Stocking Stuffer 10.8 Holly & the Hot Chocolate with Josh Hurtado

Excuse me, mer Christmas? What are you doing tomorrow? I'm visiting Tommy, finally meeting his parents. And how is Tommy? He's good, Rudy, are you excited about the hot chocolate too?

Doesn't like hot chocolate. I bet it's because he misses his wife, Nora. You think that's it? I bet that's it. Yeah, of course it's it.

You're moving, does deav No? No, my mother does not know he's moving. Yes, I've been looking at houses at South Carolina. You're going to move somewhere where it doesn't snow. There's somebody out there for you, and they're lost to.

I crashed my car in the woods and I can't find my phone, and I could. I could really use somehow. That hot dog looks awesome. Do you okay? She wrote down she's gonna need a place to see.

Well, that was quick. What is your name, hun, Holly? Oh? So, Rudy tells me you are a food critaen you should do a review of the hot chocolate Stan It's magical. Maybe next year.

I have to leave pretty early in the morning. I met my boyfriend's parents. She's just somebody who broke down, so I helped her as doing my job and be single. Oh I'm not single. Remember I said I was a beating my boyfriend's parents vaguely.

Not the worst town to be stuck in. People are nice. It's really festive if you like that kind of thing, safe under that bear that eats strangers. I mean, it's like a line full of people who seem to actually enjoy being in a line full of people. What is it about this hot chocolate that makes it so special?

No cup is truly enjoyed unless it's served in the presence of love. Welcome everyone to another stocking stuffer. This is a very special stocking stuffer. It is a very short stock well a short movie. It is a innovative, first time film production from the studio that brings you things you can buy by phone.

That's right. We are talking about QVC's Holly and the Hot Chocolate. And I say we because I even though this is a nice, quick in and out movie, I need support here. There's a lot going on. What is this movie doing.

Is it telling a love story or is it trying to sell me hot chocolate? I don't know, can it? Can it be both? I don't know. That's why I've brought on with me the Big Guns.

My guest today is a first time guest of The Feminine Critique. It's very exciting somebody whose work I have been reading and following for a very long time. He is a film programmer, a film enthusiast, a critic at screen anarchy, and the founder at PO tent Taate Films, the one, the only Josh Hurtado. Welcome, Josh, Hi, thank you so much for having me on. This is this is right up my alley.

So I'm very happy to be here. So I need you to tell me how it came up your alley, because you are someone who has I think a very deep film experience, film knowledge. You are, you know, kind of the authority on Indian film and a lot of other specific films. I think you're a big genre film guy. So at what point in your life did you decide you have to watch nine hundred Christmas movies a year?

You know, it happened a few years ago. Some local friends of mine. Every year they have a not a marathon, but they have a little event where they show a couple of TV movies to Christmas movies. We all go over there. We have you know, drinks and snacks and pizza and whatever.

And the whole goal was to show the craziest stuff that you could never imagine had ever been made. And I sort of fell in love with that, like the idea that for whatever reason, Christmas inspires people to be competing insane. And and so after that happened that I was watching you know, one or two of these films every year for one night, I was like, there's got to be more. I really no idea. This was probably four or five years ago when I first started like doing it on purpose, just digging into all the all the possibilities, like all of the different crazy things that there there are, not only you know, the Hallmark and the Lifetime and the classic things that we think of when we think of holiday films, but like all of the you know, movies that are made for seventy five.

Cents, you know, Vista Entertainment. Mar Vesta or Nicely, which is a ruction company on this one, you know, or someone who's whose daughter they think really wants to be an actress and they're a dentist or whatever, and so they they have enough money to do it. You know. It's there's just so many different avenues that these films can go down, and and so I just became obsessed with trying to find them. And then I, you know, as we are wont to do people who are film enthusiasm film fans.

Once you find something, you start working backwards, you know, and it could never be obscure enough, Like there could never be like if someone else has seen the film, I feel like I've failed, Like I feel like I should be the only person who's ever seen like this crazy thing. And then being able to share reactions to that is just really fun. Yeah, in a way, I think it does kind of mirror certain like low budget subgenres of horror, because you had, like in the late eighties to early nineties, anybody could make a zombie film and you could sell it, and it would be in a video store. It might be like in the back of the shelf. It might be one of those things that like you you know, the horror nerd who comes there finally gets to the last movie they haven't seen yet, and they end up renting it, even after the video clerk tells them not to.

But like anybody could make it, somebody will buy it because there's an audience for it. And then that became found footage and then became this And there's something about that with Christmas movies where it's sort of similar. It is this like, look, there's an audience no matter what you do, no matter how you know. It can be religious, it can be pure romance, it can have tinges of horror, it can have this. But if it has like Christmas in it, there's an audience for it.

And there is still like that rhythm those you know, the list of ten and all the things that come with it, like you can always find music for your movie because there's a lot of public domain and it's just it's a fascinating thing just how many there are. And so let me ask you what for you is like one of the more unusual, rare, kind of biggest surprises, Like do you have like a top list you go to sometimes for it? I mean, there are a million films that I would The problem is with someone with the sort of compulsion that I've developed, is that as much as I do find things every year that I really love and want to watch again, there's always the compulsion of like, well, if I watch that one, I can't watch something else that I haven't seen yet Yep.

Last year, my big my big favorite was Santa Stole Our Dog. You mentioned that one, yes, And I don't know this one. Yeah, it's it's another one of those that was. It's It can't have been made for more than you know, a few like maybe fifty thousand dollars or something, but it stars Ed Asner as Santa Claus. And payed more than five times at least by my account.

Yeah. Yeah, And you know, I think that the plot was fuzzy because it wasn't really about the plot. I think the dog ended up jumping into Santa's bag and leaving the house or whatever, and the kids go after it. But it's just there's a there's a sort of chaotic energy about that film that that I just found really engaging. Like there's there's really reckless use of CG throughout the thing.

There are you know, little people used as elves or portraying elves the film, but there's also fully a c G elves in the same THD and so there's no consistency between which characters are were the CG elves just sort of danced like the dancing baby and Ally mcbeale. Oh god, that's my Nightmare. Yeah, so many reasons. There's a there's a sequence in which I can't remember if it's car it might have been the sleigh does a felm and Louise off a cliff like, and there's all sorts of crazy things happening in that film that it was just so chaotic that I couldn't stop watching it. It was a car wreck that was just so engaging.

And last night actually I introduced some friends of mine to I mean, I don't it's probably not terribly obscure, but for me it was my first time watching it. Last year was Mister Saint Nick, which stars Kelsey Grammer. As I know the one you mean, Yes, I did not watch it. It was on my listen. I never got around to it.

Yeah, it's really it's it's very entertaining, and it's at a point it was it was made in two thousand and two, and it's it was made at a time when you know, because Christmas movies these days that the hallmark of lifetime, the ABC movies or whatever. They're largely made with people who focus only on these type of. Films, or or they rotate between this lifetime thrillers or low budget horr. Yeah. Yeah, but back then you could your TV movies had like actors in them, people that you knew.

And so there was Kelsey Grammer and there was Catherine Hellman who was Mona you know, so yes, be still my Mark and like just a whole cast of Charles Derning with Santa Claus and that one nice. And so it's it's just always exciting to find. And my list never ends, and so I'll never get It's one of the great things about films is that you never I'll never watch everything. Yeah, and so there's always exciting things to discover. Yeah, and it's exponential for Christmas movies because every year the networks and now the like your two B's and so on, like they just make more.

Ever, Like, it's funny when I go back to pull up a Hallmark movie from ten years ago and I find the trailer and it says like one of twelve new movies premiering this season, and today I think it's like one of forty two new movies from hearing this season. So yeah, you're never gonna run out. Yeah. I think I saw a stat when I was looking at stuff earlier today that there were over one hundred and fifty new Christmas movies being made by networks this year, and I was like that, even I can't get through that like that I last year, I somehow managed to be in the seventies, which will not maybe very hard again, but one hundred and forty a year, that's it's it's an endless well of films to enjoy or hate or both the same time.

Who knows, Yeah, And it's I think, I don't want to speak for you, but I wonder if you've come come to it to a similar way of there is a part of me where some of these movies I find just, oh god, they are completely formulaic. They have no charm to them that you can see the checkboxes being done, and yet it's entertaining to me to watch, like with a certain viewpoint of well did it you know, did the sidekick. Have dangly earrings? Like? Whatever it might be, there's entertainment in that, but I know that no matter what, still makes people happy.

But then you find there's like the Gems, right, the ones that are actually just good for whatever reason. They have the right person writing it, they have the right cast, and it's still that same story, but it works, and then you have the ones in between, which this year has been the place that I'm kind of most fascinated by, where I can't tell now, is this a good movie? Is this a movie where everything is working? Or am I finally has my like armor finally chipped away enough to where even like an okay film, if it has enough of the right elements clicking, it's gonna get me, I'm gonna and I'm gonna realize like, oh yeah, I want these characters to get together. It's a it's a fascinating place to be.

I totally get that. And there's there is something to be said for you know, as you mentioned before, like my forte my wheelhouses in genre films and horror films and things like that. And so when I began this like obsession, there was certainly a part of it that was that was doing it with you know, a very thin veneer of irony, you know, but at some point that you know, like you said, the veneer of irony sort of wears off and you're just in it, yeah, you know, And and it may even be just one one scene in a film that you're like, oh, okay, well, the rest of the film is shit, but this one scene was amazing. And this happened with me last maybe not last night, two nights ago, when I was watching a very merry toy store, which was just a very run of the mill Melissa Joan Hart, you know, Mario Lopez thing or whatever.

But then they're in the middle or toward toward the end, there's a sled race that's completely done on green screen and it's very aggressive, and I'm like, Okay, well, I don't care what anything else happening in this movie, but this greens You have to watch this green screen sled race, Like this is amazing, you know. So there's five great minutes in this eighty five minute movie, and that's enough, you know. And I tend to look for the best in everything, yeah, and sometimes I don't find it, but like even in a lot of yes, there. Is always a fashionable pea coat if nothing else, Yeah, there's gonna be that. So let's move into the QVC's debut film.

And I think since this movie, they have made one more that was also a holiday movie. But I don't fully understand like the origin of why I understand why any network would do a Christmas movie. Food Network was doing them a couple years ago. I don't know if they're doing them this year, but they were doing them, and I was so curious when they did it because I thought, oh, it's like, is it going to be really obviously made for a network. Is they're going to be like a recipe posted to the side.

Is there going to be a QR code to scan for, you know, step by step? And so I was wondering and it wasn't. It was just a typical Christmas romance movie that happened to have a Food Network personality show up for five minutes. So now QBC does Holly in the Hot Chocolate. It is again sixty six minutes long, so it is not like at Work length, but it is a full, you know, three act story.

And again I'm watching it thinking, are we going to get like, you know, if a character is wearing very fashionable clothes, are we going to get a scan here to you know, identify that coat or identify those earrings? And we get none of that. The movie does have a mission, which is ultimately to sell you hot chocolate. We can get to that in the you know, within the plot and so on, but it's really like played for it to be a pretty straightforward Christmas movie. Let's dive into the story of this movie, so can you, Josh, give us kind of a synopsis of breakdown.

This movie is streaming everywhere. It's on Amazon, it's on I think Peacock on Canopy like, so everybody out there can find it. And it's only sixty six minutes long, so feel free to spoil. Walk us through the plot of Holidy in the Hot Chocolate. A plot is fairly simple.

I mean, you can't do much with sixty six minutes, and they recognize that. So essentially the plot the film begins in the town of Pine Falls, which is trying very hard to gain the title of best Christmas town in the country, and we meet a few characters in the town. There's a sort of Christmas market that's happening, a winter market that's happening, and almost immediately we're introduced to the idea that this town has the best hot chocolate in the world. And this is where we get the shockingly I wouldn't say subtle but non aggressive placement of the QBC personality David Vennible, who is we'll talk about later, who's part of the story. The story writing process but everyone loves this Hot Chocolate's.

Hot Chocolate's apparently the best that the world's ever seen. We then soon meet a young girl named Stephanie who is about to go to college and she's getting She's trying to decorate her family home for her father for she leaves, because she knows that once she leaves, he won't bother doing it. He is a scrooge of great measure. He does not enjoy Christmas at all. His name is Rudy ironic of course, but yes.

Yes it's a very christmas y name, so we'll also get to that later. So he does not care for Christmas. She wants to make sure that he is happy because she loves him, and she knows that leaving town is going to leave him alone. And he's just really not into it. The whole town is into it.

The mayor, the mayor, Mayor Steve, the nineteen year old mayor, nineteen year old mayor is trying to get him involved and everything, and he just bats it away. There's a scene in which, very very early in the film, where he goes to a diner and a local tells him Merry Christmas. A local wearing a Christmas sweater, to which Rudy replies thanks, but does not reciprocate. This causes great costernation to his It's like. When you say bless you and somebody doesn't say thank you, and you just feel this.

Like yes, yeah, So anyway, Rudy is. Rudy owns a tow truck company which is also ironically named Missletwing, which he tries later to explain has nothing to do with mistletoe, but in any case, he owns a towing company. Meanwhile, in the big city of Boston, we have Holly, the titular Holly, who is a food critic at e Fie Magazine, which is a high falutin magazine, who is being scolded by her boss for positively reviewing low brow food. Such as cheese friess. Is cheese fries, which when she should be reviewing, you know, higher end, higher end affair for which the magazine is more well known or would like to be more well known or associated with.

So it's about Christmas time and Holly's about to go and meet her boyfriend. And so she's heading off to go meet her boyfriend, and on her way there, she gets in an accident which puts her very near the town of Pine Falls, at which point the Toe Truck Company Missile Towing, picks her up, brings her into town, and then you know, romance abounds almost there is sort of back and forth, you know, will they won't they? Because she does have a boyfriend. He has helped her find an autobody shop which very easily repairs her car, at which point he tells them not or he tells her that it's not repaired and she's have to stick around a while because he, like he enjoys her company. Not great, not a great way to woo.

Yeah. Yeah. The initially they're told they don't have the part, so it's going to be to wait two days for the part. She's like, all right, we'll make the best Availa go hang out. And then Rudy gets a phone call saying like, oh hey, I found the part.

Yeah, she can go, and he just doesn't tell her. And something I appreciate this movie is that everybody acknowledges that that's really messed up and that it's essentially kidnapping. Right. But and I the tone of. This movie is very interesting because it does feel very aware of what of how kind of ridiculous these scenarios are, but it is playing it straight and it's not kind of talking down to it.

But yes, this is completely one of these hijink movies, and you get a lot of these, like in the older days of Hallmark and Lifetime used to have a lot of these, like oh I lost my kind of like Overboard, right where like if you boil the movie Overboard, which is a delightful comedy, but when you sit back from it, you say, oh, this is this is a dangerous thing to laugh at. More directly to the point, You've got Holiday in Handcuffs, which is completely it's a kidnapping movie, but it's it's kind of in the in the Holiday in Handcuffs mold. So meanwhile, he tells her that she can't He doesn't tell she can le he tells her a car can't be fixed. Meanwhile, the mechanics says, I just walked past the part like three times and didn't didn't realize it was here.

And so they go on, you know, they enjoy the town. She keeps hearing about the hot chocolate as a food critic, she is very interested. He makes her a fabulous grill cheese sandwich, which apparently is the best thing she's ever had in her life. They they play in a ski ball tournament. It's very very seasonal ball.

Yeah, very seasonally bedazzled bar, which is fantastic, and you know, they eventually she she tries to go back home to meet her boyfriend. It doesn't work out, She comes back town, they fall in love, and the film ends at that point. Yeah, they they fall she comes back, They fall in love. One year later. I was trying to figure out exactly what happens one year later, right, So they re Now his mother owns a bed and breakfast that used to have a thriving restaurant, but then his dad died, so we get a lot of dead wives and parents in this.

But with so that, he decides he's going to reopen the bed and breakfast. So a year later we see that he has now has Holly moved to Fine Falls. Do you think she's working remotely? What do you think? Like the movie doesn't give us too many details on that, but what were your kind of thoughts there?

So my head canon for the film is that, you know, okay, so the restaurant was part of a bed and breakfast. The breakfast part was a part that they were no longer in operating, and so his mother was trying to sell the whole The whole Raps based on his grilled cheese prowess, convinces him to open the restaurant. That's all you need to do is make a good grilled cheese and you can run a restaurant. Come on, I. Mean there are grilled cheese restaurants across this great nation.

Beast, please, because you can have a restaurant for anything. Yes. And so my impression was with the the way that Holly was dissatisfied with her job at e Fie magazine, that it was a good lateral move for her to come back and just quit that job and move to Pine Falls and pine fall in love with him and you know, and just live that life. I feel like that. That was what my head said about this film.

Well, so at the very end, we see her editor has come to eat at this restaurant, And now was that a visiting a friend, because now it's like, oh, my former employee who invited me out to her restaurant, I'll come there. Was it a oh, we have moved the magazine here where she can write in this town, but then still have a relationship there, it was not clear. They are clearly happy and that's great, and it was hard to know how like ambitious Holly really was. Because Holly seemed to care of all the things in the world. What did she love most?

Christmas? I think was the answer. Yeah. So I don't know if it was like, oh, I really wanted to be a food critic and I it didn't work. Maybe I really wanted to be wife or really wanted to be hostess at this restaurant, or I just you know, I split my time.

So I was. Curious and was felt a little bit because there's things about this that I enjoyed this overall, But that was the one where I'm like, I kind of wish we had a little bit of closure there because I feel like everybody's happy, but I don't know what that means, and I don't know, you know, where I should fall on the Was this somebody getting like sucked into a little small town and she loves it now because she's been brainwashed, or was this like, oh, no, I was able to balance my life and I can do multiple things here and I write by myself and I you know, I'm working on my own book. Whatever it was it would have been nice to know a little more there. I mean, I feel like with the sixty six minutes you are going to lack a bit of clarity as far as where the characters are going, and there is you know, at the beginning of the film, there's there's not really any indication of where the end of the film will go as far as where the characters are.

So you're when you're looking at Rudy at no point really until she tells him that his grilled cheese is great, there's not really the impression that he wants to run a restaurant. He wants his family's business to survive, but it's not necessarily clear that he wants it to be because he is a master chef and would like to create and prepare food with love for the citizens of Pine Falls. Yes, and for her, you know, her job as a food credit feels sort of perfunctory at times because you know, she's doing these these glowing reviews of cheese fries, but then she goes to do a high falutin. You know, what would want to assume is a menu, a astronomy event or whatever which offers her A wrote this down a Quai legs with a question of chives.

I found that funny, which they repeat several times, and the question is answered and that they are not chives. It is a different flavor altogether, and she doesn't seem to be terribly satisfied with that with that career. So who knows what she transitioned to. It's not she transitioned into falling in love with Rudy, I think is all that we get of her her story at that point. But again, like you said, at the end of the film, they're both smiling real big so.

Yeah, yeah, in this world that is all that matters. So yeah, So with that being said, let's go into the list of ten to see if this kind of fits into all of those parameters. So now this one, we really kind of have co leads, right, so often her lead is a you know, female who needs to learn something. In this case we kind of, you know, the man kind of changes more than the woman. But let's start with our female.

We have Holly. One of the questions that always comes up is does she have a Christmas theme name? Mean? Yeah, I mean she does, yes. It's kind of like in I guess I don't know what the name is today now it's probably like Isabella or something, but like when you were a kid, When I was a kid, like you always had like five Melissas in class, and like three Jared's and four Jonathan's.

Like in the world. Of Cozy Cardigan Christmas, you always have like seven Holly's, eight Noel's every every season. Yeah, and now Holly is played by an actress who I thought I recognized for more things. But the main thing I saw her in recently was Knock at the Cabin. So, Hannah Gaffney and what were your thoughts on Holly both as a character the performance.

I mean, I think she she did perfectly. Find it felt like they understood the assignment, as the kids say these days, and there's there's really honestly in the cast there and we'll talk more about the rest of them, but not many of them have done much of anything. Yeah, it was surprising to me because it felt like this was a lot of comedic actors, like more so than like, this isn't your usual hallmark stable of people, like there's definitely Canadians in here, like this is there's definitely that, But it felt like, oh no, these are all like I probably recognized most of these people from Law and Order, right, surely I've seen them and in a lot of cases no, So I guess there are a lot of like more local.

But I thought, like Hanna Gaffney, I thought she was like genuinely funny. I thought she had very good timing. I thought she clicked well with everybody I thought. I thought, yeah, I thought she did. She did a good job.

I think that, and we'll talk more about them. But I think the leads in general, like in the in the main supporting cast, they they understood what they were doing, yeah with the film, and that always works. Yeah, especially when like you're you're not even making a Hallmark movie, You're making a QVC movie. Like that has to be a really weird brief for an actor to come in and say, like, Okay, what does that mean, Like let me make sure I'm not that I'm not playing it too straight or not playing or not I'm not missing the comedy, Like it's it's a tricky tone to nail down when you need you to know, like what is the goal of our movie? Is it to tell a story or is it to sell hot chocolate?

And I feel like, yeah, the lead actors, like the main supporting cast all like seem to have been having a good time, and I think that. Goes a long way for sure. Now let's talk about the bland love interest. In this case, we have Rudy who is probably like the most recognizable actor in the bunch, Ryan Farrell, who it was killing me to figure out what I'd seen him in. He's been in a lot.

I think the thing that I probably knew him best, frum was The Deuce, which was the HBO show And did you watch The Deuce, Spiny Chance? I did? Okay. I think what's funny is to realize, like, oh, The Deuce had a lot of like really really awful men in that scheme of things, like he was like maybe number two on that list as far as being like an absolute piece of shit. So it's very funny to see him in this scenario of oh, he's a romantic lead.

What do I know him from? Oh? Right, he does very bad things? Yeah yeah, but yeah I feel like he did. He And here's here's the thing about this film is like he is and you said, they're kind of co leads, so we could answer these questions like for both of them, you know, I don't Holly would not be a bland love interest.

He is. I don't think he's necessarily bland. He's just sort of a downer, yes, but he has a story, you know, he and he has he has an emotional arc that he that he goes through very quickly, very quickly, very quickly. But yeah, I mean I'm seeing here that he was in train Wreck. Also, I can't remember.

He might have been just one of like the passing boyfriends in train Wreck. Who knows. But yeah, And like I was saying, if we go through the rest of the castalotom, I've never been in another film like they were in Holly in the Hot Chocolate and they decided it wasn't for them. They didn't get those big QBC books, right, Yeah, And I guess bonus points of course, he is a widow dad who works with his hands in a more kind of blue collar job. So and then transitions to chef, which is also with his hands, so fitting all fitting all the buttons there now.

Number three is our setting, typically either a big bad city, a charming small town, or a magical winter wonderland kind of two out of three, probably more one and a half out of three, right, we don't get is it Boston is the city? She's in. Boston is where her boyfriend is, at least believe I'm not sure where she is. She might be in New York and on the way to Boston. I feel like I have Philly in my head, but I think some of this might have been filmed in Philadelphia or outside of it, So that might be why I'm.

Thinking that that could be. So pine Falls is our is our town, which is a good name for a Christmas town. You start to run out of them pretty quickly. I just did like a script where I wrote something Christmas related and I realized after I was telling a friend about it. Her friend was telling me about a movie she just watchedes like, oh, yeah, it was in Peppermint Falls, And I realized, oh, I thought I invented that.

No, that came from another movie. So you start to really run out a word. So pine Falls good one. Would you want to live in Pine Falls? I have this discussion with my wife all the time.

She would love to live in a small town. I need culture, so that's that's a tough tough sell for me. Yep, being far from cultures is rough. So I I don't know, I don't think I could do it. I get very unnerved by a town where everybody knows everything about you.

Right that Holly rolls into town. It's the next morning, and she goes to the mechanic, and the mechanic already knows about Holly and knows, like, oh, yeah, you and Rudy have a thing going. Everybody is saying, Everybody is saying, what does that mean? There's only five people in this town. How don't they even know anything's happening?

That that upsets me, Like the idea that I don't know, I think I've I've been a you know, apartment dweller for a long time. So it's that whole like, oh no, you never like, you know, you can kind of say hi to your neighbor, but like you don't really want to know your You don't want them to know you. So the idea that everybody knows like people's menstrual cycle, probably at this point in this town, is a little scary to me. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. With you there, all right.

So number four, our dead parents are a dead wife. Both we got yes, we do. Two minutes into the movie, we get dead mom. Yeah, yep, yep. Uh huh and uh and you're uh uh Rudy's Rudy's father's dead yep.

And Rudy's wife is dead. Yes, uh so he's just got his his lovely wacky mom, which we'll talk a sassy sidekick. So yeah, we've we've got them both. Yeah, we do. And I can't tell you how happy I was when we find out pretty early on, oh, he hasn't had hot chocolate since my mom died.

That to me was just like, oh, this movie is about hot Okay, now I get it. We're selling hot chocolate. This all makes sense. Now that was a made me again in a very dark way, like, yeah, that that all tracks. Yep.

So number five is our sassy sidekick. What have we got here? So we've got we've got We've got dead his mom, a sassy side We've got Stephanie, his daughter, the sassy sidekick. We've got Mayor Steve Mayor Steve perhaps the sassiest of sidekicks. Yep.

Pretty much everyone in the film who is not Holly and Rudy is at some level of sassy side Yeah, pushing them together exactly. They exist purely for the purpose of making this couple, you know, officially be together. Yeah, exactly. And you know the one person who's well, no, there's Steve and his daughter Stephanie are both actively trying to make them smooch Holly because she is the outsider here doesn't really have the sassy sidekick at per se, except you know, the sassy psychic Stephanie kind of gloms onto her as well to sort of facilitate their budding relationship. And so, yeah, we've got we've got sassy sidekicks from out our ears.

How did you like Mayor Steve? Because it's I was thinking about this, I like, this maybe is an hour six minutes, which is a weird time for a movie to be and on one hand, like they could have easily bumped it up another twenty minutes if they needed to. On the other hand, I'm like they if like it's weird that they didn't fit it into an hour, because I'm like, you could show if you had to shave six minutes. I feel like you could basically shave off all of may Or Steve and you have probably a fifty eight minute movie because he has a lot of vamping he don't, And did it work for you? I was fine with it.

Yeah, he's he's he's pure comic relief. He does he does really nothing substantive in the film. I mean, he cuts a lot of ribbons with his comically oversizors which. He and seat belts. Yes, and uh, he has the thing that I enjoyed his performance.

I could not stop staring at his hairline, which I feel that may reflect on me, but he had a he had a very aggressive hairline in the film. But yeah, I mean, and there's there's There's a thing about this film that we kind of traded text on earlier, and I mentioned it in my earlier review when I watched it from last year, is that it feels it feels meta ish. It feels like it's not fully there though it's not actively it's not actively commenting on the tropes of a Christmas film. It's not something like what is it a Christmas movie? Christmas or something like that Letter to Satan Claus or something like isn't it romantic?

Like one of those films where the characters realize what's happening to them and so it's it's it is playing with those tropes in shockingly creative ways in some at some points but it does still like he's probably the character in the film that is the most most clearly portraying to the audience that they know what they're doing. You know, that they understand that this film is not to be, you know, taken as a straight Christmas rom com. It understands the world that is living in. It's playing with the tropes, and it's because of this one character who kind of plays the throughout the thing. Yes, yeah, that's It's a good way of looking at it, because even our leads are a little more self aware than you normally have in a movie like this, Like they acknowledge things like, wow, it's you know, you've only been here for a day, but I think I have feelings for you and things like that.

But it is this Steven gets to be. It's I always go back to, this is like an airplane you have. You know, everybody's playing it straight. Everybody is doing everything, and then there's Johnny, right, and Johnny is just fluttering around in the background, and he is giving a performance from a different not a movie, but like from a different universe. Yeah, and you could take it out and everything would still play like a little more straight, But there is something about like having that element of chaos in there that takes it to a different place.

And I feel like they did find a way to do that, and it's one that I wonder did it because I don't know enough about the people behind this. Did it start from Okay, we're gonna tell a basic love story, but you know, let's have a couple of any characters. Wait a minute, I have this friend, and I think he'd be great in this part. Wait, what if the mayor is like twenty years old? Like, I'm so curious on how they landed on that choice for the mayor because it is not something you see in these movies to have the mayor character be this kid who might even be corrupt at one point, Like you just hear like a SoundBite of him like running away screaming I'm not corrupt, Like that's a choice, And I'm so curious how they got there.

Did it start with the actor, did it start with the script? I don't know, but it it's unusual and it's memorable and I. Appreciate it, Yeah for sure. Yeah, all right, So number six is our kind of villain. Right For a long time, it was always an evil woman that's less so these days, So it's really more just a general villain.

I think there's kind of two candidates that fit here. What are your thoughts? Well, I think that for me, the most obvious one is at the very beginning of the film. It is the editor at Effie magazine, who you know, hates cheese fries. She's divorced also, so divorcees.

I mean, what are you doing here? And she is stoked about being divorced. Yeah, because now she gets to salsa. Yeah, So that was that was the one that I that I caught. Who else were you were you thinking of?

Well, not a woman, but kind of the villain of the piece, right, Who is the other thing keeping our characters apart? We've got Tommy the boyfriend. Yeh, I kind of love he. He also well, he plays this sort of a similar tone to Steve in that he is. He is on that dude throughout the film.

He all he really wants, well not all he really wants. All he wants at all is this dish, this vase that he's trying to get to his house, and that's all he can seem to talk about with with Holly as she's you know, making the arduous trek to Boston. Yep. She gets in a car accident whose first. Question is the ok is the dish okay?

And you know in the in the end of the film, and he proves to be a douchebage, you know, and it all sort of all the feelings that the film has has made us feel about Tommy through the course of it are proven to be correct, and we all feel victorious. And she is able to, you know, guilt free, break that bond and go go back to the man that she. Tries, the love of her life, who she's known for. Yes, naturally, for sure. Yes.

Tommy Pope is the actor who played Tommy. He's having fun. I enjoyed him. I like the first thing he says when he answers the phone, how are you. I'm in a bad mood.

I didn't get to work out today. As soon as that happened, I'm like, okay, I get what we're doing. I like it now. Number seven is the montage. Sometimes we have many montages, sometimes we have none and the movie just doesn't work in this case, did you count any montages?

I you know, this is something that I missed. I don't recall many, if any montages. It's not something I was looking for. There they're short. I'd say there's two.

One is I don't know at what point in time it's happening. I'm guessing it is the morning when there's a little bit of holly and the Dawn and Stephanie are decorating, and we get some music play, kind of like a Christmas word salad song playing as they do that, and then we have the big ski ball tournament, yeah, which is done kind of montage of just lots of ski ball and you know, there's the big ski ball champion who comes in and has his own glove, and so it's just a lot a lot of close ups of ski ball, which is exactly something I've thought these Christmas movies have missed all this time. Yeah, for sure, for sure, all right, tournament, Yes. Now, slapstick something that comes up quite often in these movies.

Some of the anything you. Caught, I mean, most of the stuff with with Mayor Steve feels slapsticky. Yeah, there's not a lot of pratfalls or anything, but there is. You know, he he really loves those giant scissors if they feel. Like that's why you become mayors to have those scissors.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean a lot of the slapstick is is not it's not physical comedy would be more like the wordplay and the sort of you know, the missile towing puns and things like that. But you know, there's they don't even really have snow in this town, as is proven by the fact that Mayor Steve has to import or or buy a snow machine, which comes in handy at the end of the true true, but no, not a lot of slapstick. We get a little bit of deb being seeming a little drunk and kind of not always being with it. Holly sweat.

Holly is a Christmas sweater that's lighting up, and her boss is trying to talk to her and is a little distracted. So but yeah, nothing, we don't have this any like meat cute. They bump into each other. I mean, I guess she does get into a car accident is how they meet. But yeah, even that's not really played for laughs.

True. Well, I mean she's singing and then she distracted by herself. Yeah, yeah, the GPS is going off track. But yeah, it's not. It's not it's no buster keep, It's nothing like that.

So let's talk about the sage old person. Well, it's gonna be Deb, right. I think Deb is one of the sage old people. She does give, you know, good advice. Who else you're looking at?

Well this, I don't know how old this person is, but I I guess I did not know this person was famous until I thought to myself, this is a really awkward performance. Oh this is the QVC guy. Oh yes, yes, uh so the hot chocolate. Concoctioner brewer. Yes, I guess that's the right word for it.

So he's just there and the camera does like a bit of a you know, magical sprinkle over him when we meet him, and he has a speech about hot chocolate and how it only tastes good in the presence of love. Yeah, which just I don't know if we can test that. I feel like, yeah, like I hate drunk hot chocolate in the past, and it. Was just fine, Like how do you do that? Do you have like?

And even the way he's like serving it, it's like, oh, I ran out of hot chocolate because I ran out of love. It's kind of what it feels like he's saying, right, and like, do you taste you have? Like? Is it sort of like the movie Timer, it's like, okay, are you meant to be together? Two of you come up and drink the hot chocolate.

Is it the best hot chocolate you've ever drank? It's okay, then you are not really in love. You should separate now, Like, is that the way you test your like actual compatibility? I mean the hot chocolate being operating like a barbecue joint where once you run out, the play shuts down. Is that's a that's that's a choice?

All? Yeah, yeah, I. Mean it again. It allows rooting Holly to prolong their their courtship, their courtship because you know, the movie is Holly in the hot chocolate, and Holly doesn't get the hot chocolate until last five minutes of the movie. I really wondered about it because we're you know, she's online.

I'm thinking like, oh, like, so is it going to be that she's going to have the hot chocolate and then decide to write an article about the hot chocolate and that's going to save the town and all this. But no, we just had to wait until love for hot chocolate. So yeah, And it. Seems that's also sort of interesting the way that works, because you know, she is a writer, and so you would think that would be the way to go. And there's also a big fuss made the first half of the film about how they're trying to become like the best Christmas town or the.

On Mornings with America. On Mornings with America, and it's that whole idea is is gets the kibosh pretty quickly, like fairly early that it's not going to be that. And so if that's the thrust of what mayor Steve is going for, like what else do you have? Right? A snow machine?

Yeah, the snow machine, which is it's just a hose. It's just pretty much like it's a VACU know, it's a drive back. You know that they turn inverse. Yes. And that's the thing about living in Pine Falls, You're you don't know where your taxes are going, you know, Like I mean, I don't know.

I see that there's a ski ball tax every year and I'm not getting anything out of it. Uh. Now, last is Santa Claus. And unfortunately there's there's no Santa Claus in this movie. I guess there's Christmas magic in the hot chocolate maybe.

But kind of, I mean, and this is a thing that I mentioned I think at the beginning, is that I for for me to truly engage with these films, like magic must be present. It is there is a requirement for me. And so the generic rom coms don't do a whole lot for me. I'll watch them if there's something that I feel is an interesting twist on it. Like over the weekend the Lifetime Movie Network put up a couple a lesbian and a gay rom Come and So I watched both of those because that was that was a novel idea.

Yeah, I think it's the first lesbian rom com that we've had of a Christmas movie. Which which had a baking competition, which also like that worked for me and so and so if there's magic involved, like I'm in and I was the magic of the Hot Chocolate is, I mean, it's questionable, it's questionable magic. Well, q I guess QBC can't legally claim to be saying watching so maybe that's part of it. Well, that's that's probably the problem with the fact they're trying to sell this stuff. Later on it they weren't trying to sell it.

They could have said that it was magic and it fun. Then then it could have won an Emmy, So yes, all right, So now we go into the bonus round some of the other fun things that come up, And the first is the very very high dosage of public domain holiday songs that we get in these movies. Did you clock any here? I felt like a lot of sort of generic Christmasy sounds, but not a whole lot of recognizable music. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a deck the halls.

When she's kind of like stumbling into her office with a Christmas tree, she's singing jingle bells. I think in the is that how she gets into the accident or no, she's singing we wish you a Merry Christmas, like to herself in the car, which again is a choice, not something I know anybody that does. Like, I guess if the. Song comes on the radio, then you're like, oh yeah, I know the words. It's not as bad as a movie.

Earlier this year I. Watched where like they're doing karaoke to jingle bells, and that's just there's something very like wrong about that, Like, no, you don't need a karaoke video for the lyrics for jingle bells. But again, be careful because if you are singing at the top of your lungs, you might get into an accident. So yeah, let's say now number two is our secret family recipe or very complicated holiday cocktails. We get a couple of things even before we get to the hot chocolate.

There's a few other. Food things of note here. Anything that stuck out to you. I mean, there's the girl cheese sandwich that inspires inspires Holly for sure, Like that's and then he explains the types of cheeses that sitting there. Yeah, that makes sense, gre and greer.

It's a good combination. Yeah, and uh, and so there was that. I don't recall what was the other ones that you caught. I don't know that there was. A recipe, but this was probably one of those.

Like the way you have a wedding tax, you have a Christmas tax on hot dogs, right, So it's like, can I get too hot dogs? You mean two Christmas hot dogs? Sure, I mean to Christmas hot dogs and. The Christmas ketchup and Christmas Christmas mustard. Yeah.

And I like the idea of like if I was running a hot dog stand around the holidays, I would like up my prices by a dollar and I would just write the word Christmas on everything, and you know. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah, for sure. Now small business in danger is the next one. Number three, for.

Sure, there's the Bend and Breakfast. Breakfast is is Mama deb is getting ready to check it. Yeah, and so that's that's for sure. Our small business is in danger. And I like early on in the movie Holly when I think it's when she's talking to her boss and she like just very emphatically points out that she loves local business, of course, and I get, you know again, like I guess that's something we all say, but it felt very much like, oh, I know a local business she's gonna find.

So yeah, it all works out in Manned Now. Number four, I don't I don't even know if this applies to this movie product place man question mark. I mean, it doesn't really apply unless you put it in the context of the production company and the streaming service and all that. Because they did sell that hot chocolate immediately after the film was released, and so technically it's a commercial, it's a it's a it's a product placement. But in the in the film, it's not named it's just hot chocolate, which.

Is really strange because the I guess the big secret of the qv Sea Hot Chocolate is that it was a collaboration with Serendipity, which is a big fancy like dessert restaurant in New York City. The movie Serendipity with John Cusack from I don't know, like fifteen years ago, is like set in there and it's like become I don't know that it's a chain, but like they definitely now like ship nationwide and everything, kind of like Magdalia Bakery. But it's weird that like that doesn't I guess it makes sense in this movie. It wouldn't make sense to be like, ooh, this tastes so good. What's the secret?

Oh, there's a restaurant in New York City that sends us there like you know their ingredients. That wouldn't make sense. But also like does this movie like did you want to drink hot chocolate? By the end of this movie? Did you want to drink this hot chocolate?

I can't say that I did. Now I will say in my own defense, I usually want to drink hot chocolate, okay, And so so I don't think that that urge was in any way amplified by the film. However, if I watched it and there was if I was in a theater watching this film and at the end of the film someone said, we have this hot chocolate available in the lobby, I would have one hundred percent gone out there and bought the hot chocolate. Am I gonna mail order? It?

Probably not gonna happen. I think maybe now the more I'm thinking of it. The thing that is driving me a little crazy like hot chocolate. To me, it's kind of about the experience of hot chocolate, right, Like it's not like ooh, I just It's why I don't understand the idea of like hot chocol like ice hot chocolate, because I don't want the flavor of hot chocolate. That doesn't exist to me.

Hot chocolate is it's the season. I'm cold. I want to relax. I want a big mug. I want my chocolate in there.

I'm gonna put some cinnamon. Maybe I'll put some whipped cream or marshmallow, like I'm gonna stirt with candy cane, whatever it is. And in this case, it's just like it's a you know, a paper cup of like liquidy. It doesn't look thick, it doesn't look like it's not dark hot chocolate, Like there's no caramel swizzle, like, there's nothing going on in that hot chocolate. And we don't really see anyone actively enjoying it like it's it's it's a lot of talk about the hot chocolate exactly, but you don't see anybody like sipping it and taking like a like a.

Deep breath like it nodding yeah. Yeah, there's none of that happens. No, it's just everybody saying yeah, wait on lie for a long time. Yeah, we've been told that the hot chocolate is great, but we have no no one actively enjoying it, which is a strange choice. It feels like it would have been a very easy thing to fit into the film.

Yeah, I mean a montage like this is what montages are made for, is just to have everybody in town sip the hot chocolate and smile at each other. You know, you make the movie sixty seven minutes and you got your problem solved. That's true. I mean, was there a time crunch? We will never know?

Uh? Now number five is our cloying child. I don't think we have any like actual miners in this movie, right, there's like kids. Anywhere, No Stephanie is the closest we have and she is going off to college. She's a cool teenager like yeah, Like she's like, yeah, I could be your step mom.

Right, Yeah, she's a sweet kid, you know, which is not cloying at all. I think we we dodgeable it here. I agree number six finding the perfect tree. I mean, we get tree decorating, but there's no like hunting for a tree. Doesn't the Holly bring a tree into the office at the beginning of the film, she does, Like how she approach how she enters into Fie magazine is with the tree.

So I think that's probably the closest we get is her her grappling with this giant tree that she's bringing through the office. That's about it. I wonder if that was if she's carrying a real tree. That just seems rude because no. There's also no no I will I will correct us on this.

Also, because Stephanie does talk to her father about getting a real tree. Conversation does start with her, with her describing how she'll take care of it and she'll feed it and she'll clean up after. Yes, and it's the whole it's a whole thing where the audience is supposed to get that she wants a puppy or a kitten or a pet of some kind, but then Rudy makes it clear that he knows she just wants a real Christmas tree, so they don't actually go and look for it, but there is very vivid discussion of the perfect tree. You're absolutely right, I'd forgotten that. Yeah, me too, all right, So number seven is empty coffee cup acting a common appearance in these kinds of movies.

What did you see it? Would you? Would you think? Because obviously we have people with hat cocoa cups constantly. I don't think there was a lot of that because not much of the film took place in the morning.

Yeah, it all, it's all in well, the film is almost entirely shot in daylight, except for a couple of instances, you know, the car crash and a couple of the late nights things. They could show off the lights in the in the little Christmas market, Yep, but not a lot, I don't think. Yeah, it's a good point. I think you have. And the lip of that is because it is QBC selling you hot chocolate.

You have a lot of scenes of somebody pouring hot chocolate into a cup. Again, we don't necessarily see them drinking it, but it's a lot of like, no, see, our cups have things in them. They have hot chocolate, which you can buy on QVC. So yeah, and then then it goes along with the next one, which is actor is trying to not actually eat on camera. I you know, I mean there's definitely scenes of eating.

I'm trying to think if I actually saw them, I didn't notice that they didn't eat, Like the grilled cheese scene. I feel like we see or take a bite out of it. Yeah, I don't think there's a lot of obvious avoidance yea of eating. Yeah, these are professionals. Yeah, QBC only gets.

The best, it would seem. Uh. Now nine is canadianisms. I guess I was Again, this was not filmed in Canada. I think it was filmed in Philadelphia.

I feel like I clocked a Canadian accenter too, but I didn't note anything specific. Yet it wasn't an obvious one. Yeah, the lead actor is Canadian, right, and pharaohs from Alberta, So I think you can hear it. Yeah, but he he he he he did. Well, Yes, I agree.

Now, Number eleven old people aggressively matchmaking the leads. Yeah, Deb's on it. Yeah, Debs, that's trying to make it happen. She's really the only one of the only old people in the film that makes any sort of impression, and she she wants the best for her son. She's sort of simultaneously hero and villain because not villain is but you know, with her her eagerness to get rid of the the business and sort of move on after her her husband has died.

But she's she is trying to get them together. Oh yeah, the I mean as soon as she understands that this woman is named Holly, like you could see her immediately like like filling out the photo album of her new dog, her in law right, Like she's so excited by that. And when when she, I guess like leads Holly to her room and tells her no, and again she has just met this woman all of an hour ago. She has seen this woman next to her son and been able to say like, oh, the two of you, Yeah, you guys go together. You'd make good babies, Like yes, you are, You're meant to be.

So when she says to her, you know, call the desk if you need anything, or if you break up with your boyfriend right like that. Like, there's a lot of the writing here is really funny about how it's kind of navigating being a very like specific Christmas romance that has to have a little bit of bite to it outside of things even I guess there's like the one other older character. There's Cheryl apparently is her name, uh, and she like is just there occasionally with Steve, like in the background of things, and she constantly like will just point out the same kind of stuff. So there's sort of this like. Little old Greek chorus floating around to point out the fact that, like, you know, you shouldn't kidnap somebody.

She has a boyfriend, but you know, I bet they're not really meant. To be together, and like all the things that you know in these movies like there are, there's writing around to say it. Yeah all right. And then lastly, favorite fashion moment. Oh man, I didn't see a whole lot of anything that was super egregious and in either the great or terrible direction, And so the only thing that was really really stuck out to me at all you mentioned already was the Christmas sweater that that Holly's wearing in the office at the beginning, the the one that's lashing yep, that her her boss just cannot focus through.

I don't think there's anything that I noticed anyway that was that I either wanted to wear or wanted to burn. Yeah. I liked Holly's last look in the movie, when she is packing up to go. She has she's just looking very like like business woman. She she's got kind of high boots.

She has this really attractive, like tan pea coat, like full length without buttons, and there's something there that you're like, oh, like, I wish I could be that tall and. Wear those clothing. So like, we do get eventually we get a pea coat. It takes us, you know, all of sixteen minutes to get there, but we do. I mean, I do love a pea coat.

I tried. I've been hunting for a pea coat for months. I am a I'm a short man, and so I don't like things that are I don't like long pea coats, like I want like a waist length or like a little bit more than waist length peacoat. They're tough to find in for someone who is as small as I am, because even what people think are short. Pea coats go down to my knees, and so I understand it's a bit tough.

Yeah. I have definitely been in stores and oh, I like this coat and I try it on and I realize, like I'm tripping on it. And the arms. They don't tell you about the arms, right, Yeah, they think that like everybody has very long arms. If you were five to one, you do not have long arms.

Your arms are the Yeah, so. I am a pain. I am a square like that is my shape is I am a square? And so it is very difficult for me to find anything off the rack that fits me. And so, like you were saying, if I'm trying to find a pea coat, it's just a dress.

Yeah, at that point, I'm just wearing a dress. I mean, I have a theory that Hallmark, like eighty percent of its budget in general as a network, is going to pea coats because there are so many. And again I draw everybody's attention to Marry Scottish or very Scottish Christmas or Mary Scottish Christmas with Lacey Sheber last year and in that ninety minute movie, Lacy Shabert wore nine different pea coats. I have photographic evidence of this. In some scene she's just holding a coat, but you can see that the coat is a completely different color than anything she's worn in the movie.

So I don't know how they can get all of those coats. So my advice to you would just be break into the Hallmark costume room and see what you can find. Yeah, I just got to get cast. Somehow we can make that work. There's gotta be a way they make so many of these.

They're gun in need, they're good. People are gonna start dying, or they're like, you can only clone these people so many times before you run out. So I think there's always put on a Lisa you know, what's that lazy shavert wig and see how far I can get. Yeah, you know, she's a little woman. You could do it.

Yeah, all right. So did you have any more notes about Holly in the Hot Chocolate? So I mentioned earlier the fact that this is it's not an aggressively meta film in that it points out the tropes of Christmas films overtly. It sort of uses them to not even poke fun, just to let people know that it knows what it's doing, which is fun. Yeah, But I think also what's interesting about the film is that it does play with sort of inverting some of the tropes of the Christmas films, you know, typically speaking, what we'll see is we'll see like the business minded woman who comes from from the big city and comes into the small town and is then transformed by the small town guy or whatever.

And here's kind of the opposite. It's the big city woman who is all into Christmas going into small town and finding the man who hates Christmas. But he is from the small town. It is from the small town, and so she's doing that sort of transformation on him, which I thought was interesting. You know, you don't see that very often, agree, and I think that was one of the more interesting things that the film tried to do.

And you know, all credit apparently to Daved Venable, QC host with the Most who whose idea this story was. He gets the story credits and writing credit on the film because it was his idea. So I think that was good. You know, again, if you're going through if you're plowing through these kinds of films like we are, they tend to especially if be doing specifically Hallmark or Lifetime films, they are an hour and twenty six minutes, and you're in and out and the worst that you that you're out is an hour in twenty six minutes. And this being an hour and six minutes just makes it really really easy thing to do if you're if you're trying to hit numbers like I am, it's a it's a good way to do that.

It has some solid jokes though, you know, the mistletowing mistletoning joke is good. The Steve with the pine falling in love joke multiple times is good. The giant scissors gag is good. You know, there's a lot of a lot of quality jokes and quality gags in the film that you don't necessarily see these kinds of films because so many of the Hallmark and Lifetime ones try to play it somewhat straight, and this one's not as concerned with that. Yeah, and I think some of them just don't have a writer off or the relationship of the writer to the director to understand how to get some humor out, whereas this feels very much like there's a running gag where the mechanic has a jar of candy canes called bad News candy canes right on his desk, because anybody that goes through a mechanic knows, like, hey, you're gonna fix my car, right yeah, but it's gonna take a week.

Have a candy cane. And the joke gets repeated like three times, and it's like a simple joke. It's pure setup, but because of the way it's played like every time, it kind of works. And I think that's something that you could see in a Hallmark movie just kind of falling a little flat, and there's a bit of like just a little more brains, a little more sharpness in this one where it feels like it wasn't necessarily I don't think it's ever talking down to a Hallmark like audience, because I don't think it's insulting them. I don't think it's saying, like, isn't it dumb?

We just met and we're falling in love. I think it is like it toes a line in taking everything very earnestly, but in having this like a little wink of like, but we've got real jokes in here too, and I found a lot of it, Like I chuckled a lot, and I'm surprised by how funny it really came out. Yeah, and you know, the director has worked with comedians like that's that's his bread and butter is you know, if you look through his his his stuff. He's worked with Shane Gillis, who does a lot of stand up and he's both performed on on stage as a stand up as well as directing stand up specials and stuff like that. And so he I'm sure he did a lot of work getting the script and the performances tuned just right to hit the tone that the film's looking for.

And he did a great job with it. You know, there's there's not like I said, it's like we both said it. It's an hour and six minutes, so you got to make make hay while the sunshines with its something like this. You're you know, you're looking at a short feature and it feels like they did a good job. You know, he was he he wrote it along with Menible and it works.

Yep. John McKeever is the director. Yeah. It's funny because I looked at his homography and I didn't recognize anything. I guess now I see that he had like one SNL credit, But yeah, I'm guessing he watched a couple of Hallmark Movies, got the rhythm, got the beats, understood what he had to do, and then kind of brought this sort of dry humor but marries it in this really earnest way where it's kind of a good time.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Yeah, same, you know, at first when I watched this last year, it was more of a challenge than anything else, just because it was okay, well there's a QBC movie and someone had mentioned it or found that I read it online or whatever, and there was an initial challenge of like, how how do I watch this movie? Because I don't even know what QBC Plus is. Yeah, and it wasn't streaming last It wasn't available readily last year in like a normal place that you could find. He'd probably had to Oh no, I had to figure out how to download QBC Plus just to watch this movie, which I mean it ended up being not that difficult, but it was.

It was a thing that like I didn't have, like you said, like this year, it's everywhere, thankfully, and so I when I rewatched, I rewatched on on on Prime Video. You know, it's on Peacock in all these places. But last year. If you really had to want to watch this movie to watch it, and you know, I think whatever investment QBC made in this it paid off in a good film, an interesting film, a fun film for the QBC community and the Christmas Christmas movie community. There's something to look forward to.

You know. It's it's not it's not a bad rewatch. No, and it's funny. Yeah yeah, yeah sure, all. Right, Well, thank you so much.

If anybody wants to learn more about you and read more of your stuff and follow what you do, where can they find you? They can find me on all of the socials they go to under Hateful Josh, that's where you can find me there, so X Blue Sky, Instagram, maybe those kinds of places. If you're looking for my work with potentate films, we are distributing theatrically the films of s. S Roachamoli in theaters, so films like IgA and Bahubali are doing theater rounds in small bursts. You can go to potentate films at all those same socials, and also on letterbox, where you can follow all of the terrible movies I watch every year, along with a couple of bright spots.

You can find me there at Hateful Josh as well. So what number are you at for Christmas movies this year? As of now? This year? I think, I'm this was twenty eight, I think, and this I count them starting on December first, So since December first, Okay, it is twenty I got I got zinged with a couple before that, so I had to count them on accident.

Uh, But I try to because I set these weird arbitrary rules for myself and this is this is one of them. That December first is when I start. I respect them. Well, let us hope that QBC continues to make movies, especially if they are under seventy minutes long, because then we can cram in even more perfect all right, well, thank you, Josh, and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

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