Coen Bros. Western Watch: True Grit (2010)

Watched:  08/06/2026

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Coen Bros.

Shortly after watching Supergirl, which was based on a comic that was clearly an homage to the novel and/or movies of True Grit, I decided to listen to the audiobook to better remember details and ponder the differences.  After, I suggested to Jamie that she read through my paperback.  The book is short, and Jamie reads about a book a week, I think.

And, lo, it came to pass that Jamie asked to re-watch the 2010 movie of True Grit, which I had not seen since the theater.  Fortunately, I'd picked up the BluRay on the cheap at some point in recent years.  

The Coens' work has often been homage.  Miller's Crossing is Dashiell Hammett.  Big Lebowski is Raymond Chandler stoned to the gills.  A Serious Man is the book of Job.  O Brother, Where Art Thou? is The Odyssey.  But they have done straight adaptations, like The Lady Killers.

True Grit (2010) is most famous as a John Wayne film, but is a book by Charles Portis.  In 2010, this version was well-received, I believe.  I recall seeing it and liking it quite a bit, and was impressed with this young girl, Hailee Steinfeld, who played Mattie Ross, and recall I hoped she'd get more work.  (spoilers:  she did.)

Island Watch: Eden (2025) / The Galapagos Affair - Satan Came to Eden (2013)

Eden (2025)

Watched:  07/25/2026

Format:  Library Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:   Ron Howard

This is a movie about living in a place that's pretty good, but the place suddenly gets overrun by people who read an article saying the place was cool.  Because the people who moved there, wrongly believing themselves cool (and therefore heirs to the cool place), bring their suckiness to the place - the transitive powers of their suckiness, large numbers and insistence on changing the nature of what made the place cool to begin with, make that place which was once cool now suck.  

Eventually the place sucks so much, helped along with the participation of government stooges hoping for money and glamour, things in the place become straight up bleak.  

In short, this is the story of Austin, Texas.

When Eden (2025) was released, reviews were kind of all over the place, but I was curious.  I don't tend to think of Howard as a director who does grittier movies about sordid topics like sex and violence.  The movie had a fascinating cast - Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas, Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney...  A movie requiring minimal FX, and where shit gets very real as people scrape for survival in what is now an infamously inhospitable living.  And turn on each other.

LA Movie Watch: Under the Silver Lake (2018)

Watched:  05/01/2026

Format:  DVD - library

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Robert Mitchell

Under the Silver Lake (2018) is an interesting movie.  For what it sets out to do, I think it succeeds.  I am not, however, particularly a fan of movies that basically say "you'll get it when you watch it again and everything at the beginning will mean something different now that you know the end".  I mean, it's fun in a way, but I ain't got time for that.

SPOILERS

It's a movie that is having great fun encoding the hidden jokes and meaning in the movie while being about someone who is falling down the well of conspiracy theory and seeing hidden messages in everything.  From an academic exercise - it's no doubt an interesting magic trick, what writer/ director David Robert Mitchell is doing.

I guess I'm kind of caught on the "...and so what?" of it all by the end.  Like, it's a neat trick.  But...  to what end? 

Deciphering what was actually happening and why could absolutely be something one could try.  And maybe the movie even could have spoken to the moment as, in 2018, QAnon was still a force, and America was fully descending into seeing hidden meaning in everything (we just live there now). 

Stupid Valentine's Watch: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

they tried to combine the "Love, Actually" poster design with an Apatow design

Watched:  02/14/2026

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Two time stamps on Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) stick out for me.  

The first was that I had my first chuckle at 22:00 and change.  In a 2 hour movie.  This did not bode well for the "comedy" I'd put on.

The second was that I paused the movie to do something thinking there was maybe 10 minutes left and there was still 54 minutes of movie, and (a) I could not believe how long this movie felt and (b) I had the passing thought that this was the sort of movie critical milksops like Owen Gleiberman used to wet themselves over in the 90's.  Movies that think they have something to say, some poetic statement about life and love, but are just absolutely hollow and maybe kind of rotten inside.

Gleiberman, then plaguing Entertainment Weekly, gave it an A.*  

When people say "what happened to romantic comedies?" - this is what happened to them.  We decided what rom-coms needed to be were bleak melodramas starring Steve Carrell as a sad sack who keeps taking hits someone thought were funny, but just seem kind of sad, really.  Yes, we all liked The 40 Year Old Virgin, but that was a movie where he was surrounded by really funny people and managed by Judd Apatow.  Here, he's just miserable for two hours.  

Chabert Freeze Watch: All of My Heart (2015)

Watched:  01/24/206

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Peter DeLuise

I am logging everything.  Normally I wouldn't have mentioned this re-watch, but this is what we put on while we were waiting to see if we were going to lose power on Saturday night.  

As your foremost Chabert movie expert, this is definitely one of the better written parts she's been given at Hallmark, and she works very well with co-star Brennan Elliot.  

If you're worried you're about to lose power and need to put something on while you panic mildly, this is perfectly fine.

Hallmark Watch: Frozen In Love (2018)

Watched:  01/21/2026

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Scott Smith

Here in real life, we're prepping for a winter storm coming this weekend, and I knew I was planning to finish watching Mademoiselle Fifi in the evening, so we threw on this RomCom from Hallmark, Frozen In Love (2018).  

The film is not a Christmas movie, but the stuff Hallmark programs, post-holidays, to fill the winter months.  Yes, there is snow and ice and ice hockey in this movie.  No, I don't know anything about hockey.

Holiday Goofiness Watch: North Pole Nutrias (2002) and A Meowy Christmas (2017)

Watched:  NPN  12/07/2025, MC  12/14/2025

Format:  YouTube/ YouTube

Viewing:  First for both

Director:  Rick Dealup/ Steve Rudzinski

As we near Christmas, we did two quick watches with Dug and K to get ourselves in the Christmas Spirit.  The first was North Pole Nutrias (2002), a puppet-show running about 26 minutes and created by New Orleans-based pair Quintron and Miss Pussycat.  The second was a little indie movie out of Pittsburgh called A Meowy Christmas from 2018.  This one runs about 55 minutes, but feels like it's about 6 days.

While watching North Pole Nutrias, I learned not everyone knows what a Nutria is - which is a large-ish rodent that lives along rivers and near water.  They've invaded the waterways for New Orleans and cause enough problems that there's been a bounty on the animals.  But!

North Pole Nutrias is, apparently, a bit of a holiday tradition for the hep cats of New Orleans, and I get it.  It's a puppet show, shot on tape, and has some distinct vibes of music and art scenes of the late 90's.  Kind of an embracing of the media we'd grown up on - specials like Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas - but made with an intentional lo-fi feel and hand-made aesthetic.  Think Pee-Wee's Playhouse, that you know through the glossed up version and are just used to.  

Chabert Watch: Slightly Single in LA (2013)

Ah, the "look at our galaxy of stars" rom-com poster.  Always a promising sign.

Watched:  12/12/2025

Format DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

Editor's note:  we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography.  I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online (one way or another).  

Ugh.  

File this under "this movie was never aimed at me" but also "never write fiction that is a thinly veiled version of a story about yourself".

Christie Will Wolf (here listed as Christie Will) is the writer/ director/ producer of Slightly Single in LA (2013).  These days she's a prolific director and producer of Hallmark movies, and I've seen some of them in whole or part.  She also was the mastermind behind 2011's Holiday Heist, one of the hardest-to-watch movies viewed during ChabertQuest 2025.  

The movie is a rom-com/ would-be Sex in the City about the foibles of a group of women and their token gay friend (Jonathan Bennet).  The story follows around Chabert's character, Dale, who has had bad luck in love.  But what's played for comedy is merely comedy shaped but at no time made me so much as crack a smile.  The movie feels like it's about someone with terrible risk analysis and decision making skills.  But the movie is written, directed and produced by one person - who seems totally unaware that the characters are not just unrelatable, but deeply unsympathetic.  

This lead character sucks.  But she sucks the least of all of the characters, so... yay?

Chabert Holiday Rewatch: The Tree That Saved Christmas (2014)

My original rules for ChabertQuest 2025 included not re-watching and re-posting on movies I'd already seen and written up.  Somehow it bothered me that I didn't rewatch this one even though I'd previously seen The Tree That Saved Christmas (2014) and wrote it up back during lockdown.  

All I remembered was that the snow was pretty much non-existent (in Vermont in December) and maybe you could see some blankets thrown down to double as snow.  So, I decided to give it one more whirl to make sure no Chabert-stone was left unturned during ChabertQuest.  

This may have aired on Hallmark, but, if so, it's a small, indie movie that was licensed to Hallmark, which was their model for a while.  These days, I think they own a lot more of the movies that they air.  Thus, older movies like this are out there, but not officially Hallmark at this point.  

This movie arrives in Year 2 of Chabert making movies for Hallmark-type outfits.  She'd made Matchmaker Santa in 2013, and by 2014 was in A Royal Christmas, which is kind of considered a Hallmark classic by Hallmark nerds, and is arguably the real start of Chabert's rise to Hallmark supremacy.  In 2014, for good or ill, she also made this movie.

Chabert Holiday Watch: Matchmaker Santa (2012)

Watched:  11/20/2025

Format:  UP Faith and Family

Viewing:  First

Director:  Davis S. Cass Sr.

Job: Baker

Location of story:  Somewhere in California?  Outside of San Francisco

new skill:  Elfing

Man:  Adam Mayfield

Job of Man:  Bitch Boy to a CEO

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  Christmas tree lighting ceremony

Food:  Cookies

Editor's note: I was unable to find this movie during ChabertQuest2025, but saw it was now available on "UP Faith and Family", and so got a 7 day free trial.

So, new to me and not a Hallmark movie, exactly.  This movie is about a Santa who will stop at literally nothing to make sure Lacey Chabert and her boyfriend break up so that he may force her into a relationship with someone else.  Kris Kringle will bend the very laws of nature, create life, destroy roads...  

This Santa is mad with power.

Anyway, for a long time, and maybe still, a lot of the movies on Hallmark were technically independent movies.  I am unclear how it works now, but basically Hallmark would help fund movies in exchange for North American distribution.  But after X amount of time, these movies were back in the hands of the producers.  And so it was I now am enjoying a 7-day trial of the UP Faith and Family Network.

Part of how Hallmark had so many movies in the years where it seemed like a factory cranking out way too many movies, this was the trick.  Hallmark was essentially licensing very cheap indie movies, and part of them funding those movies was that Hallmark was given script approval for kicking in some percent of the film's budget.  

And, thus, the sameness of Hallmark.  They managed to pull off low-risk/ high-reward for years and people learned to write for them.

Thus, Matchmaker Santa (2012) is also, technically, Chabert's first Hallmark Christmas movie.  So, bit of trivia for you.

But you want to know about Santa and his unstoppable interest in getting people to hook up.

Hallo-Watch: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Watched:  10/22/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eli Craig

Ha!  I had zero idea what this was.  I just googled "Halloween Horror Comedy" and this came up on every list, so I gave it a spin.

I don't want to spoil this for anyone, but I'll say...  if you think the first twenty minutes are a little awkward or slow, hang in there.  There are absolute looney tunes moments in this that had me laughing so hard I missed the next minute.  Maybe that's me!  But I get why people love this movie.  

It's not perfect, but for a movie that knows "okay, you get it, we're out" just under the 90 minute mark, it's kinda ideal.  

Hallo-Watch: Hereditary (2018)

Watched:  10/12/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ari Aster

I really liked Midsommar by the same director, and I'd heard about 75% good things about Hereditary (2018) and maybe 25% meh to bad.  

Alas, the only scary thing in this movie is the pacing.   I get trying to build a mood, but holy cats, the mood should not be "for the love of Mike, get on with it".  The two hour run time felt like more than three.  And it just wasn't my bag, baby.  

I guess maybe if I hadn't already seen Midsommar, this might have been more effective, but that is not how things transpired.  Frankly, I was shocked at the audacity of Aster to have two movies with such similar endings back to back.  

The premise is fine, I guess.  Weird, controlling mother dies.  Daughter is accidentally killed.  Whoops, there's a secret cult worshipping an off-brand demon who has inhabited the daughter/ is merged with her? and now, in a ghostly fashion, slowly bothers this family to death.  And it's one of those movies where the evil wins (dramatic music).  Which would mean something if I cared what happened to any single character is this movie.  Temu Satan is going to take over the world because of these dopes?  I guess we got what we paid for.

I think the thing we're supposed to be impressed by are moods and the kooky connections we see, like Charlie, the girl, meaningfully cutting the head off a dead bird.  And oh boy, will decapitation ever be a motif.  Or her wanting to build effigies (much as her mother does in her own way).  

The selling point is supposed to be the family trauma.  Which, okay.  But... I didn't know these people at any point when they weren't brooding or gnashing their teeth or both.  So that's it - that's how I know them.  Unhappy people who become increasingly unhappy.

Meanwhile, the music is doing a lot of heavy lifting to insist scenes are intense or scary as we just kinda sit there as an audience waiting for the next piece of movie plot track to get laid down.  

I dunno, I just feel like I've seen one too many cult movies, and this one sort of just was that mixed with the 2010's horror trend of "the unknown" bothering nice white folks in their semi-rural house.  I didn't care about what was happening at any given moment, which is a weird way to feel when you're watching a movie.  If I'd turned it off and read the Wikipedia synopsis, I think I would have gotten the same amount out of the experience.

 

G Watch: Shin Godzilla (2016)

Watched:  08/16/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Third, I think

Director:  Shinji Higuchi, Hideaki Anno

Shin Godzilla (2016) is currently enjoying a theatrical re-release because, I guess, why not?  Godzilla Minus One was supposed to be in theaters for a week, and wound up playing for months and making crazy bank compared to original estimates, and then landed a much deserved Academy Award.  

Yes, Shin Godzilla is also in the process of being released on 4K disc, and, look, kids....  there's something your favorite blogger would sure like to open on Christmas morning.  

I will never not tell this story, so here goes:  PaulT, Jamie and myself went to a mid-day screening of Shin Godzilla at the old Alamo Ritz, I think in January of 2017.  We were excited, the place was almost sold out in the middle of the day...  it was a whole scene.  Then the movie started and a piercing tone hit the theater.

This tone.   1kHz test tone.  

They paused the movie and the manager came out and said "has anyone seen this before?"  A few hands went up.  "Is this supposed to be happening?"  No.  "Ok!"  So she disappeared.  We hung out for a while.

Apparently the distributor had sent out their digital copies with 1k tone and there was nothing the Drafthouse could do. So I think we got out money back and went to Shakespeare's nextdoor for a beer.

Anyway - I've seen the movie since.  But not since seeing Godzilla Minus One.  Or spending COVID lockdown watching every single live-action Godzilla movie.  

First - this one isn't for the kids.  It's a movie that happens to have a Godzilla in it as a stand-in for any disaster, but in this case, it was pretty specifically the Fukushima nuclear accident that hit Japan in 2011.  I think Shin Godzilla is a genuinely really, really good movie when it comes to the challenge of bureaucracy and systems built to ensure safety by way of democratic processes, something I'm pretty familiar with after spending a lifetime in state-funded higher education,  State government and, recently, local government.  That a single decision must pass through up to five levels and reach a "final decider" to do the obvious, and that person is hopelessly compromised by politics, optics and party machinery has real world consequences.  

2010's Watch: Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

Watched:  06/29/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Writer/ Director:  Drew Goddard

It's possible in fifteen or twenty years, this movie will be found and puzzled over as featuring folks who are now established stars, mixed with longtime stars.  Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) features Cynthia Erivo in what I will say should have been a break-out performance and her entree into film stardom, rather than her having to wait until Wicked.  She's clearly already a star.  Lewis Pullman is here.  As are Chris Hemsworth, John Hamm, Jeff Bridges and a not-50 Shades-ing Dakota Johnson.  

But this movie came out and tanked.  That's neither here nor there, but it has meant that it's not exactly on the forefront of people's minds as few eyes saw the movie in the theater and it's not found an audience on home video. 

What's odd is that Metacritic comes in at a mid-range-ish 60, and the audience score is a generous 71.  And yet... no one saw this.

However, maybe in the same way of The Last of Sheila from 1973, it will find an audience that will make sure it has a cult following.  Or not.  (I heartily recommend The Last of Sheila.)

Chabert Whoops Watch: The Sweetest Christmas (2017)

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Job: Receptionist/ Would-Be Baker

Location of story:  Helen, Georgia (which is apparently a real place themed like a German village?)

new skill:  ruining two men's lives

Man:  Lea Coco (no, really)

Job of Man:  Italian Restauranteur

Goes to/ Returns to:  has returned home

Event:  National Gingerbread Competition

Food:  oh, Gingerbread, man.  So much Gingerbread.

Well, whoops.  

I thought I'd watched this one, but... and follow me here... I found out through an odd way that I had *not* watched it.  I had confused a Valentine's movie about chocolate with The Sweetest Christmas (2017) while managing the Chabert-a-Tron 3000 and checked it off.

Hey, moron... how did you puzzle that one out?  you may be asking yourself.  

Chabert Watch: Christmas in Rome (2019)

Watched:  06/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  1.5

Director:  Ernie Barbarash 

Job: Tour Guide

Location of story:  Hallmark Rome

new skill:  Not going off the rails

Man:  Sam Page

Job of Man:  Business Man

Goes to/ Returns to:  Man goes to Rome

Event:  Business Deal

Food:  a bunch of Italian stuff I can't spell and/ or remember

So.  (deep breath)  I believe this is both the last Lacey Chabert Hallmark movie and last Chabert Christmas movie I have to watch during ChabertQuest 2025.  

Please clap.

If you haven't been around, we're nearing the end of watching every live-action movie in which Lacey Chabert appears that we could get legitimate access to.  And we're almost done.  It started in November by accident, became intentional in January, and it has been a journey.  

One of my self-imposed rules was that if I had already seen a movie and written it up, I was allowed to skip said movie.  Which is how I skipped The Tree That Saved Christmas.  But if I had seen it and failed to write it up, I had to re-watch it and post on it.  And, I know I watched a good chunk/ all of Christmas in Rome (2019) just this last Christmas while doing other things.  And then just didn't mention it.  I forgot or something.  

So I put this one off til last and was in no rush to prioritize the movie.

Anyway, this movie stars Chabert and Sam Page, who you may remember as Joan's would-be-doctor husband on Mad Men, a role that I am sure he has mixed feelings about at this juncture.  Page plays a Businessman from New York who is sent to Rome, just before the holidays, to look into acquiring a famed Italian company that handmakes high-end plates and bowls or something.  And because it's Rome, it is also *art*.

Chabert X-Mas Watch: Family For Christmas (2015)

Mirrorverse Man watches Lacey, while she stares you down

Watched:  06/08/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Amanda Tapping

Job: News reporter/ Housewife

Location of story:  San Francisco and Bay Area 'burbs

new skill:  being a mother

Man:  Tyron Leitso

Job of Man:  Advertising creative

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to alternate timeline

Event:  School Christmas Pageant (very overdecorated)

Food:  Mushrooms and what I think was Captain Crunch

In 2015, Lacey Chabert made four movies, three for Hallmark.  Two of those Hallmark movies were Christmas films.  In 2015, she is on her way to building her own legend.

The first Christmas movie selection for 2015 was A Christmas Melody, the Mariah Carey movie, which we previously covered.  

Our selection today was Family for Christmas (2015),  one of the movies in which Santa is not just a jolly old elf making toys - he's a chaos agent who uses his reality-warping powers to wreak havoc with an unsuspecting person, hoping he can make people hook up.  Santa in Hallmark-Land does not care about toys or children, he cares about making strangers decide to make it.  

Santa is a freak.

Previously, Santa gave Chabert "courage"/ "the inability to stop herself from escalating an already bad situation" in A Wish For Christmas.  This time, Santa finds a perfectly happy career gal/ news reporter (Chabert) who gets a friend request from her college sweetheart she dumped to become a successful reporter.  Meanwhile, she's being offered jobs in NYC, getting the most understanding breakup in Hallmark history, and stealing her assistant's ideas for stories.

Apparently Chabert ponders that Friend Request and what could have been with this ex-boyfriend SO HARD, her pondering becomes a Christmas Wish.  One she did not explicitly make, but Santa still says "yeah, but you really wanted to know".  

Chabert Not-Hallmark X-Mas Watch: A Holiday Heist (2011)

Watched:  06/06/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

So, I thought A Holiday Heist (2011) was going to be a Hallmark movie, but it was not.  It was, instead, one of the weird, trash movies that get made every year in a filmmaking economy I do not understand.  It wasn't A Talking Cat!?! levels of not-giving-a-@#$%, but it was closer to that than it was theater-ready.  It made your typical Hallmark movie look like It's a Wonderful Life by comparison.  I do not know who this was for, where it was shown, who paid for it...  Usually when something is this trash it's called something like "The Dog Who Saved Christmas", but there's no dog in this movie.  They can't afford it.

The filming had to have occurred over, like, two weeks.  There's maybe five locations, and all of the money went to getting hired gun actors with some name recognition to show up, do some schtick, and mostly not be there longer than two or three days.

In this case, it's Vivica A. Fox as the mean Dean of the college and Chris Kattan as a wacky uncle who has nothing to do with anything.  

And... Lacey Chabert as the focal character.  As she does in so many movies, she plays the anchor of the plot.  She is the general-female-protagonist-with-an-artistic-bent, this time a college student skipping Christmas to work in an art gallery (Chabert herself would have been about 28 or 29 when this was filmed).  

Chabert X-Mas Watch: A Christmas Melody (2015)

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?

Chabert Holiday Watch: A Royal Christmas (2014)

Watched:  06/02/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing: Unknown

Director:  Alex Zamm

Job: Tailor/ Would-be-Fashion Deisgner

Location of story:  vague Europe

new skill: passing for someone allowed in public

Man:  Steven Hagen

Job of Man: Prince

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  The Royal Christmas Ball  

Food:  pancakes

I have two more non-Christmas movies to watch as part of ChabertQuest 2025, but just wasn't in the mood for either after a weird couple of weeks around Signal Watch HQ.  So, instead, I went down the list of the Christmas movies I have to get through, and we picked this one.  

While I had not previously written this one up, I am positive I've seen it in parts or in whole as I certainly remembered bits of it, so I am not calling it a First Viewing.  

Wrongly, I believed that A Royal Christmas (2014) was Chabert's first Christmas movie for Hallmark.  It's not.  We'll get to that one.  Nor is it even close to the first basic cable Christmas movie about an unlikely American regular-ol'-girl who sweeps a prince off his feet.  But it does appear to have been the moment Hallmark fully invested in Chabert for Christmas, and ten years later, she basically signed a contract to be the Queen of Hallmark Christmas.

The movie was filmed in Romania, but with American and English talent.  Jane Seymour co-stars, which can't have been inexpensive.  And they have a whole castle, block off city streets, etc...  Maybe it's a huge budget!  Maybe the dollar goes super far in Romania!  I have no idea.

Our basic story is that Chabert is a normal girl with a dream to be a fashion designer.  She works at her dad's tailor shop in Philadelphia and has been dating an MBA student, Leo, for a year.  Leo is to spend Christmas with Chabert and her dad, but Leo is  suddenly summoned home.  Before he departs, she learns Leo is actually Leopold, a legit prince of a small, independent country in the South of France.  A sort of San Marino, I guess.  But it is what SNL would call The Kingdom of Caucasia.  And, so the movie can happen, she goes along.