Christmas Collision
Theodora the Bountiful (Sebrina Scott) is a soulless, big
city real-estate something or another closing deals and destroying dreams, and
her doubly soulless boss Mr. Ronan (Vernon Wells) is dispatching his top dream
crusher to Nowhere Ohio, around Christmas (Theodora is Christmas Averse) to
foreclose on some random farm for some reason.
At Christmas.
Now in Nowhere Ohio we meet sad Charlie the Masculine, (John
Wells), who is back home in his small farming community to lay his recently
passed mother to rest. It looks like
Charlie and his beloved mom didn’t part on the best of terms, so Charlie is not
in a good place right now. What Charlie
does not need at the moment is to be at his mother’s wake, and have some brutal
woman show up at his home to deliver papers of foreclosure to him. Come on Theodora, it’s a wake. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?
Theodora isn’t happy about it, this being that the person
she needs to sign these papers is dead and stuff, but she does meet Charlie at
this wake and promises to come back the next day to close out this job, kick
Charlie out of his family home, and head back to the Big City in time not to
celebrate Christmas.
As promised, Theodora comes back the next day, Charlie isn’t
signing anything until he can talk to the bank folks because he knows him mom
wouldn’t allow her farm to be foreclosed on, Theodora gets upset about this,
tries to stomp out the house, slips and falls and hurts her ankle real
bad. Now I haven’t known Theodora for
long, but my initial thoughts, from what I do know about her is that Charlie is
going to have a hefty lawsuit on his hands, but I would be mistaken on
this. What actually happens is that
Charlie allows this terrible woman, who tried to evict him at his mother's funeral, to stay in his
house while she mends up. I dig that
Nowhere has no motels, I guess, I mean Theodora had to be staying somewhere,
but there’s no way in hell she’s staying in my house. But I guess that’s why Charlie is a better
man than me.
As you might imagine, with these two freaking living
together now, things start to happen.
Charlie decorates for Christmas, Theodora hates Christmas
decorations. Charlie tries to be nice,
Theodora tries to be mean. But eventually
they stumble on common ground, this being the magic of Christmas Cookies. You see, Charlie’s mom was a master baker who
won the Nowhere Ohio annual cookie competition every year, and I might mention
that there are more than a few people who are happy she’s dead because that
means they have a shot at winning this year, but Charlie would like to keep the
family winning streak alive. Problem is he can’t find his moms cookie
recipe. As it so happens, Theodora’s
grandparents were also master bakers, and while Theodora herself can’t bake,
she can eat cookies, and thus she’s a master cookie taster… just go with it. So while spending evenings together testing
cookies, and telling each other their life stories, disdain begins to grow into
love. Additionally Theodora is noticing
some discrepancies in the paperwork around this foreclosure that has raised her
suspicions. I should mention that there’s
some kind of conspiracy going on concerning this land between Mr. Ronan and
some non-descript business eel played by Michael Pare, but they never really
tell us the significance on why these people are so desperate to steal this
property from poor Charlie. Or maybe they did and I just missed it. Entirely possible.
It’s looking pretty good for our couple right now, the recipe
mystery has been solved, the ankle is healed, a near miss kiss was actually a
dead on lip lock and love is about to bloom… until Charlie overhears Theodora
arguing with Mr. Ronan about the foreclosure, and in the heat of this argument
she calls him ‘Dad’. Now I’m not sure
why this upset Charlie, I mean she is yelling at this dude on his behalf, but
for some reason, Theodora’s boss being her father, in Charlie’s mind, means
love cannot continue. Normally in these
movies, Charlie’s character would go through the entire movie without knowing
that the woman he has fallen for is actually the agent of his demise, until of
course she is exposed, but Theodora made this crystal clear on Day One when she
crashed his moms wake. Guess they had to
get there some kind of way.
Fortunately for love, the good people of Nowhere Ohio know
that Charlie is dumb, and has apparently been this way his whole life so they
went and shamed him back into loves good graces. Theodora, back in the city, is giving her dad
the business on his illegal land dealings and she is going to save the family farm
of the short-sighted man she loves dammit!
Now everybody’s back in Nowhere in Ohio, Charlie wins the cookie contest
and the 10 grand that comes with it, he’s locking lips yet again with the woman
I guess he loves, one that that likes to foreclose on dead people, and even Mr. Ronan has
recognized his evil ways and is begging for forgiveness. All at Christmas. And as an aside, if 10G is the cookie prize,
and if Charlie’s mom has won this prize for like the last 25 years, unless she
had a severe gambling addiction she should have a nice little nest egg stashed away
somewhere.
I must say that the young ladies behind crafting ‘Christmas
Collision’ certainly have a solid working knowledge of this particular genre of
film as this movie knows what is necessary to make these things work. A beautiful Christmas Averse heroine, a
handsome Christmas loving hero who made it a point to be caught shirtless a
couple of times, somebody evil closing something in a small town, lots of
Christmas decorations, caroling, a cookie baking subplot which was probably
better than main plot, cocoa drinking, a misunderstanding break up, wise old
people kicking knowledge, a cute kid here and there with the only thing missing
being snow and snow fights. This was
probably because they couldn’t afford a snow machine, otherwise I’m confident
it would’ve been in there as well.
Here’s the thing though.
This movie had a running time of around 95 minutes. Your typical Hallmark / Lifetime movie,
commercials removed, runs around 82 minutes.
I understand it’s not easy for a director to cut anything from their
movie, but most times it has to be done, and I’m of the opinion that Christmas
Collision would’ve benefitted greatly if it had been sold to a network and
forced to be compressed with a TV edit.
Some scenes tended to drag on too long, there were scenes
that were unnecessary, there were scenes that were essentially repeating
already established plot points, and other plot points that probably could’ve
been completely excised. Even though
Michael Pare is my main man from way back, and I dig that he gets top billing
in this movie and I’m also guessing this movie doesn’t even get made without
his name attached to it, but if you cut out every scene that he’s in, nothing
in this movie changes and its five minutes shorter. Maybe.
I’m not sure he was even in this movie for five minutes.
All that being said, Christmas Collision is a very sweet
movie, the performances from our leads are solid, the supporting cast is
earnest, and it is a very vomit worthy entry into the overstuffed Romantic
Christmas movie genre, but take my word, once this movie gets picked up next
year to be shown on IonTV or wherever and they have to shave fifteen minutes
off its runtime to get it commercial TV ready?
This somewhat slow moving, meandering, scattershot plotted of a movie might just turn
into a mini classic.
Four Vomits!
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