You, Me & the Christmas Trees (2021)
After taking a year off from attempting to watch Hallmark Christmas flicks, I decided to bite the bullet and pre-game the new season with You, Me & the Christmas Trees, a reasonably inoffensive Danica McKellar vehicle about a cute arborist rescuing a hunky tree farmer’s Christmas tree business. If this is the worst holiday TV movie I see this year it’ll be a good year, but I don’t have high hopes.
You, Me & the Christmas Trees is what happens when an efficient, capable production dealing with a low budget and tight time constraints sleepwalks a movie into existence. It’s not as incompetent as many such efforts, but it’s aggressively uninspired. I’ve never been a fan of soap operas or the influence they’ve had on modern serialized drama, and I suppose that’s where I get lost. Each movie is just another episode in a long-running seasonal soap opera. Does no one expect sharp writing, interesting characters, or compelling stories? Nope, so long as there’s aspiration interior design populated by pretty people with serious but also surprisingly easily solvable problems underscored with generic holiday tunes and hardly any sincere spiritual message, it’s all good - now pour me another glass of wine while I tweet out some emojis.
Rating: As a Movie Two Conifers (out of five), as a Christmas movie Two and a half Douglas Firs. Since I’m, obviously, not the target demo for this sort of thing actual fans can probably tack on at least one additional star to my rating to make up for my Scrooge-iness.
Five Star Christmas (2020)
A family rally together to make a go of their father’s conversion of their family home into a Bed and Breakfast. A fairly solid ensemble cast work well together in this romantic dramedy though, as usual, the writing could have been a lot sharper and less trope-ish.
Probably a better film than You, Me & the Christmas Trees, and yet my attention kept wandering. I shouldn’t have tried a double feature right out of the gate. All in all not a bad film.
Rating: As a film Two and a Quarter Stars. As a Christmas film Three Stars.
While writing these reviews I was listening to Sammy Kaye - "Christmas Serenade" (1951) - a solid effort very much of it’s time.
