Five Star Christmas
While Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) is your typical Hallmarky driven, detail oriented, ambitious career woman, she still treats her employees with reverence and respect as we can see as she gives out FANTASTIC office gifts, and she still loves Christmas. Don't need to inject the Christmas spirit into this career girl. This Christmas, Lucy is driving back to the family home in Connecticut to be with her family for the first time in a few years, singing Christmas Carols all the way there because it looks like Ms. Lenz has a very nice singing voice and I'm guessing she demanded they let her use it for this for this movie. When she makes it home, she is in for a surprise.
Turns out Lucy's old man Ted (Robert Wisden) has turned the family home into a Bed and Breakfast. Not an Air BnB but a legit like hotel thingie. When the rest of the fam arrives which includes younger brother Will (Blair Penner), his wife Suzanne (Barbara Patrick), baby sister Amber (Grace Beedie) and Grandpa Walter (Jay Brazeau), Ted has some explaining to do. Seems Ted was lonely, retired, his wife, their mom was murdered fifteen years ago, and he needed something to keep him busy so he dumped all his cash into this venture, which is quickly going belly up because Ted has no idea how to run or market a Bed and Breakfast.
What the family needs is to get the word out some kind of way, and as fate would have it, the famed B&B reviewer Bea Turner has blown a tire in their driveway and has decided to stay there. At least they think it's Bea Turner. This woman tells them her name is Beth Thompson (Laura Soltis), but Bea Turner is notorious for coming into these places under a nom de plume as not to tip folks off to her presence. Thing is the B&B is empty at the moment so the always forward thinking Lucy has the family pretend to be guests and staff to give the establishment that lived in look. No sooner than Bea Turner checks in does some guy Lucy met earlier at the Candy Cane Shoppe, Jake Finley (my main man Victor Webster), checks in as a geologist looking for a place to stay while he takes rock samples. In the dead of winter, during the holidays.
What follows next? Shenanigans and Hi-Jinx! Baby sister takes on the role as the chef and gosh darn if she isn't great at it. Grandpa is the handyman... not so good. And little brother and his wife are the world travelers who have actually never been anywhere. Soon Grandma Margo (Paula Shaw) drops in and gets in on the fun as Eastern European royalty. I couldn't place her accent, because it was terrible, but I'm all here for it.
As you might imagine, despite the mayhem and chaos surrounding this farce, Christmassy things still happen and more importantly Gigantor over here and the hot chick are starting to fall for each other. Long walks, making snowmen, twisted ankle triage because Jake's mom was a nurse and that healing knowledge automatically passes down genetically, enjoying festivals, deep conversations under the stars and no near miss kiss for these two, they landed it on the first try.
But then the thing has to happen. Lucy has already confided in Jake about the shenanigans she arranged to trick this Bea Turner character, but the thing is Jake is actually Bea Turner! What a shock! Well, not so much really, mainly because it was fairly obvious from the start and they also spoiled it in the synopsis. Lucy is none too happy about this deception and tells Jake to kick rocks. Jake tried to point out that she was a deceiver too, but hers was different, to hear Lucy tell it. And now love is derailed. And they will probably get a crap review and lose the B&B.
BUT NOT SO FAST!!! Lucy's dad recites what his dad told him and that's that love is a star to reach for, or something. I can't remember. But whatever, Lucy's going to get her man, but she's too late because her man has already made a grand gesture to get his woman! And now they are making out again. At Christmas. And they got a five star review! Of which the ethics behind this review are EXTREMELY compromised, unless he ended this review with the disclaimer that he's sleeping with the owner.
So after making a few suspect choices with the last few movies I watched, the Excel Randomizer went back to the source. Back to Hallmark giving us a movie with very few twists and turns or surprises, but setting it up as if there were surprises, though there weren't any surprises. Not say Five Star Christmas didn't bring a little something different to the table because this movie bought the wackiness. I have to admit I laughed out loud on more than one occasion, thus making this a true romantic comedy. Did I buy into buy into Victor Webster and Bethany Joy Lenz as couple? I sure did, even though he's from the land of the giants and she's from the land of the Lilliputians. Actually I think Ms. Lenz is average sized, Victor Webster is just a large dude. I even bought into the Ralston's as an actual family. But if our main couple works, then these movies generally work. It's that simple.
Since we were sent back to the source, of course the vomit worthiness was very high. We had carolers, we made a snowman, we didn't bake cookies but we did eat freshly baked cookies and made taffy so that counts. We went to a Christmas festival, we went shopping for a Christmas tree, we trimmed this Christmas tree, we had a dead mom, we drank gallons of hot cocoa, we had wise old people dispensing insufferable knowledge, but we didn't have any cute kids though one character did announce she was pregnant which does not count. We did have the added bonus of even dad getting a little action. No near miss kiss though. I thought for sure someone was going to interrupt that first kiss, but they managed to land it.
Other than the fact that both of these characters are fairly entrenched in their careers, which I don't think either of them are going to give up, meaning they won't be together too long after Christmas ends, you probably can't go too terribly wrong with this one.
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