A Gift Wrapped Christmas 2.0

In catching some of the previews for The Secret Gift of Christmas, I was struck by the similarities which appeared to be between it and one of my favorite Christmas TV movies, Lifetime’s 2015 flick, A Gift Wrapped Christmas. To start off with, here are the opening scenes in both movies:

Come on now. And their jaunty walks are identical.

In both, a cheerful force-of-nature type woman is a personal shopper, for those that can afford such a thing. Their clients are primarily business owners and corporate types who must impress their colleagues and clients at Christmas (and other occasions, presumably).  As the movie went on the similarities continued to be striking. Both shoppers (Bonnie and Gwen) take great pride in their work and are really committed to finding the perfect gifts that will amaze and delight. They are both hired by workaholic single-Dad widowers who do not spend enough time with their attention starved children. They are still dealing with the deaths of their wives and are closed off from moving forward. Both do not want the shoppers to go outside the box with the gifts and just want them to buy boring and impersonal under-the-radar type things like plants or mugs. In both movies their instructions are ignored and Bonnie and Gwen find gifts so special and perfect for the giftees that the result is great good will, effusive thanks, and big business wins for their handsome clients. At first very skeptical and resistant, they are won over. Both men even let the women revitalize their boring wardrobes. Not stopping there, the women both grow close to the men’s children and forge ahead to repair their personal lives. It isn’t long before their relationships with their kids are on the right track, and stuffy attitudes are melting away. Both Gwen and Bonnie both have supportive sisters who want more for them than just their work, and absent parents though for different reasons. And, needless to say, clients and the personal shoppers start falling in love. In both cases, this raises the ire of a jealous other woman and we have conflict and misunderstandings.

In the end, there are just enough differences between the two to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit. Although I am not a lawyer. Bonnie uses shopping to fill the void left by the death of her mother and she is estranged from her father. Gwen is just great at shopping for others and her mother is a free-spirited world traveler. At the end the couples are brought back together by different things. Gwen goes to her clients cabin to deliver his son’s most yearned for Christmas wish, a sled. And in the 2023 version, Patrick, Bonnie’s client, finds and returns a beloved Angel necklace she thought she had lost forever. Bonnie had some work to do on herself, as she was kind of on the verge of being a shopaholic. She learns that “presence” is more important that “presents”, thanks to a last minute appearance of a magic Santa Claus. Gwen was just a shining star and had no issues whatsoever to work on, to my memory.

A Gift Wrapped Christmas was a 10 for me and this new one was a 7. As good a job as Meghan Ory did as Bonnie channelling Meredith Hagner as Gwen, she couldn’t compare with Meredith Hagner’s portrayal in the first version. She was not a breath of fresh air, but a tsunami. The 2023 movie one did have Christopher Russell who was as handsome and authentically nice and sweet as ever. I was getting kind of worried I wouldn’t see him in a Hallmark Christmas movie this year. So I would have to give The Secret Gift of Christmas the nod for the male lead. I do want to acknowledge the excellent job by the actress who played CR’s daughter. She struck just the right balance between eliciting both our sympathy and our admiration. She was never a Debbie Downer about not seeing enough of her father, but always upbeat, frank, and wise beyond her years. All in all, for a story that was basically a copy of an old Lifetime movie, it was well done, and I enjoyed it.

PS. I recently saw that the powers that be eventually did credit the story writer which, indeed, was the same for both movies. The script writers are different. This was not on IMDb when I wrote this review because I specifically looked for such a credit. IMDb credits often dribble in long after the premiere, which is unfortunate. So in the interest of fairness and full disclosure, I wanted to add this note to my original review.

September 26, 2024