ChabertQuest 2025: I Have Watched 72 Lacey Chabert Movies since November

I am full of bad ideas.  

Once, I went vegetarian for a full year just to prove that I could do it (it was a disaster, but short being force fed sausage pizza at a work meeting, I remained vegetarian all year).  

I have decided to own every issue of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.  

To what end do I do these things?  I do not know.

But, worse, sometimes someone else's bad ideas will land in my head, and I'll think "yes, I will do that thing", especially if it's absolutely pointless. 

This post marks the end of ChabertQuest2025.  It began as a germ of an idea that became a marathon.  A Chabert-a-thon, if you will.  And now I can put down my remote and put away my Christmas ornaments.  We have done the thing we set out to do.

Some numbers:

• As of this writing, Lacey Chabert has 183 IMDB entries
• Of these credits, she has 87 live action feature films / TV films listed
• Of those, I was unable to locate 14, as they are not streaming or otherwise readily available.
• I refused to rewatch one of the movies because I'd already seen it and had a blog post about it
• Thus, since the holiday movie season began in November 2024, I have watched 72 separate movies in which Lacey Chabert appears.

Who we are and how we came to be

Last Christmas, rather than taking in a medley of new and classic Holiday movies as we usually do, we thought "we're doing all Hallmark."  After all, we've seen all of the usual Christmas films a few dozen times.  I can keep White Christmas a bit fresher if I don't sit through it every year.  So we just leaned into what's usually something we'd normally catch pieces of, but don't always watch all the way through.  

By the end of the holidays, I'd watched 9 Lacey Chabert holiday movies.  

Why Chabert for my Christmas merriment?  Well, not all Hallmark stars are of the same caliber.  

Sorry, other actors.  It's true.*  There is absolutely a Hallmark talent pool of leads who get re-cast, over and over, and here at The Signal Watch, Lacey Chabert is considered better at the acting and festive thing than the average Hallmark bear. If you're going to watch one of these movies, might as well watch one that's not a dud.

Randy, who is not good for me, upon reviewing my Holiday movie post from 2024 said "now you should watch every Lacey Chabert movie".  And I was like "ha ha.   That's insane."  

And then I was like:  ha ha... that is insane....  maybe so insane it just might....

And here we are.

Who is Lacey Chabert?

Chabert Watch: Gypsy (1993)

Midler took center stage?  Whaaaaat....?

Watched:  06/13/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Emile Ardolino

Everything's coming up Chabert!

So, I'd never seen Gypsy before in any form.  A snip of the Natalie Wood version was on once and we agreed we'd watch the full thing at some point and... we did not.

This film, Gypsy (1993), was a TV movie that aired in December of my Freshman year of college, so I am not shocked I was unaware of it existing.  All I really knew about Gypsy was:

1. Jamie once played a small part in a community theatre version of the play 
2. Broadway queen Audra McDonald is currently receiving rave reviews for her portrayal of Momma Rose.  
3. It's sort of about the ultimate stage mom
4. It's the origin story of a real life stripper turned writer turned pop figure,  Gypsy Rose Lee, who was a fixture in American culture from the 30's to the 60's

This TV movie was an adaptation of a Stephen Sondheim musical of the same name, which was originally on Broadway starting in the late 1950's and ran for some time.  The musical, in turn, was based on Lee's own memoirs, which had been a popular book.

Chabert Watch: Daddy Day Care (2003)

Watched:  06/11/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steve Carr

Sometimes coming into a movie and seeing it has an extraordinarily low rating sets you up for success.  Daddy Day Care (2003) has a 39 on Metacritic* and a Critics score at RT of 27%.  

Honestly, I thought it was fine.  Not good, but fine.  

It knew what it was - an excuse for kids to be cute and throw in some wholesome jokes.  It was clearly intended to be a family movie, and so I can see how critics decided this was bad, hoping for the Eddie Murphy of the 80's and 90's.  And I don't automatically give Eddie Murphy a pass.  I think I declared Candy Cane Lane the worst movie of 2023.  But as a family movie based on its own merits, sure.  Daddy Day Care (2003) is.. fine.  (I also have seen so many awful movies of late, this feels like Casablanca by comparison)

The movie stars Murphy as a guy trying to run a health food team within a processed food company, who loses his job when his project "Veggie-O's Cereal" bombs.  Coming with him is his side-kick, Jeff Garlin.  They recruit their former mail-boy, Steve Zahn, to work with the kids.  Regina King plays Murphy's wife, who has just started working as an attorney.  Anjelica Huston plays the head of a school/ daycare that's run like an intense prep academy.  Lacey Chabert plays her assistant.  Jonathan Katz plays a City employee keeping tabs on the daycare.  Laura Kightlinger is in there.  Kevin Nealon.  Siobhan Fallon Hogan.  And a very small Elle Fanning is one of the kids.

Brian Wilson Merges With The Infinite

Musician and legend, Brian Wilson, has passed.

I still remember my brother getting a Beach Boys record for his birthday when I was probably five.  It was a Greatest Hits, and the pop-surf classics that made oldies radio play.  And we dug it.  

But as a kid, I took the Beach Boys for granted.  Their music was everywhere - absolutely on the radio, at restaurants, and in every fifth commercial when summer rolled around. Like Elvis, they simply were.

It wasn't until college that two folks flipped me from "oldies station Beach Boys" vs Pet Sounds Beach Boys.  One was NathanC, and the other was a fellow named Robb, who was absolutely grooving out to Pet Sounds when I dropped in at his place one afternoon.  Robb was also my compatriot in discussing Phil Spector and The Wall of Sound, so this all lined up pretty neatly.

I'm absolutely one of those guys who thinks Brian Wilson was pretty great, but also one of the great American tragedies.  This is not an original insight, but I don't know how else we can discuss him.  He has a certain genius that was still very much in force when I picked up Smile several years ago, and you always wondered what could have been.  

But mental illness is a real sonuvabitch, and he struggled with his issues for so many years.  His family managed to keep him healthy and making music, and I can't imagine the love and care that took.

Still, what a legacy he left behind.

Go put on Pet Sounds and Smile today, if you can.  And here's the the Wilson family today. 

1950's Watch: Designing Woman (1957)

Watched:  06/10/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincente Minnelli

I was a bit wary of this film as I watched the trailer, but you never know.  

For example, I'd quite liked Woman of the Year, and I thought that was not going to land with me.  But I've been taking a mini-journey through the very limited media lifespan of Dolores Gray, who was mostly a Broadway and West End performer (she's American - she played Annie Oakley in London's Annie Get Your Gun).  She only has, like, five or six movies, total, and Designing Woman (1957) is one of them.  

The story is about a sports reporter (Gregory Peck) who meets a high-end fashion designer (Lauren Bacall) while in California, but it turns out they both live in New York.  After a whirlwind week and marriage, they return to the city and what was going on in their prior lives.  

Turns out a hard-drinking sports writer and a wealthy woman used to more of a salon sort of atmosphere with her pals are somewhat at odds.  It's a deeply heightened "men be like this", "women be like this" clashing of worlds.  

Chabert Watch: Christmas in Rome (2019)

Watched:  06/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  1.5

Director:  Ernie Barbarash 

Job: Tour Guide

Location of story:  Hallmark Rome

new skill:  Not going off the rails

Man:  Sam Page

Job of Man:  Business Man

Goes to/ Returns to:  Man goes to Rome

Event:  Business Deal

Food:  a bunch of Italian stuff I can't spell and/ or remember

So.  (deep breath)  I believe this is both the last Lacey Chabert Hallmark movie and last Chabert Christmas movie I have to watch during ChabertQuest 2025.  

Please clap.

If you haven't been around, we're nearing the end of watching every live-action movie in which Lacey Chabert appears that we could get legitimate access to.  And we're almost done.  It started in November by accident, became intentional in January, and it has been a journey.  

One of my self-imposed rules was that if I had already seen a movie and written it up, I was allowed to skip said movie.  Which is how I skipped The Tree That Saved Christmas.  But if I had seen it and failed to write it up, I had to re-watch it and post on it.  And, I know I watched a good chunk/ all of Christmas in Rome (2019) just this last Christmas while doing other things.  And then just didn't mention it.  I forgot or something.  

So I put this one off til last and was in no rush to prioritize the movie.

Anyway, this movie stars Chabert and Sam Page, who you may remember as Joan's would-be-doctor husband on Mad Men, a role that I am sure he has mixed feelings about at this juncture.  Page plays a Businessman from New York who is sent to Rome, just before the holidays, to look into acquiring a famed Italian company that handmakes high-end plates and bowls or something.  And because it's Rome, it is also *art*.

JLC Watch: Freaky Friday (2003)

Watched:  06/08/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Waters

If you weren't an adult in the 00's, it's hard to imagine how easily mainstream media managed to convince the public that completely random people were now the biggest star in the world and we all had to care about them.  This was a result of the fact that the internet had not yet discovered algorithms and was just force-feeding us content, so whether they were pushing someone on teens or the elderly, we all got the same stuff.  

America was in the middle of occupying Iraq, which had begun four months before the release of Freaky Friday (2003), and as a bit of a newshound at the time, I was often trying to find out wtf was happening.  But every time you tried to get online and look at the news, sites were saying "yeah, war in Iraq that could trigger 1000 years of war with the East, but... look at what Lindsay Lohan's mom said today!".  

I have no negative feelings about Lohan, especially as a teen.  She existed.  But I can't say the same for the de-evolution of news at the dawn of the clickbait era and selling us on the antics of certain celebrities.

Lohan is fine in this movie.  Cute, has a pack-a-day-habit voice pioneered by Jodie Foster and carried on to Emma Stone just a few years later, but...  In my book, Jamie Lee Curtis is putting on a comedy clinic.  Lohan's good!  But with JLC playing a surly teen, Lohan doesn't get to do anything as kooky as JLC.  And I am not sure she has the same presence as Foster in the original film, but those may just be fond memories from 1982 or so when I last watched the movie.

I found this version, though, really, really funny - once it gets started.  And it doesn't suffer from meandering in the manner of 70's-era Disney live-action flicks.  The first ten minutes or so are rough as we watch the leads snipe at each other and get all of the set-up in place - including the shitty younger brother.  But, immediately upon the body swap, the movie works.  I was lol'ing.

2025 audiences might shift uncomfortably about the trigger being a magic fortune cookie.  I'll just leave it at that.

My recollection is that the original movie is a bit more even-sided between the kid and mom not understanding each other, but this one really leans into Lohan's character taking it from all sides before the swap, which initially I found odd, but it does give the story plenty to work with as Mom-in-Kid's body navigates her daughter's day, (the unfair English teacher played by Tobolowsky is particularly a good bit).  And I did appreciate that the script's inclusion of a step-father coming into the picture (Mark Harmon) is played so well.

But...  for comedy... JLC mooning over a boy, frustrated with her punk brother..  it's all pretty solid work and she commits to the bit.  I wish they'd done more with the therapy session stuff, but what we got was good.

Tragically, the movie is also from the era of SoCal Pop-Punk being shoved down our throats, and it wasn't enjoyable at the time and has aged like a banana left out for two solid months.  Thus, I wish I enjoyed the rock band numbers more than I did.  But I didn't, minus JLC clearly really knowing how to play the bit her character plays in the film.  That was cool.

I didn't start this post off to drag Lohan - it was just a weird time for how talent was promoted (remember how we were bombarded with Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie for way too long?), and she had some hard years transitioning to being a grown-assed adult as a result.  But this movie was a key part in her rise to fame and Disney trying to cash in on her popularity.  And you kind of wonder what would have been if Hollywood weren't so full of toxic monsters.

Fortunately, Lohan and JLC are teaming up for a sequel this summer, so maybe she'll get a second shot.  She's been fine in her Netflix movies.

Chabert X-Mas Watch: Family For Christmas (2015)

Mirrorverse Man watches Lacey, while she stares you down

Watched:  06/08/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Amanda Tapping

Job: News reporter/ Housewife

Location of story:  San Francisco and Bay Area 'burbs

new skill:  being a mother

Man:  Tyron Leitso

Job of Man:  Advertising creative

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to alternate timeline

Event:  School Christmas Pageant (very overdecorated)

Food:  Mushrooms and what I think was Captain Crunch

In 2015, Lacey Chabert made four movies, three for Hallmark.  Two of those Hallmark movies were Christmas films.  In 2015, she is on her way to building her own legend.

The first Christmas movie selection for 2015 was A Christmas Melody, the Mariah Carey movie, which we previously covered.  

Our selection today was Family for Christmas (2015),  one of the movies in which Santa is not just a jolly old elf making toys - he's a chaos agent who uses his reality-warping powers to wreak havoc with an unsuspecting person, hoping he can make people hook up.  Santa in Hallmark-Land does not care about toys or children, he cares about making strangers decide to make it.  

Santa is a freak.

Previously, Santa gave Chabert "courage"/ "the inability to stop herself from escalating an already bad situation" in A Wish For Christmas.  This time, Santa finds a perfectly happy career gal/ news reporter (Chabert) who gets a friend request from her college sweetheart she dumped to become a successful reporter.  Meanwhile, she's being offered jobs in NYC, getting the most understanding breakup in Hallmark history, and stealing her assistant's ideas for stories.

Apparently Chabert ponders that Friend Request and what could have been with this ex-boyfriend SO HARD, her pondering becomes a Christmas Wish.  One she did not explicitly make, but Santa still says "yeah, but you really wanted to know".  

Chabert X-Mas Watch: The Christmas Waltz (2020)

no idea why dude looks like he's about to abduct Chabert

Watched:  06/07/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First full time through

Director/ Writer:  Michael Damian

Job: Attorney 

Location of story:  Manhattan

new skill:  Waltzing

Man:  Will Kemp

Job of Man:  Dance instructor

Goes to/ Returns to:  It's all in Manhattan

Event:  The Christmas Dance show

Food:  Wedding cake?  

The curious thing about the Will Kemp/ Chabert movies is that (a) Chabert is *not* a classically trained dancer, and (b) Kemp is, like, 9 inches taller than her.  So it's not a traditional ballroom couple.  But it does fulfill some vision of a graceful man taking the audience's stand-in in Chabert and making sure you CAN dance.  And isn't that what it's all about?

The Christmas Waltz (2020) is about power-lawyer Chabert figuring out her perfect life and Christmas wedding are not happening when her absolute shitheel of a fiancé decides to take a promotion and move to Boston less than four weeks before their wedding.  I mean...  honestly, guy.

Chabert has signed them up for dance lessons for their wedding dance, but winds up using the lessons for herself, remembering she loved to dance as a child and walked away from it to lead the perfect life her fiancé just poured gasoline on, and then tossed a match.  

Comedy Watch: Summer of 69 (2025)

Watched:  06/06/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jillian Bell

So, Hulu has sort of decided to corner the market on horny teen comedies and stoner comedies through the American High company.  

We have a six-degrees-of-separation connection here as someone we know worked on the film, and I wanted to check it out.

This is a "not aimed at me" movie, and that's cool.  I'm a 50-year-old dude, and not a young woman.  But I still found it pretty funny.   But, yeah, this is a movie that seems to be speaking to the awkwardness of being a teen girl - especially a "good girl" teen girl, something I am unlikely to ever be.  But it's not like everyone was speaking Romanian, so I basically got it.