Hallmark Christmas Miscellanea Watch: A Grand Ole Opry Christmas (2025) and Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (2025)

Watched:  11/30 and 12/1/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First for both

Director:  AGOOC - Clare Niederpruem / CatCC - Lucie Guest

Sunday we decided to lean into the Hallmark Season with their big dollar movie, A Grand Ole Opry Christmas (2025).  Monday I was doing other things and we let play Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (2025).  And it was a study in where Hallmark is going in 2025 with a more ambitious, less-boilerplate film versus classic Hallmark formula.

A Grand Ole Opry Christmas was a sincere time-travel movie about a woman (Nikki Deloach) whose father was a 90's country star in a Brooks and Dunn model, but he threw in the towel and quit making music.  A few years later he died, and she doesn't know why he quit making music.  She, and her best friend (Kristoffer Polaha), are transported to the mid-90's via Christmas/ Grand Ole Opry magic to learn what happened.  

Mean, Christmas at the Catnip Cafe is about a big city marketing exec (Erin Cahill) who inherits half of a cat cafe in small town upstate New York.  The other half is owned by an overworked veterinarian (Paul Campbell).  She wants to sell to buy a condo in LA.  He wants to keep his cafe open.  But they mutually wish to get to business time.

Hallmark Holiday Watch: Holiday Touchdown - a Bills Love Story (2025)

Watched:  11/25/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

So, for reasons beyond my understanding, the NFL has entered into an alliance with Hallmark to produce movies about super-fans of their teams falling in love at Christmas.  

In no way will this get repetitive after 32 movies.

Despite some real star-power (for Hallmark) the first movie was a complete mess.  And I expected more-of-same.

Holiday Touchdown: a Bills Love Story (2025) actually solved some of the issues of the first movie but then blew my mind by trying to create a sort of MCU of NFL-themed movies by showing the characters from the first movie in this one.  And the magical Santa is in this one mucking with people's lives.

The last movie had some star power with Diedrich Bader, Richard Riehle, Ed Begley Jr., Christine Ebersole, et al.  What it didn't really have was much actual representation by the Chiefs players.  

This one had Joey Pantoliano playing a version of himself as a wacky uncle.  Our stars are Woman (Holland Roden) and Man (Matthew Daddario, who I didn't know, but people keep fan-casting his sister as Wonder Woman, and... fair).  They're childhood friends and neighbors, and the running gag is everyone knows he's pining for Woman.

There's lot of Bills-specific humor which I vaguely get, and lots of regional-specific stuff, which did not lose me, but sure felt like them making sure we knew they were in Buffalo and not doing the usual "we filmed in Vancouver, but please believe this is Arizona" thing Hallmark will do.

The pair find out Joey Pants has been receiving gifts every year from an anonymous source, going back to when he was drafted and this same anonymous person also sent his family groceries and money.  The movie is them solving the mystery.  

Along the way, they fall in love, blah blah blah...  but there's also LOTS of Bills players and coaches and owners and whatnot.  And the main character is a project manager on the new stadium, so there's lots of discussion about that.  But none about how expensive tickets are supposed to be in the new stadium.

I dunno, like a lot of the new Hallmark movies, it's actually kind of funny.  Not gut-bustingly, but I had a chuckle or two.  It feels more like a sitcom than a Hallmark movie.  And that is not a complaint.  Anyway, they fixed a lot that didn't work in last year's offering.

Chabert Holiday Micro-Watch: Maybe This Christmas (2025)

Chabert may have signed an exclusive deal with Hallmark for making movies and selling some lovely products in Hallmark stores, but after last year's slam dunk ad with Philosophy, she's now got a gig with Maybelline.  And while we don't believe she could possibly have a blemish, this year she's re-teaming with Dustin Milligan to sell concealer.

Over a handful of 30-second episodes, we get more story than most Hallmark movies.

All 5 episodes in one convenient video:

"Hallmark Channel's Christmas Concert" (2019) might be the Hallmark Channel's Star Wars Holiday Special

This item does not appear on the IMDB for Ms. Lacey Chabert under "actor", but under "self" so I'd initially missed it.  But it popped up on Hallmark as an option, and I wasn't going to not watch it.  

So, what is it?

It's a bizarre artifact of where Hallmark was in 2019, I guess.  And the watchword for the whole show is "awkward".  There clearly was a lack of rehearsal time, and a spirit of "we're pros, we'll wing it" that doesn't play particularly well.  No one here is Bob Hope and keeping this on the rails.

The show is *not* exactly a concert, but kinda, sorta framed like one of those old-school Christmas specials where a celebrity pretends they're in their house.  Lacey Chabert is throwing a party where other Hallmark stars are her guests, but she's also acknowledging the camera (and sometimes awkwardly looking at it).  

One-by-one, a series of Hallmark stars come in, and then they each sing a Christmas standard in what I assume is not actually Chabert's livingroom and kitchen.  But it's not a set - I'm pretty sure that's a real house.  No set would be this poorly designed for television coverage.

Chabert Hallmark Holiday Watch: A Merry Scottish Christmas (2023)

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.

(take 2)

Chabert Hallmark Holiday Watch: Haul Out the Holly - Lit Up (2023)

Watched: 11/16/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  second

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Job: Copywriter/ Editor?  She never works during this whole movie

Location of story:  Evergreen Lane - which I think is in Salt Lake City

new skill:  Mastery of the Christmas Arts

Man:  Wes Brown

Job of Man:  Architect

Goes to/ Returns to:  stays in same place (this is the 2nd installment)

Event:  Several ongoing Christmas festivities

Food:  Cookies

Editor's Note:  So, y'all.  Despite my stated goals and belief I'd done a phenomenal job documenting ChabertQuest 2025 (pats self on back), I messed this one up.  Yes, I'd seen this movie, but had I written it up?  I had not.  Thought I had, but that was a lie I told myself, and discovered my error in July.  I felt terrible as we agreed the the deal was I would watch and review all of the movies I could find starring one Lacey Chabert and you'd be like "why are you doing this?"

So, here we are, rewatching this one.  And writing up this movie.  For you, the people.

There were really only so many directions one could go with the premise of Haul Out The Holly (2022), the first film in what is now a trilogy.  

The premise of the first film is that a woman breaks up with her live-in boyfriend and goes home for Christmas, only to find that her parents weren't expecting her and are actually moving to a seniors' condo in Florida.  She's essentially left behind in her parents' McMansion.  However, her own father was head of the HOA, and he set up a very Christmassy set of rules, which Chabert finds herself required to adhere to (despite the fact she does not own the house) and is force marched through the holiday season.  

Guys, she also falls for Man nextdoor along the way.

So... we end the film with Christmas, love, and a 5000 square foot house in which she'll creep around like a Victorian ghost, I guess.  

But what next?  Haul out another holiday?  Tragedy strikes Evergreen Lane?  She casually starts putting out inverted pineapples when the neighbors come over?

Here in the sequel, Emily (Chabert) been gifted her parents house, she's all-in on Christmas madness, dating Man, and helping out with the neighborhood festivities.  

However, as Christmas approaches and events are just beginning, the Jolly Johnsons, winners of a Christmas-themed reality show, move into the cul-de-sac.  To the longtime Christmas-nerds of Evergreen Lane, this is like having your favorite quarterback or rock star move in and they flip out (yes, these movies operate in a cartoonish heightened reality).  

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.  

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.

Hallmark Watch: A Big Fat Family Christmas (2022)

Watched:  11/05/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jennifer Liao

So, we were busy and we had stuff going on as I was having some foot surgery on the 6th, so we kind of randomly put this movie on.

There are two very exciting things about this movie, and one is that it co-stars Tia Carrerre as the "mom" if you want to feel your age, Gen-X'ers.  And she is desperately trying to underdress so she is not obviously Tia Carrerre.

The second is that I was 4/5ths of the way through the movie and the dad character made a particular face and I ran to IMDB.  And, yes, the guy playing the dad is Yee Jee Tso, who I suddenly recognized as someone from the 1990's Nickelodeon show Fifteen.  Not even a main character.  Just a guy.  Which means this guy is exactly my age and somehow wound up 30 years later playing the husband to Tia Carrerre.  Well done, my dude.

Hallmark Holiday/ Paul Watch: A Newport Christmas (2025)

Watched:  11/02/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

Pal PaulT worked behind the scenes on A Newport Christmas (2025), and had nice things to say about the production, so I wanted to get to this movie when it aired.  I did not expect it to air in early November, but I have a broken foot, anyway, and had been laid up all weekend, so here we go.

From time-to-time, Hallmark's willingness to indulge in Christmas Magic has included Time Travel of the Somewhere in Time variety - people falling in love after one of them gets time-shifted, sometimes someone from modern times going into the past, and sometimes someone from the past coming to the here-and-now.  This movie is the latter, with a Newport, Rhode Island heiress of 1905 coming to 2025.

I was messaging Paul a bit as the movie rolled along asking him questions and I did mention to him that it was very odd that this Hallmark Christmas movie had some of the tightest time travel logic I'd seen on display in a time travel movie in a while.  

At Hallmark, it's been Christmas Since October 17th

In case you were wondering, we're already Counting Down to Christmas over at the Hallmark Channel.  

Back in September we shared Hallmark's forewarnings, and the schedule, as it was then published.  What it didn't indicate was that Hallmark was dipping into its now endless stash of movies and that, as near as I can tell, they went into Christmas rotation on two of the three Hallmark channels on October 17th with the arrival of a new seasons of The Mistletoe Murders.  But, for days beforehand, they had been playing Christmas stuff, but I didn't really pay it much mind.

For those who don't check in on these things, Hallmark moves around when it goes all in on the Christmas season, and in many years refuses to stick to the internationally favored Mariah Carey Calendar, which declares 12:00 AM on November the First as when we can begin prepping for the holidays.  

Hallmark Christmas Movie Schedule 2025 Drops

Ms. Chabert, set to grace Christmas screens this Holiday season, seen here having pulled this man's finger

Well, Hallmark has released their schedule for the Christmas movies coming in 2025.  Despite the fact it's September and in the 90's where I live, over in Hallmark HQ, it might as well be time to rock around the Christmas tree.

Hallmark isn't completely ignoring the rest of the year.  They're currently showing movies with a fall theme on the channels (although it's not officially autumn until September 22nd).  And they're even getting spooky this year as Ms. Chabert and Hallmark stalwart Wes Brown will appear in the Halloween themed third chapter in the "Haul Out the Holly" saga.  

Meanwhile, Hallmark ornaments are coming in waves for 2025, with an official Lacey Chabert ornament coming in October.  (I am well aware of the Superman ornament, thanks).  

Here's the Hallmark checklist of new content:

Christmas at Sea: I Watched a Hallmark Christmas Cruise Reality Show

The word that comes to mind, over and over, when watching Christmas at Sea (2025) over on the Hallmark Channel is "awkward".  

The concept of a cruise where people get on a boat to share oxygen with working actors while also desperately celebrating secular adult Christmas a month early with hundreds of tipsy strangers is just kinda... awkward. 

The folks who they recruit for the show?  We'll get into that. 

Trying to make something of a 3-day cruise?  And try to film it and make it look natural when it so clearly is all staged and stage-managed?  Awkward.

I've long withstood the slings and arrows of others' discomfort by throwing on Hallmark movies at Christmas - which led to me spending the first half of 2025 watching 70-odd Lacey Chabert movies.  But for a few years I've been aware that the Hallmark company now has basically Christmas Cons in Kansas City each December over two separate weekends, and now there's a Christmas Cruise, where one can set sail with Hallmark devotees and a handful of stars from Hallmark movies.

Yes, Hallmark has it's own galaxy of stars.  

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 X-Mas Watch: The Christmas Waltz (2020)

no idea why dude looks like he's about to abduct Chabert

Watched:  06/07/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First full time through

Director/ Writer:  Michael Damian

Job: Attorney 

Location of story:  Manhattan

new skill:  Waltzing

Man:  Will Kemp

Job of Man:  Dance instructor

Goes to/ Returns to:  It's all in Manhattan

Event:  The Christmas Dance show

Food:  Wedding cake?  

The curious thing about the Will Kemp/ Chabert movies is that (a) Chabert is *not* a classically trained dancer, and (b) Kemp is, like, 9 inches taller than her.  So it's not a traditional ballroom couple.  But it does fulfill some vision of a graceful man taking the audience's stand-in in Chabert and making sure you CAN dance.  And isn't that what it's all about?

The Christmas Waltz (2020) is about power-lawyer Chabert figuring out her perfect life and Christmas wedding are not happening when her absolute shitheel of a fiancé decides to take a promotion and move to Boston less than four weeks before their wedding.  I mean...  honestly, guy.

Chabert has signed them up for dance lessons for their wedding dance, but winds up using the lessons for herself, remembering she loved to dance as a child and walked away from it to lead the perfect life her fiancé just poured gasoline on, and then tossed a match.  

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.