Christmas Under the Lights
This movie, Christmas Under The Lights, largely takes place on an
alpaca farm, yet another glorious titling opportunity thrown away. An
Alpaca Christmas? Christmas Under the Alpacas? Christmas
Under the Lights is rather generic and boring, whereas An Alpaca
Christmas Frenzy would grab some attention. Hallmark, Lifetime, Ion, UPTv,
TVOne, BET… we're here to help—just a phone call away. (Sorry, GAF fans we don't do ya'lls movies.)
Heather Hemmings, with her cute little scrunchy nose (reminiscent of
Samantha from Bewitched), stars as Emily, a hardworking Los Angeles
event planner. We meet her after she's just planned an event and is now
settling down in her apartment for a night of chosen loneliness and a Christmas
holiday of the same. Emily has a family farm and a younger brother who
genuinely loves her back in Seattle, but she treats the farm and her brother
like they have cooties.
Her brother Nick (Antonio Cayonne) calls because it's time to plan the
Christmas festival at the farm, an event their recently deceased mother used to
plan. Emily makes up all kinds of excuses why a professional event planner
wouldn’t want to plan a freaking event for her own freaking family at her freaking family home, but
eventually, she comes around and heads back to Seattle to plan this Christmas
event that she doesn’t want to plan.
Here’s where Emily cute meets Luke (Marco Grazzini) by almost running him down in
her rental car while he’s chasing a loose alpaca. Luke, recently divorced, was
invited by little brother Nick, an old friend, to stay at the farm and help out
while he gets himself together. Initially, Luke and Emily have some choice
words for each other, considering Emily was driving way too fast while checking
her phone, almost leading to Luke's death. But eventually, they warm up to each
other, obviously—especially when Emily learns that Luke is famous light artist
Lucas... I don't know... Jones. Wait...THE Lucas Jones? Yep, THE Lucas
Jones. Who better to set up the Christmas Lights at the Christmas Festival
than a world-famous light artist! Is that even a thing! Luke says no because
he's going through some stuff and wants to focus on getting his life together
and working on the farm. Emily, who is pretty much the worst, doesn't accept
this completely reasonable answer and berates Luke until he agrees to do it.
Throughout the movie, we learn that Emily didn’t just recently become a
nightmare; she’s been a nightmare her entire life. Flashbacks show her being a
gawdawful child to her poor mom (Sharon Taylor)—refusing to move to the farm,
refusing to help around the farm, incessant back talk, and overall terrible
behavior. This leads to being an overall terrible adult who never comes home
for Christmas, never calls her brother, and only made it home when her mother
was diagnosed with Stage 8 Super Cancer—and even then, she didn’t stick around
because her mom asked her to leave. Emily! Don’t listen to her! Stay home,
girl.
But to the main reason we are even here, eventually, Luke and Emily start spending time
together and begin to fall hard for each other—more Luke falling than Emily,
who seems benignly interested, but Luke is all in. Luke would really like Emily
to stay in Farmville, but Emily has to go back to LA because… I don’t know…
because. Also, a big-time CEO, impressed with Emily’s thrown-together Christmas
Festival, makes a special trip to Farmville to offer Emily a killer job doing
Event Stuff, further making her staying in Farmville highly unlikely. Then
Emily is visited by her dead mom, who takes her off the terrible-person hook by
telling her that she wasn’t an awful child and all her awfulness was by design
so she could become the woman she was destined to become. Or some nonsense.
Dead mom even likes Luke. Of course, Emily wakes up and realizes it was just a
dream, but now she has the answers!
The answers? Not to take that plum gig but start her own business, which was inspired
by Luke, and make the Big Time CEO her first client, then accept the responsibility of
planning the Christmas Festival every year, and finally making out with Luke
while the Alpacas... and the dead mom look on… at Christmas.
Most of the positives I personally mined from this movie came from Heather
Hemmings' looks—whether in jeans, a tight sequined mini skirt, or pajamas, she was making it happen. The character she played, however, was tough to get behind. Emily
wasn’t a great sister, kind of a terrible daughter, not a very good friend to
the few she managed not to alienate in Farmville, and other than looking
awesome on his arm at parties, I can’t imagine she’d be a great girlfriend to
Luke either. Fortunately, Marco Grazzini's natural charm and his character of Lucas, and Lucas's endless fawning
over Emily, kind of makes up for Emily’s overall indifference, making their
relationship work in this movie. As I often say, these movies usually sink or
swim on the strength of the relationship we’re given, and this relationship works
in a strange, lopsided way.
Regarding the tropes and the vomit-worthiness of this movie, it was fair. We
missed out on caroling, which at this point is almost inexcusable—just wedge it
in there; it's easy enough to do and all the caroling songs are out of
copyright's reach. We also missed Christmas tree shopping and snow games like
building a snowman or a snowball fight, which we know is hard to do for a movie
shot in July, so we won't be too hard on them for this oversight. There were no
wise old people or cute kids in this movie, while Emily’s mom was certainly wise, she wasn’t near old enough,
and the few kids we did see were brats. But we got some Christmas tree decorating, hot
Christmas drink sipping, plenty of near-miss kisses, a very soft breakup by two
people who both agreed they couldn’t be together—until they could—and I think
they wrapped some gifts. Plus, Emily and her brother are now orphans. Can you
be considered an orphan when your last living parent dies when you're like
forty? I think so.
Christmas Under The Lights wasn’t the worst Hallmarky Christmas
movie we’ve seen, though we have seen better. My only suggestion would’ve been
to make Emily a little nicer. That’s all. Three Vomits!
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