Make or Bake Christmas
The "Wrong" Crew is back! This time, matriarch
Vivica A. Fox, her director of choice David DeCouteau, and a couple of the
usual suspects, Gina Hirauizumi and Meredith Thomas, are at it again. If they
could have gotten Jessica Morris and Jason Shane Scott on board, the whole team
would be back together for this movie that SHOULD'VE been called "The
Wrong Christmas Baker," but instead, it's named "Make or Bake
Christmas." We'll take what we can get.
Emma (Jasmine Avaliotis) is a charming kid working for this
universe's version of Martha Stewart, Leslie Lake (Vivica A. Fox). That is if
Martha Stewart were an overbearing, slave-driving, extremely demanding boss who
might end up in federal prison somewhere. Oh... yeah. Leslie has had her eye on the SugarBaker bakery for a while, but the owner Denise Sugarbaker (Jackée) refuses to
sell. No problem, Leslie decides to send her assistant Emma undercover to the
bakery as a seasonal baker (it is the holidays), for a little light corporate
espionage to convince them to sell. Or steal their recipes. Either or. Yes,
Emma should've said no and quit right there, but then we wouldn't have a movie, now would we?
Sure enough, Emma gets hired and immediately catches the eye of Denise's
son, Dave (Landon Moss), who certainly likes what he sees but also doesn't
trust what he sees. You see, Emma is fairly useless. She's a terrible baker, can't wrap
gifts, and doesn't know the difference between sugar and salt among other things. There was one scene
where Denise told her she needed 7 dozen cookies and Emma asked, "How many
is that?" It's 84, Emma! So she's also awful at math. But these people
seem to like her, and she likes them and also likes the boy, so things are
going swimmingly.
More or less. Leslie keeps calling and asking about her progress, which I
guess is going pretty well since she has snapped photos of the secret recipe
(which Leslie inexplicably gave to a stranger to hold) and has also gotten a lot of
answers about the struggling bakery by asking Dave a lot of strange questions that the average seasonal baker probably wouldn't ask. Like, "Your ledger
profit intake exceeds your overhead manifest costs. What is your plan to
equalize the revenue streams?" Nothing suspicious about that.
Eventually, though, after a couple of near-miss kisses with Dave, misses caused by
Dave's mom and her continuous interruptions (who desperately wants them to
kiss), Emma comes clean. I was a bit surprised by this because usually in these
movies, the deceiver almost never gets to come clean. He or she always wants to
but is invariably interrupted until eventually outed by some secondary
character. But no, here Emma tells Dave the truth and leaves the bakery in
sadness.
She then heads to Leslie to let her know she did not do what she was asked
and quits on the spot! She then travels to Leslie's house to personally
apologize, but Leslie doesn't accept her apology because she really likes this
kid and desperately wants to get her son laid. Instead, she invites her to the
company Christmas party where she personally apologizes to Dave, is informed
some of her great ideas—such as selling their product in grocery stores
(genius)—have been implemented, offers her a job as vice president of this
failing bakery, runs up on stage to sing karaoke badly, and then kisses Dave
under the mistletoe. At Christmas!
WAIT! That's not the end! Miss Vivica is the EP of this movie and she'll be
damned if she lets this movie end without her showing her face! A year later,
she shows up at the SugarBakery to compliment Emma on being a good person, buys
some competitor cookies, and this would've been the PERFECT time for her to
tell Jackée, "Looks like you hired The Wrong Christmas Baker... but the right
woman," but I didn't get that because that's not the title of the movie and I never get what I want.
Now it's over.
So what to say about this film? It takes place in Los
Angeles, so it's not very Christmassy in terms of snow and whatnot, but it
still follows most of the standard beats, with some extra stuff added in. There
was a side romance with the Meredith Thomas character, Emma's co-worker, and some
random real estate agent that probably didn't add much to the story. Miss Gina
was kind of wasted, and the woman is a professional singer, so I thought she
would get to show her stuff on the karaoke stage, but they didn't give us this
either, though the karaoke did provide the movie's most glorious highlight, at least for me.
Corin Nemec showed up in this movie as a YouTube baker and also did next to
nothing. But we did get a lot of baking, obviously—some baking montages,
near-miss kisses, mistletoe, hot cocoa and eggnog sipping, and Christmas
present wrapping (even though it was job-related). As mentioned, we missed out
on snow, no Christmas present shopping or Christmas tree trimming, though we
did see a lot of pre-decorated Christmas trees.
But we did get lots of canned Christmas music, including a completely
original Christmas song. What was great about this song is that Emma went on
stage to sing it, and God bless Jasmine Avaliotis, but the child can't sing,
and that's awesome! Then Dave came up on stage and I thought he was about to
bail her out, but gosh darn, Landon Moss only made it worse. I respect that!
The vast majority of us can't carry a tune either, and that simple scene of two
very good-looking people getting in front of a camera and singing terribly made
this movie completely relatable to me. Minus the good-looking part.
Anyway, at the end of the day, "The Wrong Christmas Baker" (which
is what I've decided to call this movie regardless) wasn't a bad way to spend
ninety or so minutes. It's always good to see the Wrong Team back on the scene.
And Vivica, I still have "The Wrong Christmas Tree" ready to go! Hit
me up, girl!
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