Unfulfilled Promise

Young New York professionals Leah Goldberg and Graham Westwood are in love and in a committed relationship. In fact, Leah, although she laughs off the idea coyly, is expecting a proposal soon, likely during the holidays. She meets his nice (gay) sister for the first time and they get along great. On impulse, the siblings invite Leah to spend Christmas with his family in Connecticut and to meet their parents for the first time. Leah is excited to finally experience a traditional Christmas holiday with all the trimmings. That evening, Graham goes to Leah’s  family’s Hanukkah celebration. Her large family are warm and welcoming and a wonderful time is had by all. There’s lots of food.

On the way to Graham and Maddie’s luxurious home they give Leah a list of forbidden topics of conversation and warn her that their parents can be “a lot.” Indeed. They probably should have provided Leah with much more detail. In fact, a manual of behavior would not have gone amiss. Their father is pretty nice when he is not hinting around that he expects his children to eventually join him in the banking business (not happening), but the mother, played by Barbara Niven is a piece of work. Barbara Westwood is tense and inhospitable to Leah, who is a star in every way: Sweet, friendly, warm, and very intelligent and successful. As we learn, Barbara can not deal with change and thrives on routine and tradition. Leah’s mere presence as Graham’s unexpected new girlfriend, is enough to seriously upset her apple cart. She also is a perfectionist and very particular about everything. When decorating the tree, she uses a tape measure to divide the tree into quadrants to ensure each section has the same number of ornaments and those ornaments must be exactly 4 inches a part. You get the picture. Throughout the family’s checking off all the activities on Barbara’s Christmas Itinerary, Leah can do nothing right in Barbara’s eyes and she cannot disguise that fact. To make matters worse, there’s no food! No snacks to nosh on and Barbara is a terrible cook. The constant barrage of Barbara’s micro-aggressions towards Leah while putting on a smiley facade is like death by a thousand cuts. Leah goes from an eager to please and be pleased confident woman to doubting her own worth and often on the verge of tears. Graham and Maddie try, but are of very little help. They have lived with their mother’s quirks all their life and don’t seem to fully realize the effect she is having on poor Leah. They comfort her and assure her that it’s not personal and to just be herself, but Leah still feels like an outsider. I couldn’t wait for one or both of them to stand up to Barbara or at least do more to help Leah cope. And to top it all off Graham is being aggressively pursued by his old off and on girlfriend with Barbara’s full blessing.

Everything is barreling towards a great dramatic and exciting scene where the last straw is finally reached and Barbara finally gets the truth bomb dropped on her in an epic telling off. Would it by Graham, Leah, Maddie, or some combination of the three? I was all there for it,  And the snobby bad girlfriend had to be similarly dispatched, of course. I couldn’t wait. There’s nothing like retribution, repentance, forgiveness,  and reconciliation for Christmas! But nothing of the sort happens. At the culminating event of the Christmas fundraiser Graham mildly tells his mother that Leah is “good for him,” (which she already knew he was going to propose) and she needs to be “a little more flexible” with her. What? As if it was Leah’s behavior for which allowances needed to be made?! Barbara runs away to the cloakroom, starts to cry,  and is found by Leah. And all of a sudden Barbara has a total personality transplant. Out of nowhere,  she tells Leah she likes and admires her and starts calling her “honey,” and “sweetheart”. She is “shocked!”, I tell you “shocked!” that Leah could have gotten it into her head that she did anything wrong or that Barbara hated her.  And the girlfriend! She buttonholes Leah and out of nowhere and admits she crossed the line with Graham and apologizes! Is it possible that Graham finally stood up to her? Maybe. But if so we were cheated out of that scene too.

At the end, the Goldbergs and the Westwoods are together to witness the long awaited proposal of marriage on Christmas Day. Which she accepts. Graham promises to stand up for her in the future and to be her “rock.” Do we believe him? Who cares? It’s too late for the viewer because the movie’s over.

There were many good things about this movie besides the performances, but in the end I just couldn’t forgive the unfulfilled promise. Emily Arook absolutely shone as the overwhelmed but plucky Leah. She carried the movie and kept me watching and anticipating for her to be avenged. For once, Evan Roderick seemed right for his role. In the past he has played a spoiled brat not nearly good enough for the heroine, or seemed to be more of a little brother to the heroine rather than her romantic partner. But it is Barbara Niven’s performance that I was most impressed with. Yes, her character is rigid and awful to the point of scariness. But the veteran actress made her vulnerable as well. One had the impression that she didn’t have any control over her behavior. That her meanness was not a conscious choice but some kind of personality disorder for which, we would be assured at the end, therapy would be forthcoming.  At one point I briefly thought early onset Alzheimers might be a possibility, but that would probably be too depressing for a Hallmark Christmas movie.