Hallmark Watch: A Holiday Engagement (2011)

Watched:  11/26/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:   Jim Fall

So, I've always wondered why Hallmark used the model they did, of sort of hoarding all of their hundreds of Christmas movies for the their three cable channels.  And, I think. they have an app or streaming service.  But I kinda think signing up for a Hallmark app is for the folks who are a particular breed of cat.  

Now, they've dumped an insane number of these movies on Amazon, YouTube and Netflix.  Jamie was looking for something else and realized this, and as we were doing some Christmas decorating, she randomly picked one, and this is what we got.

The movie is from 2011, so it's an interesting snapshot in time for Hallmark's continual evolution.  They have name-actors, but in supporting roles.  Shelley Long is a major character as the mom who seems like she's entertaining notions about how a a woman plans her future that last got updated in 1961.  It's a thankless role.  Sam McMurray - who you know from everything - is the dad, who is a two note joke, and gets away with cashing a paycheck for just mugging a bit.  Salute.  Haylie Duff appears and you absolutely wonder why she's not the star every time she wanders onto the screen.  A pre-Vice Principals/ Righteous Gemstones Edi Patterson steals the early part of the movie as the star's much more engaging friend.  I wanted to watch her movie, not what we got.  Also - Jan Brady shows up for two shots trying to steal a wedding dress.  

The two stars of the film are D-Listers.  I don't think I've seen them even on Hallmark since.  I'm sure Bonnie Somerville has her fans, but I don't know her.  And by the end of the movie, maybe through no fault of her own but based just on the script, I hated her.  The other lead is Jordan Bridges - who I just learned is the son of Beau Bridges, making that factoid the most interesting thing about the movie.  

The plot:  a reporter loses her newspaper job because it's 2011.  And, simultaneously, her Business Man gets a possible promotion which will move him (in his mind - them) to Pennsylvania from LA.  

Instead of taking the job loss and a future anywhere but nearby as a chance to escape her family, which we will soon learn is upper-class-white-people-uber-toxic, our hero and BM break up.  But so f'd up is her relationship with her family, she decides to rent an actor for Thanksgiving, paying the guy with an all-inclusive package in Mexico if he pulls it off.

The rest is exactly what you think.  The actor makes mistakes.  BM shows up un-announced in a grand gesture and spoils the growing PG-flavored romance brewing between hero and her actor-stand-in.  There's a blowout, everyone comes to a realization/ learns something, and hero runs off with the actor.  Christmas.

I'll have to accept the idea that this movie stipulates that, in 2011, someone could date someone long enough to get engaged, and that the parents have never met the dude or see a picture of the intended.  It's stupid, but okay.  But, yes, that is the @#$%ing premise.

But... I have to ask...

• How messed up is your relationship with your family that you think that, instead of just being honest about getting fired and dumped in the same week - which is not your fault - they'll treat you like shit when you show up for Thanksgiving?  Just don't go home.  You're an adult.  Set boundaries.  This movie is terrible.
• What is the plan here?  Punt to after Thanksgiving and then say your man broke up with you?
• The obvious conclusion by your parents would be that the boyfriend was so enamored with you, he proposed, but a few days with your family was so bad, he ended it.  That's not good.
• So now you'd have to go through with the scenario where you got dumped at Christmas instead of a month earlier.  That is not a win.
• So now you plan to carry this unnecessary and extravagant lie until your parents die/ you die?
• How is bringing someone who doesn't know you, your history, your family - a bonus?  Why not just say "he couldn't make it"?  
• This just means that Shelley Long's Mom character is a horrible person.  Full stop.  If her children are all lying to her (and they are, as we learn) Mom needs to realize she's failed all of her children and is a psycho who has made her children hollow shells who feel they must constantly lie to keep fragile-mommy happy.  (IRL: these kids stop coming home ASAP, they do not keep returning in their 30's for more of the same, or limit the parental contact, leaving parents bewildered.)
• Most bizarre, our hero lets her mother embarrass herself and spend money as if a wedding is happening.  And unless this is the world's dumbest, longest con - no wedding is nigh
• We also learn that our reporter hero has been sending her clippings to her mother of her best work, and her mother has never read *any* of it.  Like - all other things aside - if that's the case, you walk out the door in that moment, and you do not come back

So, yes, this is a movie about a terrible family full of crazy people.  And all you want is for nice-guy Jordan Bridges to run away from these psychopaths.  

The best part of the movie is the waiter at the Mexican restaurant doing a Jan Hooks bit.