Candy Coated Christmas
Discovery Plus huh? Sure, why not. I mean if you can make Cake Wars and Destination Fear, you can make a Hallmarky Christmas movie. And rest assured my friends, after watching this one, it is clear that the creators behind this film have seen their fair share of Hallmarky Christmas movies.
Molly (Molly McCook) is a high flying marketing something or another, working at the hotel chain of her magnate father Fred (John McCook). So whenever they name a character after the actors real name, it's always been my assumption that this actor had trouble responding to other names. Also, Ms. McCook has her real life father playing her dad in this movie, which helps me out a bit in that one of the things I've always found strange about acting, of all of the pretend things that actors have to do, is calling somebody who is not my mom or dad, mommy or daddy. I don't know why that weirds me out, but it just does.
Anyway, It's Christmastime, Molly is liquidating her assets and has big baller plans by going into business with her bestie Gracie (Jae Suh Park). While she's packing her bags to spend Christmas in Hawaii with her old man, Dad hits her with the bad news that the hotel chain is bankrupt and she has no money to go into business. No worries though because Dad reminds Molly about her late mother's childhood home in some cold, snowy town called Peppermint Hollow, which can be sold and those funds can go to her business. Molly just has to detour from Hawaii to Peppermint Hollow to get the ball rolling on this sale.
Molly makes it to Peppermint Hollow, which she hates because it is cold and snowy and everything they serve has peppermint in it, which the gluten free / carb free Molly refuses to eat, and then she is assaulted by a random snowball before she is saved by the heroic Noah (Aaron O'Connell). Molly feels Noah actually assaulted her, pushing her out of the way at that errant snowball, but they agree to disagree. As fate would have it, when Molly goes to check out the house she plans to sell, she is reacquainted with Noah who lives there, along with his mom Kim (Lee Garlington) and his orphaned niece Dakota (Landry Townsend). Turns out that Molly's mom rented the house to Kim, her best friend back in the day, and while these people seem nice enough they will be out in the street in a couple of days if Molly gets her way. Made all the more easier because they are way behind on their rent. Deadbeats.
But then Molly starts spending time with these deadbeats. Not only is this house their home, it is also a peppermint farm, which will have to be shuttered when Molly sells off the property. And the more she hangs out with Noah and Dakota, the more she is drawn to them and the more she NEEDS to tell them the real reason she's in town which is to make them homeless. But does she ever do this? Of course she doesn't because she has to fall completely in love with Noah so Noah can find out on his own and feel betrayed.
Before that eventuality, Molly gets a crash course on the many uses of peppermint and samples some peppermint wonder products that the old chick and the orphan made, and being a marketing genius she thinks she has a plan to throw some money into saving the peppermint business and stopping the eviction, while sowing the seeds of love with Noah. But then she gets the sad news that she's completely broke. Busted. We're talking cancelled credit cards, zero dollars in the bank account broke. She's so broke she had to sell her Gucci bag and Valentino shades just so she could buy a party dress for the orphan girl. If selling your Gucci isn't suffering, then I don't know what is. Are they telling me this rich girl only owns one purse? And Noah doesn't love her no more as he has found out she's actually in town to evict them, but more so because he can get broke chick in Peppermint Hollow, no need to import one. At least that what I thought he was thinking. But after some wise words from his mom and his orphan niece, he realizes love is the thing, he goes and gets his woman back, actually she tracks him down, and they kiss. At Christmas. Oh, and dad shows up to let us know that the his chain of expensive hotels has been saved. Yay. Gotta love the pro 1% angle of this movie.
Just so you know, as a Holiday Romantic Movie, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Candy Coated Christmas, even though I don't recall seeing a preponderance of candy coating in this movie. The orphan kid also blurts out the title of the movie even though I don't think it was relevant to anything in particular happening at that particular time. A Peppermint Infused Christmas would've been a more accurate title, but I guess that doesn't have the right ring to it. Anyway, this is a Romantic Holiday movie which definitely dots its Holiday I's and crosses it's Romance T's.
We have a Christmas averse heroine, who's also a bit on the nasty side ready to close the family (insert business here), A strong chinned Christmas obsessed hero, lots of snow... more on that later... snowball fights, Christmas tree shopping and tree decorating, endless cocoa drinking, a little caroling highlighted by the fact that Ms. McCook seems to have quite the set of pipes on her, lots and lots and lots of baking, I mean the Pioneer Woman was co-star of this movie for goodness sakes, and I don't know if those confections in this movie were real, but they sure did look delicious! Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, we had an old woman kicking wise words and a cute orphan kid, and a near miss kiss which was actually more of a peppermint farm seduction / tease, which was strange and uncomfortable. See? This movie checks all the boxes and effortlessly achieves that fifth vomit. If there's anything wrong with this movie, it's that there's nothing wrong with this movie in that it is predictable to a fault. Which of course we expect, often even demand, while still wanting a few surprises here and there. Obviously there's no pleasing us over here.
About the snow, this movie gave us some 'Behind the Scenes' action with the Pioneer Woman, and as we already know, they shoot these winter themed movies in the spring or summer. All of the crew was wearing t-shirts and tank tops, green grass and bright sun all around, but yet they still found a way to fill their movie with fake snow. We appreciate that effort Discovery Plus. I also like how Molly McCook made the executive decision to not wear a coat in this fake winter setting and just pretend to be cold, as opposed to actually wearing a coat and mercilessly sweating under it. Oh, and her pajama game was tight in this movie. She might've only had one purse, but she did not wear the same set of silk PJ's twice in this movie.
I don't know if people who like these Holiday Romance movies will like this one, but it wont be because Discovery Plus tried to do anything different or out of the ordinary. They honestly tried to give the people what they think the people want. Maximum Vomitage.
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