Watched: 06/04/2025
Format: Hallmark
Viewing: Second?
Director: Mariah Carey
Job: Unemployed/ diner waitress/ Would-be-Fashion Designer
Location of story: Silver Falls, Ohio
new skill: Giving up
Man: Brennan Elliot
Job of Man: Elementary School music teacher
Goes to/ Returns to: Returns to
Event: Christmas concert/ Snowflake Pageant
Food: I don't know that they had a food they harped on
The two Queens of Christmas in one forgotten movie!
Chabert stars! Carey directs?
I'd seen this one during COVID lockdown, but, honestly, I was pretty drunk. Plus, I blocked out a lot of what I watched during lockdown, so it was kind of like seeing it for the first time.
I re-read my original post on this movie, and I agree with most of it. It is very fixated on high school and a girl leaving and everyone rubbing it in her face that she had to come home after (checks notes) her husband died and her business failed.
So, yeah, being a jerk about that seems right. As we've learned in the last decade, people are the worst.
I also still think the movie is very thin, and that's a screenplay issue, but also I'm surprised I was so surprised by this the first time. It's kinda par for the course for a Hallmark movie to basically provide a set-up and then people shoot the shit for forty-five minutes, there's a small bit of tension about the two would-be-lovers maybe not getting it on, and then they throw caution and financial security to the wind and go for it. I'd argue that when there's more to it, that's the outlier.
But, yeah, it's about Chabert giving up LA to come home where she has what seems like a 2700 sq foot Queen Anne waiting for her in perfect condition. Her daughter has a gift for singing and poetry, but is sad they've left LA.
Chabert enrolls her daughter in her old school only to find that her high school nemesis, Mariah Carey, is there and the Queen Bee of the PTA, etc... and a real piece of work. But Santa works there as the janitor?
Anyway, I dunno. It's fine. Brennan Elliot plays Man, and he does his usual thing where he seems like he's making up his own dialogue, which honestly improves his movies by >45%. He's cast as an elementary school music teacher, and it's absolutely hilarious. This dude is not teaching kids to play the recorder and Do-Re-Mi.
I think the things to notice are more that Carey clearly had one shot - and one shot only - she thought worked for her, and so she uses it every time she's on screen (she's facing screen right, and the camera is just below eye-level, looking up. She uses it in videos, too).
It did strike me how unhinged the conflict at the end of the movie is - that Chabert's friend doesn't just pick up the phone and call her, but flies all the way to BFE, Ohio to see Chabert AT CHRISTMAS instead of calling her. Or that, for reasons, Chabert can't design clothes in Ohio.
Is it stupid?
Sigh. No. It's a cute little movie that soaks in tropes, and that's fine. Anything dumb in it is standard-issue Hallmark.
I don't actually believe Mariah Carey put on her puffy director's pants and got out a bullhorn to direct this, but I imagine it was an interesting set. That Carey doesn't really acknowledge this movie and didn't even have the little girl sing a signature Mariah Carey song is an interesting choice. Oh, here's the Daily Mail with a scandal article from the time the movie was being made.
And, yeah, that the movie curves everyone toward giving up and soaking in mediocrity is... a choice (is Chabert going to just be a junior waitress at a small-town coffee shop now? It's a fine job, but someone just offered her a whole line to create for a major retailer...). But it's fine.
Chabert carries this movie when the actor playing her daughter isn't doing a better-than-expected job. She maybe treats the movie like it's better than it is, and that's not a bad thing.
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