A Christmas for Mary

A Christmas for Mary (2020) - OWN

Lena (Morgan Dixon) is the hard working fifteen year old assistant to Vivian (Vivica A. Fox), who is the publisher of this realities version of Essence magazine.  Okay, so Lena is probably older than fifteen since she drives and stuff and seems to have a full time job, it's just that the kid, cute as she is, doesn't look much older than fifteen.  It's Christmas Time and thus time for the magazine's big Christmas story, which assistant Lena would love a shot at writing.  Vivian is reticent to turn this huge assignment over to a child, but the kid has gumption so she's getting her shot.

But what to write about?  While putzing around in the attic of her mother Deborah (Jackee Harry) looking for Black Santa, she finds a portrait painting of a woman standing by a Christmas Tree painted by her late grandfather, with that woman NOT being her late grandmother.  She also finds other information pertaining to this mysterious woman in the picture via letters written to her by her grandfather, some old newspaper clippings and a few old pictures.  Her mom knows nothing of this woman, or, as it turns out, her father's life before her mother or maybe during her mother?  The only clues we have is that whatever happened took place a few hundred miles down the I-5 from San Fran to Pineville California, and Lena is determined to find out what her newspaper reporter grandfather was into back then.  My initial thought was dat ass, but I'm sure it goes deeper than that.

In Pineville Lena discovers this woman's name was Mary, who has since passed, but was a pillar of society in this town.  She introduces herself to Mary's handsome grandson Michael (Alonzo B. Slater) who she helps out by rescuing his cookie baking fiasco and then begins pumping him for information.  The sparks are just a flying between these two.  In fact, these two kids look to be falling for each other, while uncovering more information between his grandmother and her grandfather, but alas he has a girlfriend, and he's moving to New York with this girlfriend despite the fact his mom doesn't like this girlfriend but LOVES Lena.  Eventually we meet this girlfriend, Stephanie (Leah Briese), and there's nothing wrong with this woman that I can tell.  She is a bit grating, but she's a salesperson and she's literally footing the bill for everything for this dude including his room and board in NYC since he has zero employment opportunities as far as I can tell.  She's a saint in my book.  Not that this matters because everyone in the room knows she's not gonna have a man by the time this movies over.

You know who else doesn't care that Michael has girlfriend?  That would be Lena.  She doesn't give a flying fig about his girlfriend.  She even goes in for the kiss to let this cat know where she stands.  Michael does resist, considering he has no job and needs this woman, so they just continue unraveling the mystery.  The Mystery, as it were, was simply a love that did not complete, both Grandpa and Grandma parted ways and started new lives, and Lena has her story which Vivian loves.  Lena's dream of being a staff writer has come true but yet she's back in San Fran feeling empty and alone.  While her Grandfather found his love eventually, she has lost hers... NOT SO FAST!  Guess who has shown up at her doorstep... still with no job as far as I can tell... but Michael, and he confesses his love and seals it with a kiss.  His kiss... not that one that was forced on him earlier... at Christmas.

If 'A Christmas for Mary' were a Hallmark movie I'm fairly certain this would fall under their Murders and Mysteries division since a large portion of this movie focused on solving a mystery.  And for all I know this could be Oprah Winfrey testing the waters to see if she needs to start up another television network because, you know, Oprah.  As far as a Christmas movie goes, I will say that our mystery and the Christmas Holiday were integrated together quite nicely.  This is kind of a warm weather Christmas movie so no snow or snow related activities, but almost every clue that Lena investigated led to some Christmassy event, be it cookie baking or ornament decorating or cocoa drinking or a Christmas party, and we shouldn't fail to mention that the entire mystery was centered around a Christmas painting.  Or a photograph with a water color filter passed off a painting.  We're good with it.  

The Romance angle... well... I'm not so sure about that one.  Morgan Dixon is more adorable than a bucket full of kittens and puppies sprinkled with stardust, but she's just so young and I think she's still working on figuring out this acting thing.  But I am confident she will get it.  So while she and Alonzo Slater looked great together, because they are both great looking kids, I'm not sure I got the feeling they actually belonged together.  The whole girlfriend angle probably couldn't been left out as well, because Lena was actively trying to steal this woman's man which isn't a great look.  Michael simply planning a New York move provided more than enough romantic conflict we think.  This next thing has nothing to do with the movie itself but I would've liked to have seen Vivica and Jackee in a scene together.  They are both in this movie, so I would've enjoyed watching them play off each other for bit.  That's just personal for me.

Anyways, it's a Romantic Holiday movie with a mystery thrown in and it's not completely terrible.