Hallmark Watch: A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025)

Watched:  11/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Hallmark fans are never happy.  And maybe with good reason.  There's a contingent that seems to get mad if anything actually happens in the movies, and others who get mad if it's not a particular kind of movie. Which leaves Hallmark in a pickle as they can't keep making the same movies over and over from a decade or two ago, but anything *new* is also a threat to part of their audience.

But, all that matters is if people watch, and apparently they are watching.  And, given the viewership habits of Hallmark viewers - which means a lack of awareness of debuts of new movies, watching later, catching the movies on the app or whenever...  that's a pretty good turn out of viewership across streaming and cable.

This year it seems Hallmark is cramming more value into fewer movies to drive up advertising during broadcast and draw eyeballs to the app.  This is opposite the decade-ago strategy of going for quantity over quality - ie: they chose not to release 75 new movies in a single Christmas and hope the novelty kept folks locked in.  But it's a risk when you make new kinds of movies and fewer of them, and give people a chance to tune away.

But the new approach means they wound up with A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025), which is about all I had energy for as the weekend post-surgery wound down.  

A lot of money went into this movie, bringing in stars like former-Superman Brandon Routh as "Cal" (yeah, I know), former Mean Girls star and Hallmark stalwart Jonathan Bennett as Dylan (the middle kid) and Eden Sher as Emory, the kid sister.  It's three adult children of a couple who want to take everyone on a European Christmas River Cruise.  And, in the way of these things, all three children have different challenges.  And it's largely (or completely) filmed in Austria and Germany?

Cal recently got divorced (as did Routh IRL), Dylan is trying to get engaged to his longtime partner who is acting weird, and Emory is let go from her "steady" data analyst gig just as she heads out the door.  In any other movie, each of these is the whole plot.  Here, it's their defining thing, but they're all essentially carrying subplots that maybe are jointly undercooked in the 82 minute runtime.

SPOILERS

The movie hinges on no one saying what is happening with them in order to maintain the holiday peace, which is a very real thing.  To a degree.  

But at some point the dramatic irony wears thin in both real life and in this movie.  Like, you didn't murder someone, Cal... Just come clean.  But at the same time, I am well aware, even (or especially) in family, no one tells everyone everything.  And as parents age, they get *very* weird about what they will reveal about their health and when.  Which is kind of heavy for Hallmark.

In this way, this movie was not a huge amount of fun.  I get it.  It was trying to capture something honest about family and the way life just works with the complexity of the holidays and our loved ones.  And it even nailed the idea that when you come clean, it allows everyone to pivot and actually work to make sure you're having the best possible holiday.  

In this case, the looming cloud is that Dylan's partner won't agree to marriage *in this moment*.  This is, as we deduce, because Dylan's parents have turned his partner into their neurologist and dropped the veil of doctor/ patient confidentiality around just the partner as the father is dealing with early Parkinson's disease.  

It seems lousy to do to your kid and their partner, but I won't say it's implausible.  And, the movie even ends with the couple agreeing that went poorly and they need to work on communication.  

I'd never seen Eden Sher before, but she's pretty funny and I expect we'll see more of her.

Kudos to Brandon Routh who took what could have been a boring, one note jock part and made it feel very real.  That dude is largely underrated.

But by the last 30 minutes of this movie I was just irritated with all of the characters.  You knew where this was headed, and it would not stop playing the long game.  It feels like there was a better movie here where everything is on the table and the last forty-five minutes is the "yes, and then...?" bit that could have been interesting.

But good for all of them for getting to go to Europe and have a good time.

I assume Hallmark reddit will hate this one, as it's not a whispy tale of wildly red-flagged romance in Hicksville, USA.  But we'll see.  I don't really think a complaint about varying vibes and tones to the movie holds much water as I think that's kind of the real deal when stuck with people for several days.