Enid-Raye Adams

Holiday Road

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Road Trip!!

I tend to like ensemble pieces, and I loved this one. To me it was the ultimate road movie with lots of interesting characters, intriguing stories, good humor, and touching, satisfying conclusions to the individual stories. And it even had a pretty nice romance in there. We meet nine diverse people at the Portland airport on their way to Denver for Christmas. The flight is canceled and, organized by the female part of the future romantic duo, (we’ve already gotten the meet cute out of the way) come together and prevail on the other half of the future couple to share his 15-passenger van to Denver. Because there is a problem on the interstate, they decide to go the back roads, and adventures, mishaps, and many opportunities for Christmas cheer abound.

At first, none of the passengers are particularly likable, some less so than others. But as we learn their stories and get to know them we start to care for and root for them to have their happy endings. Their pasts and the reasons they are going to Denver are revealed gradually. Just enough clues and information are eked out to intrigue us and heighten our curiosity about them before we hear their whole stories. This is done via a young social media influencer who is one of the sometimes merry, sometimes not merry, band and who is filming the journey for her 100,000+ TikTok followers. They call themselves “the Van Clan” and as time goes by, their journey starts to go viral. None of the nine are shortchanged and their stories flow smoothly and naturally. The writer and director were on their toes with this one.

I won’t synopsize the group’s stories, but tell you just a bit about them. The two who are destined to become a couple are a risk-averse dating app developer and the ring leader of the group, an adrenalin junkie and travel/adventure writer. She is caught searching frantically through her knapsack for medication that is not there. We have a mother and son at odds who are traveling to Denver to meet his birth mother. There is a grouchy old guy with a sack of cash who is going to visit his daughter, as is a down-on-her-luck young woman who is a talented singer. A Chinese couple who barely speak English with an estranged son in England are traveling to visit her sister she has not seen in many years. And getting them to open up about themselves is the young vlogger who has a journey of her own.

Of all of the really excellent swing-for-the-fences Hallmarks I have seen and admired so far this season, this one, which was a bit under the radar with only 2 known but not high-profile Hallmark actors, is my favorite so far. It had both humor and heart and, Bonus!, there was never a dull or nonsensical moment. Well, there was one, actually, but that’s OK. I probably missed the explanation. And I don’t care. Something to watch for on my next viewing, because I will be watching this one again.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Wedding Season

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Silly Season

How many times has a Hallmark movie started out with a youngish career girl hoping for a promotion into her dream job, usually in a creative field, end up back in her hometown for some reason pressured by a strong boss to meet a deadline in order to achieve her goal. And there meets the love of her life. Infinity times, that’s how many. This one started out in this same stale manner. But Despite this bone-tired beginning and a resolution to the romantic conflict at the end that I most certainly did not approve of, this wasn’t too bad in the middle.

Stephanie Bennett made a credible main girl, and the main guy, Casey Deidrick, I found to be very attractive. They had excellent chemistry together. I really like his type: Tall and powerful looking with a beard. Hope Hallmark keeps him on. And I had no problems with her.

Trish is an assistant at a magazine doing stupid fluff like how to choose the correct nail polish color. She dreams of being a feature writer doing personal pieces that move, surprise, and illuminate. She is taking a month’s vacation time to go back home and be a bridesmaid at three good friends’ weddings which are happening only a week apart. But first, she has a meeting with Helen, her boss, about some of her ideas for features she can do when she gets back. All of her proposals are tired and stale and have all been done before, as Helen points out. And it takes her boss to tell her that she has the perfect unusual story right in front of her. Being a bridesmaid 3 times within 3 weeks. So here’s the thing. Right away we see this girl has no initiative, imagination, or creativity. It certainly looks like she needs to stay with the fluff and be grateful for it.

The love interest is the big brother of her male best friend who is one of the grooms. They are both single so they decide to be each other’s plus one. The 3 weddings each have their challenges to overcome and to my mind, there is plenty for Trish to write about. But she struggles. The second couple is even brave enough to call off their wedding the day before even though they love each other, because they realize that their careers are more important to them than their marriage. And they are both OK with that. Happy even. That was certainly different for a Hallmark movie! Their shocking decision throws a wrench into Trish’s 3 weddings in 3 weeks theme. Instead of realizing that this bombshell might make her feature story better (in the hands of a good writer) she calls her boss to give up and quit! Honestly, this girl is hopeless. Her boss is made of sterner stuff though and points out that writing about nail polish is easy and personal experience features are hard. She has an assignment. She just can’t quit. She has a magazine to publish. Finish the damn article. I loved her. Well, she does, in between falling in love with the big brother, being a bridesmaid, and paddleboarding (she has a very casual approach to deadlines which also doesn’t bode well for an aspiring journalist).

Like I said, I didn’t approve of the ending either. Ryan, the love interest, is a world-traveling photographer who is pretty well-known and successful. He is starting to long for family and stability with all of these weddings and true love going on. He gets a message the day before his brother’s wedding that he has to skip the reception because the rarely visible Southern Lights (in Australia) have made an appearance and it is his dream to photograph them. Trish understands and rightly encourages him to go. It’s his dream. When he asks her whether they can continue getting to know each other and kissing and stuff after he gets back, she says no, because he is always on the move and all these weddings and such have made her realize she wants love and marriage too. Girl. Putting a halt to a budding relationship with such a sexy good guy without giving him a chance is not the way to accomplish that. To make a long story short, he gives up his dream assignment to stay home and do something else for a career so he can start a relationship with Trish. This was all ass-backwards. She’s the one who should have had a think about her career goal because she doesn’t, from what we saw, have what it takes. She should have followed him to Australia, written about it-hello?!, and then they could have figured out their future later.  Argh. He quits his life and great career and doesn’t even have a plan.

Enid-Raye Adams who played Trish’s boss was a stand-out. Trish’s office mate and friend was Latonya Williams who is a favorite of mine. I was sorry to leave her behind in New York City when we moved to the small town. I wish she could have come along. Trish could have used her good influence and advice.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

Campfire Christmas

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Too Campy.

**Spoilers**

This one was just silly despite the rapport and charm of the two leads, Tori Anderson and Corbin Bleu. Unfortunately, they are overshadowed by the hammy performances of approximately half of the secondary actors. Since they all over-act in the same way, I blame the director. Tori is an aspiring writer who has been working as an assistant in a publishing firm. Unfortunately, every attempt to have any of her manuscripts published by her firm is shut down by her heinous boss. She grew up with a group of friends that attended her parents’ Christmas-themed summer camp. Her parents tell her that they are selling the camp and are going to throw a week-long farewell celebration for all of the two generations of former campers who strangely all seem to be the same age. Weird.  She has kept in touch and sees all of her good buddies except one, her camp romance, Corbin Bleu. When they tried to make their long-distance relationship work outside of camp, it didn’t and Corbin dumped her, breaking her heart. Besides Corbin and Tori the friends include a married couple that met at camp and two contentious gay actors who got the show-biz bug there while competing for the same roles in  “the pageant.” The 3 couples all have misunderstandings and issues to iron out before their Christmas dreams come true and love wins. So there’s nothing new here, including the “big misunderstanding” 20 minutes before the end of the movie. This one is of the “only half the conversation is heard” variety and is particularly dumb.

What makes this one below average is the sheer boredom of watching all of the campers running around like maniacs doing fun activities like they are 10 years old and on sugar highs cheered on like their lives depended on it by Tori’s grinning parents. The one scene that got my attention was provided by Tori’s boss. Besides Corbin and Tori mending fences and discovering the old spark is still there, we have her still trying to get published, this time by writing a history of her family’s beloved camp. Her boss had rejected her latest manuscript because it needed more passion and a more personal connection.  Her boss loves her pitch but then to her horror, asks her, “who are you going to get to write it?” What???!!! I mean, I was floored. Imagine how Tori felt. When her boss goes so far as to hire a writer and asks for Tori’s notes and personal diaries, Tori quits on the spot. She learns later that her boss kept rejecting her manuscripts because she didn’t want to lose Tori as an assistant. This somehow makes her feel better, and in the 6 months later epilogue, we learn that she wrote a children’s book out of the story illustrated by her soon-to-be fiance, Corbin, who is an art teacher.  The married couple are now pregnant and the gay rivals are now a happy couple. Situation normal in Hallmark-Land. It has gotten a pretty harsh reception on IMDb and not just because of all of the diversity.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

July 29,2022