“What in the Samhain?”

Taking Christmas decorating drama as far as it could go, what else was Hallmark to do but to move on to the next challenge and take on Halloween? The folks on HOA loving Evergreen Lane, a cul-de-sac in Provo Utah, are thrown into a panic when the Halloween (and Shakespeare) obsessed Marvin and Luna Balmer (The M. Balmers) move into the house vacated by the Jolly Johnsons and start setting up for their favorite holiday of the year. Not Christmas. Something must be done. It’s Evergreen Lane, not Everscream Lane. They call in the big guns, Jared (Wes Brown), President of the HOA, and Emily (Lacey Chabert) Director of mumble mumble Activities, just back from their honeymoon. To not shorten a long story, when Emily was a child, she was traumatized when a mean girl, Ashlynn Ashworth “Yard Yelped” her by scaring her with scarecrows on Halloween shortly before the death of her beloved Grandmother. From then on, the neighbors dialed back all of the other holiday decorations to focus only on Christmas to protect Emily. The Ashworths pulled up stakes and moved away shortly thereafter. However, the ban on Halloween was never officially written into the bylaws of the HOA (!). So, Alas poor Yorick, the Balmers can not be stopped. A Big cul-de-sac meeting is called, and led by sweet and kind Emily, they decide to welcome the Balmers and in a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em” spirit, totally embrace all of the art and science of Halloween celebration complete with costumes, contests, yard displays, and child-friendly activities. (They agree to only go up to 5 on the “Nosferatu Scale”.) It doesn’t hurt that thanks to Luna Balmer’s life being saved when she was just a kid, all proceeds will go to the local Children’s Hospital. And as Emily points out, Halloween is for remembering the dead, and this year’s celebration will be the perfect tribute to Emily’s Gram-Gram.

I really liked this one much more than the previous two Haul Out the Holly movies, which had some very problematic and disturbing aspects to them. The fascist undertones of the HOA were dialed down considerably. It was very fast paced and the wisecracks, jokes, and gags came thick and fast. And they were mostly quite funny. I probably missed a lot of them, but one that stands out was when Jared calls Emily’s messy attic “the portal to Pan’s Labyrinth”. It was very episodic with no one gradually unfolding plotline to be seen. The neighbors tackle a number of challenges including baking contest drama, Jared’s dismay over his widowed mother being courted by weird Ned (Stephen Toblowsky), Jared’s suspension as HOA president, and Emily not being fulfilled in her career and wanting to write children’s books. Also it turns out that the local media star who holds in her hands the success or failure of the money raising aspect of the cul-de-sac’s Halloween hijinks is none other than Ashlynn Ashworth, the mean girl whose family may or may not have been chased out of the neighborhood when she dared to scare young Emily out of her wits. But no one, not even a former mean girl, can resist the niceness of Lacey Chabert’s Emily. So we were not worried. Even though a lot of the side stories kind of fizzled out, I would certainly be on board with another one with these next year. Perhaps an Independence Day or Thanksgiving Day edition? This was fun and silly. If you can embrace that, it’s a treat, not the other thing.