A Christmas Melody
The description on the IMDB page of this movies reads as such... 'A gift of music transports people back to another time and place where they find their truest feelings'. Hell if I know what movie that is because it sure ain't this one, because that description sounded kind of interesting. No... A Chrstmas Melody is pretty much stock Hallmark Christmas tripe, so prepare accordingly.
Kristin (Lacey Chabert) is an L.A. designer shutting down her failing shop, but as he she's heading out the door she gives homeless begging ass Santa Claus(Kevin Chamberlain) a framed five dollar bill from her first sale so he can get some food. Or some hooch. What it actually does is inform begging Santa what a great heart Kristin has and he will be dipping his toes in her biz for the rest of the movie. Note that begging Santa never gives her the fiver back.
What Kristin needs is a reboot, so she and her daughter Emily (Fina Strazza) head on back to Kristin's home base of Silver Falls Ohio which upsets young Emily to no end, to the point she writes a letter to Santa wishing they could go back to LA. Even though she's like FORTY. Or so.
On Emily's first day of school Kristin runs into the PTA's Queen B Melissa (Mariah Carey) who lets Kristin know how great she's doing and how crappy Kristin's life must be and that she sucks. And there's a Christmas pageant coming up and Emily, who sings, can't be in it because Melissa, for unknown reasons, hates Kristin with a passion. What Melissa doesn't know is that the the school music teacher and pageant producer Danny (Brennan Elliot) has had a thing for Kristin from way back, even though Kristin doesn't remember this dude at all, and that he will basically do anything she asks. Anything. Like get her daughter that tryout despite the fact auditions are long closed, or babysit this kid all the time, or buy Christmas trees and ornaments, or give her daughter special Pageant training which NONE of the other kids are getting, including awarding her a special solo number. Not to mention he's at their house like every freaking night! There's not a unit of measure large enough to gauge how crappy this cats life had to be before Kristin rode back into town.
Weird Santa is also back, now pretending to be a school janitor, giving Emily sage advice which is always followed by him disappearing into thin air. Creepy. Also, the costumes for the pageant are total ass. But guess who used to be a fashion designer yo? Now those costumes are dope, the music teacher has stalked his way into Kristin's heart, Emily now loves snowy Ohio, It's all good!
Until it's not all good. Kristin's bestie flies in on the redeye from LA to let her know that her department store wants her to be their resident designer, and move back to LA. Kristin's dream is back on track... but dreams change you know. Like working in your aunt's diner, being with a man who might make 30g a year and getting abused daily by Mariah Carey trumps following your dreams anyday. As long as it's at Christmas.
This film was directed by Mariah Carey, which is cool, even though I've read some who have doubts that she actually did this. I don't know why, I mean it's not like this is Apocalypse Now we're working with. Point the camera at Lacey and yell ACTION! Trust me, Lacey knows what to do with this material. True enough, this movie was painful to watch at times, but we blame that more on whoever wrote this mess than on the director, and one shortcoming we can lay at the feet of director Mariah Carey, is that she has no idea how to direct actress Mariah Carey. Lee Daniels, somehow, found a way to squeeze a decent performance out of this woman, but Mariah was stiff, bland, unconvincing and was looking very much like a pop star who fell out of the clouds into bad movie small town in Ohio. Which brings us to the one thing Mariah does do well, which is photograph Mariah. Perfect every time. And she only provided one song for this movie, the opening song, and that song WAS NOT All I Want for Christmas is You. Come on Mariah... work with us over here.
The vomit levels that we expect from these types of movies was fairly high though. Once we got out of LA and to Ohio we were surrounded by snow and lots of Christmas ornamentation, there was a tree shopping sequence, a magical albeit disturbing Santa floating about, a solid Christmassy theme for a narrative, a semi-cute kid and Kathy Najimy kicking the old person wisdom. Although she's not all that old and truth be told not a lot wisdom was spilling from her mouth, but she's Kathy Najimy so we give her a pass. There was no cookie baking, but there was a lot of sewing which kind of isn't quite the same, there was nice closeup of a giant tub of Folgers for those who really like blatant product placement, and the final pageant number, allegedly written by a nine-year old, was kind of off the chain. Director Mariah managed to check off most of the required boxes that are required for these types of movies.
But as a regular movie, because there were segments which were literally painful to watch, probably on the bottom half of the TV Christmas movie ledger.
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