ava Hayward (Annabelle Borke) and Claude Lancaster (Colton Little) absolutely despise each other, with Ava on the verge of quitting the movie. Then there's the fact the movie is over budget and off schedule with the studio threatening to shut the whole thing down. But the main thing that's happening is that Jack and Lucy are spending quality time together. Taking long walks, having deep conversations, and singing Christmas duets while Jack plays on the piano, among other things. This isn't the first time we've seen Bethany Joy bust out a tune in one of these movies so I think she gets singing requirements written in her contracts. They've also managed to save the movie by convincing Ava, who has finally quit the movie, to come on back to set, and Lucy convinced the sad director that a happy ending totally works. Also, Lucy is the one who dropped the hourglass and broke it, and she'll be trapped in the 40's forever if the set guy can't fix it. But there's issues obviously, one being that Jack tragically dies soon after the movie is finished and never lives to see it's success but also, and more importantly, Lucy is falling in love with a man who has been dead for 80 years.
Eventually it will all come to a head as Lucy, who has been masquerading as a studio rep, will be found out as a fraud, the hour glass is fixed, she has to run home before the authorita grabs her, and also leave the man she loves behind after telling him the fantastical truth. She couldn't even tell him about his tragic end. And once she grabs the hourglass and disappears into thin air, Jack realizes the devil is real.
A year later, we are on the set of the remake, the happy ending is restored even though I don't think anything happened in the 1940's that was remotely was happy for Lucy, but the studio boss is pleased. Lucy walks outside the Biltmore, somewhat pleased, but somewhat sad. Until she hears his voice. OH MY GOD!!! IT'S JACK!!! Apparently Jack spent a year flipping the hourglass over and over again until it finally sent him into the future. The death was just a story they (I don't know who they are) made up just in case his future trip actually worked, and now they are together again, making out in the snow, at Christmas.
So yeah, A Biltmore Christmas is actually a pretty decent regular movie. A nicely told, if not well worn tale of a heroine out of her time, Bethany Joy Lenz is a skilled and talented veteran of the genre, Kristoffer Polaha was suitably charming, the movie did well to create that 1940's vibe with the clothes, sets and the fast talking with people calling each other 'buster' a lot. "Watch it bustah, I'm not the kind gal who takes kindly to wandering hands or you might lose one or two those bustah!" or something like that. All of this made it pretty easy to get into the story. I do wonder what Jack is going to do now that he is in the future, considering he has no social security number or no discernable skills that translate to 2023. I guess he can continue acting? Hopefully Lucy has a guy that can forge documents.
It's Hallmarky vomit worthiness, however, was a little lacking. Did we have caroling? Not really. Yes Lucy and Jack sang Jingle Bells while sitting at a piano, but that's not caroling. Was there hot cocoa drinking? I mean there was alcohol infused egg nog sipping, which again doesn't really count. There was no gift shopping, no montages, clearly nobody was in a kitchen baking cookies since most of our time was spent on a movie set, no Christmas tree decorating, and watching one light up also doesn't count, and there certainly wasn't any snow games like making a snowman or a snowball fight. A snowball was thrown, but it was used as a weapon of violence so we also cannot count that either. Jack's an orphan so I guess we had that, and naturally Jack and Lucy did have a near miss kiss. The movie was also devoid of cute kids and wise old people. I mean they were there but they weren't saying much.
All of these absences can be simply be explained off in that this movie focused on its three stars. Bethany Joy, Kristoffer and The Biltmore. It's kind of hard to build me a snowman or bake me a cookie when I'm forced to listen to Admiral Riker repeatedly give me valuable Biltmore history lessons.
But A Biltmore Christmas is still an entertaining movie, just one that is a little low on the vomit scale.
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