Hallmark Holiday Watch: Three Wisest Men (2025)

Watched:  11/16/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Three Wisest Men (2025) is the third film in the very popular (for Hallmark) Wise Men series.  We previously covered the first and second installments.  

The problem with this movie is that we've established not just three characters, but their mom, spouses and partners, children, etc...  and it is not a small cast.  And everyone needs to get a plotline.  So it's a lot of movie.  I couldn't help but notice that this one was an "extended cut", which means whatever aired with commercials had less movie, and I have to assume that made this even more of a jumble.  

From a business perspective, it's a fascinating peek into how Hallmark now functions like an old-school studio with their constellation of stars.  

Back in 2022 when the first one of these aired, the appeal was seeing three Hallmark Hunks Male Leads together in a movie as brothers.  The plot was essentially Three Men and a Baby, a very popular 1980's comedy.  And while there's a romance in there somewhere, it was indicative of a shift as we were doing more of an ensemble thing.  It was safe, sure, using a very proven formula, right down to the charm being casting three known male actors out of their depth.  In fact, it relied on the guarantee that Hallmark fans knew Paul Campbell, Tyler Hynes, and Andrew Walker.  And, if you didn't know them, they were already favored Hallmark talent and maybe you would like them here.  And maybe in their other Hallmark movies.

The movies are written by the actor Paul Campbell and his sometimes co-star Kimberly Sustad, who is one of the better Hallmark stars, and who has realized that the real money is made having additional pieces of the thing (and probably staking out other opportunities should the roles dry up).  Further, the leads have a piece of the Executive Producing action - ie: they're getting a real cut.

To ensure some additional success, Campbell and Sustad brought in Russell Hainline who wrote last year's oddball Netflix hit Hot Frosty.  But his specialty is writing comedy at Hallmark that is... funny.  Not like...  "whoops, they slipped on the ice" or "isn't this awkward?", but... like... jokes.  He was also on Sustad's 2025 acting entry Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper!.  Which was actually kind of funny.  

Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! was also co-written by star and executive producer Robert Buckley.   Anyway, it's nice to know there's a pipeline for the talent and *also* a platform they can use once they have Hallmark's trust in order to do something a bit different from the time-tested formula movies of weary city gals meeting their high school sweetheart who is now a guy with a duck jacket and stubble.  

And the more Hallmark swings for the fences, the more likely eventually they'll make, like, a regular pretty good movie that normal people would enjoy.  We're getting closer every year!  

This movie is very clearly meant to wrap up plot lines started in the first film and give us one more shot at spending time with these guys.  But it's also clear we either make this an ongoing TV show or wrap it up, because it's hard to keep coming back and make folks' continuing issues humorous and not troubling.  

Walker is freaking out about having twins on the way.  Campbell is accidentally sabotaging his own wedding planning.  Hynes is offered a chance to move to San Francisco and have a cool job, but he'd be leaving his family behind in Seattle.  Also, his ex from the first movie (Ali Liebert) is working at the new company, and he reasonably feels weird about that as he's with the girl from Movie #2.

Meanwhile, a soon-to-be father-in-law arrives and is, of course, an asshole (Lochlyn Munro, fresh off Peacemaker Season 2).  And 

Really, what I think the Hallmark movies borrowing from other movies need to do is realize that less is more.  This movie had so much going on, there's a whole bird plotline that just abruptly ends - and the problem with that is that every story arc should be pulling toward your resolution once it's introduced.  We just get the bird back so they don't have to talk about it any more, but the play was to have the father-in-law forgive Paul Campbell and *then* the bird comes back in that moment.  It would have saved us some unnecessary business.

And there's probably four or five things like that in this movie.  And the last movie that felt like that over at Hallmark was Haul Out The Halloween, the third Haul Out the Holly movie.  So something is going on in how these movies are being written or approved, and I really don't have any educated cases what that is other than a lack of time to get it right at the script stage.

Anyway, it's fine.  The idea was a 90 minute hang with familiar characters and that's what was delivered.

I think Tyler Hynes should have gone for Ali Liebert.  Yowza.