Flakey

It’s Christmas in July time at Hallmark only in June. It was nice to get back to a Christmas story in the summertime. All that cold weather and snow when it’ so hot outside! And in this one, the snow, or at least the flakes, were (was?) the starring attraction, not just white background.

Teagan is a photographer who specializes in taking pictures of snowflakes. She also  works closely with the community center as a photography teacher. Her best friend runs an Art Gallery and Teagan’s snowflakes are center stage. There are 35 main types of snowflakes and she has  photos of 34 of them. She has been on the hunt for the last one to complete her collection for 3 years, since her Mom died. If she finds it by Christmas Eve, a collector will not only buy all 35 of the pictures, but donate enough to the community center to fix everything that ails it. Finding the rare and elusive 12 sided stellar dendrite will be like finding a needle in a haystack but if the needle kept melting!

Anyway, and you won’t believe this, One of Teagan’s star students, Julie, is the daughter of Teagan’s former high school honey, Noah,  and he is a not-too-sad widower. Now that his wife is dead, he has returned to his old hometown after giving up his former career as a climate scientist (weatherman) to become the world’s worst professional snow plow driver. Not sure why he did that since since the usual loving grandparents or other hometown family who could mother his little girl were noticeably absent. The two prospective love interests meet, sparks fly, etc. Being a snow plow driver,  Noah volunteers to take Teagan to a gathering severe snow storm on a mountain to hunt for the snowflake that will complete her collection and save the community center. Driving around, looking at the scenery, and staying at an Inn, they get to know each other. Excitement occurs when Noah runs into some black ice and crashes his snow plow into a snowbank. Now you would think that wouldn’t be a problem for a snow plow, but, like I said, he is the world’s worst. He failed to stock the humongous cargo box with the usual snow fighting tools such as salt, sand, and shovels to get him out of trouble.

Also no chains on the tires. But adorned with bows and wreaths aplenty! Meanwhile, back in Willow Creek a rival photographer is also on the hunt for the rare crystal. She looks like Sarah Silverman. Sarah starts cosying up to Julie trying to learn Teagan’s secrets for photographing snowflakes which are easily found on Google. She is so hopeless and incompetent that she ends up being comic relief rather than a source of tension and suspense. Nevertheless, she is taken dead seriously as a legitimate threat throughout the movie.

Back on the mountain, Teagan and Noah are somehow rescued. They continue chasing the elusive snow storm, but when they find it Teagan has barely gotten her camera out of the bag before she almost gets lost and is almost flattened by a falling tree branch. Thoroughly cowed, they give up on the snowflake and return to safety but without Teagan’s camera which she forgot and left on the mountain in the snow (IKR?). Just to set your mind at rest, the next day, Noah goes back to get it and somehow the camera snuck back into it’s insulated camera case which saved all of the pictures. It turns out she captured a shot of the rare flake (perfectly centered!) without even knowing it,  the community center is saved, and Julie looks like she is going to get a new mom.

I just touched on some of the stuff in this movie that didn’t make sense. Good ole reliable Marcus Rosner is OK, but for some reason I am not a fan of Rebecca Dalton who played Teagan. I’ve disliked most of the movies she has starred in and my dislike has mostly been  due to the obnoxious characters she has played. This one did not win me over.