Holiday Watch: Hot Frosty (2024)

Watched:  11/24/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jerry Ciccoritti

Selection:  Jamie

Every Christmas, we're inundated not just with Hallmark-style Christmas films - we also get a few comedies, many which that involve some straight up magic as the premise.  After all, it is Christmas, and Christmas includes Heat Misers and flying reindeer and Mariah Carey.

But those Christmas comedies are not always winners.  Last year, I nominated two magical Christmas comedies for some of the worst films I'd seen all year.  Those included Genie and my selection for worst of 2023, Candy Cane Lane.  So I am not just easily in the bag for anything that comes along, Christmas-wise.  (I do remember liking parts of Dashing Through the Snow, but that may have just been Teyonah Parris smiling on screen).

Mostly, this movie made me happy for Lacey Chabert, who accidentally fell backward into being the second-most-popular Hallmark star, and then was promoted to full-Hallmark status when Candace Cameron Bure decided Hallmark was now too woke for her.*

Chabert had been kind of pushing the envelope at Hallmark the last few years, finding movies that didn't exactly fit the Hallmark mold as we knew it.  Haul Out the Holly, por ejemplo, was an attempt to just do a plain 'ol family comedy.  It even has Gen X's favorite Ned, Stephen Tobolowsky.  

Hot Frosty (2024) is a leap into a straight, goofy comedy, as evidenced by some of the casting, from Schitt's Creek's Dustin Milligan to Katy Mixon Greer, who I particularly loved in Eastbound and Down.  I also was delighted to see Lauren Holly show up (and she was really funny, as pre-usual).  And, lastly, if you don't know Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truligio, well...  your life is a poor shell of an existence and I pity you.  

Christmas Watch: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)

Watched:  11/23/2024

Format:   Cinepolis Theater

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dallas Jenkins

Selection:  KareBear

So, yes.  This was not entirely my idea. 

The book which inspired the film The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024) was a staple in our household while I was growing up.  In it's way, the book was as familiar as Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary for me (I can't speak for Steanso).  But I honestly haven't revisited the book in decades or seen the older movie version with Loretta Swit.  But every Christmas, whether it's at church with my folks or watching someone at the Vatican read scripture, when they get to the right part, I think of Gladys yelling "Hey!  Unto you a child is born!"

For context - While growing up, we were very involved in any church we attended, and my mom, The KareBear, ran the Sunday School at a couple of them.*   My mom's perennial draw to the book likely stemmed from seeing herself in several roles in the book - from the hard-scrabble kid growing up figuring things out, to the pious girl who loves church (our narrator, Beth), and culminating in herself as the overextended mom running a Christmas Pageant wherein things are not ideal.  

I'll admit, from the kid participant perspective in Christmas pageants - this thing lands.  (My earliest memories include my mom making me be an angel in a Vacation Bible School production and having to explain to me that angels are also dudes despite the felt-craft imagery I'd seen to date.)

And, lo, this fall my mother declared that *all she she wanted for Christmas* was for the fam to gather and go see the movie.  So, last night my folks (The Admiral and KareBear), Jamie, Steanso, Cardboard Belts and the kids all went to the theater and caught the film.