Chabert Christmas Watch: She's Making a List (2025)

Watched:  12/06/2025

Format:  Hallmark Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stacey N. Harding

Job: Spy for the Naughtylist

Location of story:  Unclear but LA?/ Snowy generic USA

new skill: Empathy

Man: Andrew Walker

Job of Man: Restaurant consultant

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to?

Event: Christmas Eve

Food: dessert pizza

Here you go, Randolph.

For a while, actor Lacey Chabert has been tapped The Queen of Hallmark Christmas.   At the start of 2025, Hallmark signed an exclusive contract with Chabert, and as far as I know, the only such contract ever signed by the media concern, locking in talent.  What numbers they had on hand to drive that decision must have been pretty interesting.

This year, Chabert would go on to star in a Halloween movie,  this movie - She's Making a List (2025) , and in January, she's starring in a movie about being stranded in paradise.  She has both her own product line in Hallmark stores, and Keepsake - a line of ornaments at Hallmark - released a Lacey Chabert ornament.  Not a "here's a Star Trek character" ornament, just a Lacey Chabert ornament.  

Just before starting on this post, NathanC sent me an article from Variety that states Chabert is filming a Hallmark movie at Disney World for Christmas 2026.  So, she's doing okay, if you're wondering.  

So, for Hallmark and Chabert both, a LOT was riding on the film.  Would all this investment pay off? 

For weeks they've been promoting the movie heavily, maybe to the detriment of other Hallmark movies, but also - you gotta make sure your investment pays off.  

Well, I have no idea what the viewership was or how that even gets calculated in late 2025.  So it comes down to  is the movie worth watching?  Was it better than the usual Hallmark fare?  And...  did Chabert wind up in a generic Hallmark movie about a Big City Gal winding up in Small Town America where she learns the meaning of Christmas? 

Chabert plays Isabella, who is a sort of chief investigator for a company that has the contract from The North Pole to check up on/ audit kids for the Naughty or Nice List.  She was an orphan and was hired by the company where she swiftly moved up the ranks, praised for her efficiency and all-business attitude.  Isabella breaks the fourth wall, addressing the camera to get important exposition across - and the device is kind of entertaining in a Hallmark movie.  

The company is run by a guy who feels maybe very-of-the-moment as a cross between an entertainment company exec and a tech exec.   And, he lets Isabella know she's up for a promotion, but Giuseppe is also in the running - and Giuseppe is hilariously played by Alessandro Miro, who was better than he needed to be in last year's The Santa Class.  

Chabert is assigned to a kid who could tilt either way, Charlie (Cadence Compton), a girl who is a magician (no, like, card tricks) who lost her mother about a year before.  Chabert makes her way through a variety of disguises as she observes Charlie from a safe distance and would like to just mark the girl off as naughty, but something is off.  

She meets Charlie's father (Andrew Walker) by accident, and he asks her out.  As a way to get better eyes on Charlie, she accepts.  

Anyway - the movie never quite feels like Hallmark of old, even as a career-driven gal decides that maybe her employer is (and has been) wrong for doing what it's doing, and thanks to her experience of the movie decides she wants to do better.  It's a bit goofier than the usual way that formula plays out.  Happily, the movie eschews the usual tropes, like baking scenes, laboriously pondering Christmas past over a cup of cocoa, etc...  It's a pretty tight movie that with more polish would be welcome on any streamer.  It's even also got some subversive commentary cooked in when it comes to how the corporation works and what it's doing with AI and algorithms.  

And, in fact, it wonders out loud if the idea of a Nice and Naughty List isn't just a bit cruel to kids who are just kids acting out.  After all, we aren't ever getting the full picture of what's going on with anyone when we want to write them off.  Maybe helping instead of punishing is a better road?

I don't know who Stacy N. Harding is (our director) but she manages to get what I think is the best performance I've seen out of Andrew Walker, and the kid actor who plays Charlie is fantastic - something I do not say ever about Hallmark kid actors.  Someone needs to get her out of basic-cable-land.  

Is it stupid?

I thought this movie was part of this year's trend toward quality over quantity, reinventing the old Hallmark tropes, and taking the leash off the the movies a bit more.  Yes, they'll always be PG at most, but they can still do jokes.  And some of the comedy in this was really solid.  I mean, they lean into corporations listing their address in Delaware as a punchline, and it works.

A lot of movies tend to lean into the corporate spin or paramilitary spin on Santa and his elves these days, and it's a sign of the times.  We already had a movie earlier this year with Christmas Angels as some sort of Christmas corporation.

This take wasn't overly cynical or kind of sad - especially as Chabert basically blows it all up in the end.  

But mostly - the movie moves as a brisk pace and has stakes, something I do not associate with Hallmark all of the time.  They don't just wander aimlessly, or fill time needlessly.  The character growth feels earned.  The ending is maybe a tad rushed, but we're at the point where we know where this is headed.  

Did Chabert earn her paycheck?  Yeah.  She was more or less playing the straight-man, even as she put on various disguises.  It was the character.  But I do wish Hallmark would let her play unhinged sometime.  She's great with an under-the-breath zinger as a straight-man, but she's particularly funny in her early work when she just cuts loose.  And it feels like Hallmark is allowing women to now be zany in their movies.  Let Chabert be funny!

I'm not sure this was the best movie this year - but it was a solid entry for the year for Hallmark and for Chabert.  Whether they got enough eyeballs on this movie or not is their problem, I guess.   But Chabert is still one of the best Hallmark has to trot out and generally liked by her the channel's audience, and I think this movie played well to what that audience is looking for.