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| what do you know? I watched this on the 2nd anniversary of the movie's release |
Watched: 11/18/2025
Format: Hallmark
Viewing: Second
Director: Dustin Rikert
Job: Doctor
Location of story: Somewhere in Scotland
new skill: Lording over peasants
Man: James Robinson
Job of Man: Groundskeeper
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to
Event: Some underwhelming solstice thing, a banger of a party and a ball
Food: liquor, really
So, I thought I'd covered this movie because of the image I used for my 2023 Hallmark report when I was moving too fast assembling my ChabertQuest2025 list. But I had not. So here we go.
This is a movie about a naive American doctor and her family who inherit a Scottish castle. However, the diabolical groundskeeper seduces and bamboozles the doctor into falling for him so that he may claim ownership of the lands he's worked since he was a child. That same labor presumably led to his father's early demise, and this is his revenge. With dead eyed smiles, he earns the trust of the stressed out family, offering to take care of everything and let them live off the fat of their inheritance.
Unfortunately the movie ends just after he's successfully bedded the heiress doctor but before we can put his nefarious schemes into motion, so we never see that part.
This is a movie that makes the 2009 Folger Christmas advert seem positively chaste. Scott Wolf (Party of Five) and Lacey Chabert (Party of Five) play the adult children of a former Scottish Dutchess who find she ran away from her duties to become a folk-rock singer. Now the whole family is reconnecting in Scotland as the mom is the inheritor of the family estate, and she's offering it to Wolf and Chabert.
From the moment they land, Chabert and Wolf - who live in LA and SF so don't see each other often - have eyes only for each other. Wolf immediately begins ignoring his wife (Kellie Blaise) and the two siblings spend every minute together trying to reconnect.
At the film's end, Chabert is hurt by Wolf's decision to stay in Scotland and run the estate, and one is not left wondering why she feels so abandoned as he seems to recommit himself to his wife. But seeing no other way to be together, she returns to the Castle instead of going back to SF.
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| no no. You're playing siblings again. Back up a pace. |
(take 3)
This is a movie about something called a "Dirty Reindeer", which is not a disgusting euphemism. Unless you want it to be.
(take 4)
A Merry Scottish Christmas (2023) is a movie about a mother who guilt-trips her kids into coming to Scotland for Christmas.
It's a Hallmark travel movie, a popular genre, wherein a woman over 30 goes to Europe and bangs a local and feels it is very authentic. In these movies everyone loves Americans, the three or so things everyone knows about another country are treated like the deepest lore, and it's often shot not at all in that country. Example, this movie extolling the virtues of Scotland is filmed in County Kildare, Ireland and asks Irish people to do their best Scottish accent.
It's about a mom who ran away from her role as a Dutchess, blah blah blah. The kids have to wander around and try and figure out if living in a @#$%ing castle with free servants is the right move. It has the usual "let's bake a local item" thing, and says stuff about Scotland I'll just accept to be true because I've never been there, and don't currently know any Scots I could ask.
Chabert plays a doctor with her own GP clinic, Wolf plays a busy accountant and a wife who is unhappy, and their mother is played by Fiona Bell.
There is a creepy groundskeeper (James Robinson - actually Scottish!) who should be scaring the shit out of the whole family, but instead they love him. And, man, this guy shows every red flag in the book, just following Chabert everywhere so he just happens to show up. And flatter her professional skills in one way by asking for her help when he clearly just bruised his wrist, and then negs her by making her double-check her work by going to his mom's clinic where it is clearly stated there is no X-Ray (not a plot point, somehow).
The highlight of the film is the party where Hallmark star Will Kemp shows up, they throw in some jokes for Chabert fans who've seen the two paired before, and it seems like they're having an actual good time.
I did wonder how Chabert felt opposite Wolf who is a pretty solid actor. Like, someone was kind of meeting her energy level and the scenes are mostly very watchable and the two work much better together than Chabert and her supposed love interest here.
Is it any good? Yeah, it's fine. I mean, I absolutely hate the writing and acting (dead eyed enthusiasm) of the love interest, but there's enough other stuff going on, it's fine. Fake-Scotland is picturesque, and Wolf's wife's hair is amazing.
Chabert is given fairly good stuff to do in this movie, like having understandable doubts that don't seem ginned up. I just don't believe she connected so much with Man as she did with hanging with her family and the promise of a big-ass castle with staff and having kind of a guaranteed clientele thanks to the only other doctor approaching retirement age. Also, she'll probably buy herself an X-Ray machine with her Dutchess money.
Also, the line of sight in this make it looks like Chabert and the wife are looking at each other longingly while Goofus there on the left is checking out Scott Wolf.
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