The Hallmark Christmas Movie Thread

Lily Adler

🔥🍨Getting hot scoops🍨🔥 (she/her)
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Fans and haters alike, let's talk about our favorite subgenre of cable cinema. Where Princesses from made up countries fall in love with working New England dad to corporate attorney quits her job in the big city to save her family's bakery in Montana while dating the hunk rancher.

Also included Lifetime and GAC Family films. :hehe:
 
I don't have much experience with watching these, but the ones I have watched have been cheesily fun, warm and wholesome. I tend to favour the ones with Lacey Chabert. :shrug: Though I can't imagine why.
 
I love watching hallmark movies. I saw the worst one with Melissa Joan hart the other day, it was the best.

I love that they’re getting more diverse too
 
I don't have much experience with watching these, but the ones I have watched have been cheesily fun, warm and wholesome. I tend to favour the ones with Lacey Chabert. :shrug: Though I can't imagine why.
Yeah I see Candace Cameron has taken her crown as the go to star for a lot of these movies. I heard Amy Acker was in one of these.

I do wonder if Hallmark just finds excuses to air these in July.
 
Fans and haters alike, let's talk about our favorite subgenre of cable cinema. Where Princesses from made up countries fall in love with working New England dad to corporate attorney quits her job in the big city to save her family's bakery in Montana while dating the hunk rancher.

Also included Lifetime and GAC Family films. :hehe:

Also describes a majority of Christmas movies on Netflix as well.
 
Sometimes I like watching them just to see towns in Ontario and B.C. that I recognize.
 
We could only be so lucky!

iu
 


My mom watched this one last night. :hehe:
 
The wife put one of these on about a marketing exec who has to save a winery during Christmas. It was torture :csad:
 
Is there a patient zero for Hallmark movies? Like the first one that came and everyone was like, copy that x 1000?
 
Netflix Christmas movies:

- Kids aligning themselves with Santa or an elf to save Christmas. A new spin is the early origins of Santa Claus, such as A Boy Called Christmas (which I actually enjoyed). Also a Jangle Christmas in which a young girl joins forces with her toy maker grandfather (Forest Whitaker) to save Christmas from an evil toy maker (Keegan Michael Key). Just saw a Polish film called "David and the Elf" in which a young boy joins forces with an Elf so that he can get his family together for Christmas.
- An American girl meets a random prince of a fictional European nation around the holidays and they fall in love. This spawns at least two more sequels. There are at least three of them starring Vanessa Hudgens. There's a different spin on this with "A Castle for Christmas" in which Brooke Shields plays a best selling author who goes to Scotland and ends up buying a castle run by a Scottish Duke (Carey Elwes) that her grandfather used to work for. They don't get along at first (the usual formula) but they end up together.
- And of course the whole Hallmark Christmas movie formula. The Netflix movies do have spins on this formula though. One of them being the Christmas movie Holiday Rush in which a widowed Hip hop radio host (Romany Malco) falls in love with his producer (Sonequa Martin Green) while raising his three children. Another one is The Holiday Calendar in which Kat Graham plays a Holiday photographer who falls in love with her best friend.

Saw a Christmas film recently where two teens switched places for a few days for Christmas with their families. One spends time with a family from the country, who's matriarch is played by Shelley Long. Another spends time with a rich family, who's matriarch is played by Bo Derek.
 
Is there a patient zero for Hallmark movies? Like the first one that came and everyone was like, copy that x 1000?
I honestly think Lifetime may have did the formula first. But then they decided to spice it up:

 
There's also a German Netflix Christmas movie in which a young boy works with his grandfather. On the outside, the grandfather is a toy maker, but hidden he is actually Santa Claus and the boy is expected to someday take over the Santa mantle and another Christmas movie that takes place in an African jungle starring Rob Lowe and Kristin Davis.
 
Netflix Christmas movies:

- Kids aligning themselves with Santa or an elf to save Christmas. A new spin is the early origins of Santa Claus, such as A Boy Called Christmas (which I actually enjoyed). Also a Jangle Christmas in which a young girl joins forces with her toy maker grandfather (Forest Whitaker) to save Christmas from an evil toy maker (Keegan Michael Key). Just saw a Polish film called "David and the Elf" in which a young boy joins forces with an Elf so that he can get his family together for Christmas.
- An American girl meets a random prince of a fictional European nation around the holidays and they fall in love. This spawns at least two more sequels. There are at least three of them starring Vanessa Hudgens. There's a different spin on this with "A Castle for Christmas" in which Brooke Shields plays a best selling author who goes to Scotland and ends up buying a castle run by a Scottish Duke (Carey Elwes) that her grandfather used to work for. They don't get along at first (the usual formula) but they end up together.
- And of course the whole Hallmark Christmas movie formula. The Netflix movies do have spins on this formula though. One of them being the Christmas movie Holiday Rush in which a widowed Hip hop radio host (Romany Malco) falls in love with his producer (Sonequa Martin Green) while raising his three children. Another one is The Holiday Calendar in which Kat Graham plays a Holiday photographer who falls in love with her best friend.

Saw a Christmas film recently where two teens switched places for a few days for Christmas with their families. One spends time with a family from the country, who's matriarch is played by Shelley Long. Another spends time with a rich family, who's matriarch is played by Bo Derek.

To add from this, there's one Netflix Christmas movie called Let It Snow that doesn't have these three standard Christmas tropes for a Netflix Christmas movie...well it kinda fits the last formula but not really. It kinda does because it's about love during Christmas. It doesn't in that all of the people in love are high school students from this one small town in Illinois and they know each other. Unlike a majority of the Netflix Christmas movies, where it has at most 3 names we've heard of, there are at least 5 or 6 names in the film we've heard of: Jacob Batalon, Isabela Merced (many of us may know her as Isabela Moner), Odeya Rush, Shamiek Moore, Liv Hewson and Kiernan Shipka, although Joan Cusack makes a cameo.
 


LOL, that's the subject for a Spanish language Christmas movie for Netflix. What I got from it is some Christmas hating auditor goes to a small town in the Spanish side of the Pyrenees mountains that loves Christmas and it sounds like his heart is starting to warm up to Christmas but then something happens to prevent that (at least for the time being).

Other Christmas doozies for Netflix this year:

  • Father Christmas is Back: 4 sisters reunite for Christmas Holiday in a mansion in Yorkshire, England. Their estranged father (Kelsey Grammar) comes back to their lives with his new squeeze (Julie Bowlby, who was the ditzy girlfriend of John Cryer's character from 2 and Half Men). One of the sisters is Elizabeth Hurley. Also starring John Cleese. The family's last name is Christmas.
  • Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star: I had said earlier that there were three Christmas movies starring Vanessa Hudgens that had the "American girl meets random prince of a fictional European nation around Christmas" trope. Well this is one of the three. And Vanessa plays three different roles.
  • A Castle for Christmas: I had said earlier this one sort of fits the "American girl meets random prince from a fictional European nation around Christmas trope" but this time it's Brooke Shields playing a best selling author who buys a castle in an actual real life country (Scotland) that her grandfather used to work for and eventually ends up falling for the landlord of the Castle, a Duke (Carey Elwes) not a prince. As I said, they don't get along at first, but they end up together.
  • Single All The Way: A social media person (Ugly Betty's Michael Urie) goes back to his hometown in New Hampshire with his BFF and roommate, Nick to visit his parents (Barry Bostwick and Cathy Najimy), who set him up on a date with a local boy. It doesn't really work out with the other one and the two Peter (Urie) and Nick get together by the end of the movie.
  • David and the Elves: This one is in Polish. I did say that a young boy joins forces with an Elf so that he can get his family back for Christmas.
  • Love Hard: A single woman living in Los Angeles (Nina Dobrev) falls in love with a guy on a dating app (Darren Barnet from Never Have I Ever) and she decides to surprise him for Christmas in his hometown of Lake Placid. Instead she finds out she is catfished by one of his friends (Jimmy O Yang from Silicon Valley and Space Force). Obviously Dobrev and Yang's characters end up together. Oh and Harry Shum Jr. from Glee plays Yang's older brother who is a bit of a d-bag in the movie.
 

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