Stocking Stuffer 10.9 The Holiday Junkie & Season Wrapup

My mom believed Christmas lights lifted people, and she would have loved decorating this house. Hello, nice to meet you. Are you supposed to hang the Christmas lights? I'm a professional holiday magic maker. Oh you're serious.

Yes, I'm serious. I'm the house manager repairs everything except putting up the Christmas decorations. Yeah, Christmas isn't really my thing, so you do this all by yourself. My mom started the business when I was a kid. It's just weird to hire someone to play there at Christmas.

Wow, who climbed up your chimney? Last November my mom died. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's grief. It's the one thing that Christmas canthadys.

My dream is to make magic again, and you've made me feel things that I didn't think I could feel anymore. There's nothing better than Christmas. The Holiday Junkie premiere Saturday, December fourteenth. That eight part of It's a wonderful lifetime And we did it? Or did we?

We're gonna find out. It's the finale of season ten of Stocking Stuffers. I'm Emily, and as this tradition, I close my doors, I lock the doors and do this final episode by myself just so that I can usually finish up with one movie and then dive into kind of an overall evaluation of the season, ranking which my movies from bottom to top, and doing a quick best of favorite, this, favorite, that, all of those fun things. Because it's the end of the year and people love lists. What can you say?

So we're gonna do that. But first, as you heard, we have the directorial debut filmic directorial debut of Jennifer love Hewitt. I guess she has directed for TV before, but this is her first like actual film. It is on the Lifetime network. And in the past I've tried to like mix up more of my networks.

I keep like a spreadsheet and I try to make sure I'm not just doing Hallmark or just doing one network. This year, I don't know. It was chaos, guys, it was wild. So I mostly did Hallmark, but with some old ones in there. And I realized the end of the year, Hey, you know what, Lifetime is the burger king to Hallmarks.

McDonald's right, it is the chief competitor that has never quite made it, I think to the same level of acceptance. I don't think it's Christmas. Ratings are really near Hallmarks, and I think more importantly, it does not have the same like fan insanity and devotion that Hallmark does. Like Hallmark does conventions, I don't think Lifetime, particularly Lifetime Christmas can you know, pack a convention center quite the same way. But that being said, like anything, right, any you know, monopolies are not good, and the more competition you have, kind of breathing down in your neck, it forces other networks to up their game.

And I think Lifetime's you know, kind of insistence on always playing the game with Hallmark, sometimes poaching talent. A couple of years ago they poached a lot of talent when Hallmark did not. It was back with the old CEO, when he did not take the side of progressivism, and a couple of stars defected to Lifetime. Today, you still get some big names there, and obviously this is Jennifer Love Hewitt, who is not you know, necessarily the Marque name, but is you know, somebody pretty well known. So you know, it's like Hallmark, a network that it seems very much employed run by women, or at least more so in terms of equality.

It's been a lot of others and I figured I owe it to Lifetime let me do one of their movies. One thing I will say right off the bat, I'd kind of forgotten this. You tend to have a little more like not edgy, but Lifetime can be a little sexier, it can be a little more suggestive. It also has this like, I don't know, they don't have the same film jurors that Hallmark has when it comes to lighting. Because I am watching this movie and I realized, like there's something very drab about it.

And it's not the subject matter, it is not the I don't know, there's just something and I'm curious if other people feel the same way, But just the overall look of the film just like didn't quite have the spark that I think I've gotten very used to having watched quite a few Hallmark movies this year. But why did I pick this one? I had read an interview with Jennifer Love Hewitt for a Vulture that was published earlier this week, and it was just very sweet. So she did this movie. She co wrote it and directed it, stars in it, produced it.

I don't know, I think you know, probably also ran the daycare center there because her kids are on set and all that, and she wanted to basically make a like it sounded like from the interview, and I will try to link it if I can find it. This was very much a labor of love for her late mother. Her mother died about ten years ago. A little more than that, I guess she has since written a kind of memoir about that. I have not read it, but I'm intrigued.

And her mother was a big Christmas fan. Jennifer love Hewitt apparently is very well known for being a big Christmas fan. So she wanted to kind of make a movie about that and honoring that, and it was sweet. So I figured out why not. I too have a dead mom who died around the holidays.

So let's see if I mean, I know my dead mom is better than Jennifer love hew it's dead mom. But that's just me being competitive and right anyway, the Christmas junkie, No, it's not the Christmas junkie. It is the holiday junkie. What is a holiday junkie? You're asking yourself.

It sounds serious, it sounds dangerous. No, it's somebody who apparently, and I'm sure this is a real thing, like you know how all right? Ken's job is beach right. So, Andy played by Jennifer Love Hewitt's job is holiday and it was a business her mother started she has continued it where essentially it's like, hey, really really rich dads, probably moms too, but in this movie we only meet a dad. Really rich people who have families who want their children to think they're great and want, you know, to have all the lights up and have the house decorated to the teas and smelling like gingerbread, but they have you know, no actual care to do it.

You, I guess rent somebody with a multiple set of skills to come in and you know, decorate, plan your holiday activities, you know, maybe wrap the presence, schedule use so you're going to see the rockets at a certain time, whatever it might be. And Jennifer Love Hewitt, or Andy in this case, she is at a kind of crossroads. It has been one year since her mother has died. Her mom died the previous November. She has not really, you know, fully come to terms with that, which is quite true of a lot of things.

And so she's doing now her like first real Christmas us alone with this job. And she is also trying to kind of do something different. She's trying to scale her job a bit where you know, her mother was just kind of this like rent out here, all come in and decorate. Andy sees it more as like a kind of consumer good type company where she can do it other holidays she can I guess, franchise. I don't know she's got a business plan.

We don't see it, but it sounds like she knows what she's talking about. So a venture capitalist hires her. She goes to a town. If they said the name of the town, I know they do because it's a holly something. It's a holly land, Holly Holly Hill, thank you my own notes.

Look at me writing notes and being good about it. Holly Hill is the name of the town. I have no idea where it is, but it is somewhere where it's not snowing, and they acknowledge that, so, you know, smart there. Once she gets there, she discovers she is going to be living in this very large house for a few days. But the family keeps getting to laid in their trip because the weather is bad.

So she's planning all these activities for them, but they're not coming, so instead she's just decorating, and then gets involved in the town. And also there is a house manager, which I think is just a handy band, but he's referred to as a house manager in this case. And he is very handsome, and he is very tall, and he is played by Jennifer Love Hewitt's real life husband. So this is convenient because guess what, guys, now, I don't want to say they fall in love, because obviously there's a reason these two very attractive people are single. See, she's still dialing with you know, the death of her mother.

He is dealing with something really serious. We don't know what it is. It sounds terrible. Clearly he was in love. Something around the holidays happened.

So we're thinking dead wife, we're thinking dead fiance. We're thinking wife died in a sleigh accident while en route to the wedding. No, the woman just left him, like right at the you know, a week before they got married. So yeah, that's bad, but he hasn't loved since then. But what do you know, They things off and the venture capitalist finally comes back, sees all the work she did.

She's able to tell him, you know, I actually am thinking about scaling up, and he's like, okay, it's Christmas Day and I have nothing else to do, so sure, give me your business, Fitch, and they end up happy. I mean, obviously, what were you expecting? Where was this gonna go? And that is the holiday junkie. So let's waste no time because we have a lot to do.

Let's go into it the first thing, last time of the year. We are going through the main ten Our female lead in need of a lesson. So we have Andy, and you know what does she need to learn? She needs to know. I'm not gonna say like, you need to get over your dead mom, because I know that's not quite it.

But I don't know. I guess she needs to tried to open her heart because she's a little reluctant to kind of give in to make and charms. He is also reluctant to give in to Andy's charms. So I mean, this could be a very annoying relationship for a lot of people that would be friends with them. Thankfully, it works and we're okay.

I want to point out something that was very confusing. Now, one bad thing, I'll say for lifetime. And granted I watched this, I recorded it on the DVR and I'm watching it. That way, the old fashioned way. As I mean, hey, there was a time we didn't have DVRs.

Okay, we had to put a cassette tape inside a VCR and you couldn't schedule that. Nobody knew how to schedule it. There was a function, nobody ever used it. Anyway. I'm watching on the DVR, and I am thinking to myself, is it normal to have this three minutes of commercials every nine minutes?

I don't know if it was me, I don't know if it always happens this way there, or if it was the pacing of this film. Something about it felt very commercial heavy, and as a result, I ended up watching some of the commercials, including the one for another Christmas movie airing on Lifetime, and I think I saw the commercials seven times over the course of all these commercial breaks. This was called a Carpenter Christmas Romance. It was a guess about a carpenter. It starred Ali from Pretty Little Liars.

And here's the thing about this movie that I kept, you know, seeing like commercials for Ali from Pretty Little Liars is the you know, lead of that movie. And her character's name is Andy, same character name as the movie I was watching it was confusing and weird, and I found that very strange. So that being said, we're gonna continue on with our bland love interest played by mister love Hewitt, also known as Brian hellis a He's very tall, and he's good looking. He digs his shirt off, so if he came for that, it's there. So he is definitely like the guy who works with his hands and wears card heart, has that kind of just like dumb hunk thing about him.

You know, he's he's fine. He has a dream, of course, and there's a lot of talk about dreams, like blatantly, what is your dream? Tell me about your dream? And I appreciate that because the more obvious these films can be, the more amused I am. His dream is to run his own construction business and have kids, so presumably Andy says too, and that works out for them.

Number three is our setting, big bad city, charming small town, magical winter wonderland. Here we have a charming small town which we see all of one storefront of, and then a lot of establishing shots at this very large house. Holly Hill is the town. It has a diner where everything happens and nothing happens. Outside of this diner and they do a big traditional cookie swap and also a ready for this, a holly Hill Holiday hop, which is I guess a dance that this town does every year, and this year Andy just takes it over and everybody's happy, and we don't see much of the dance.

We see a little bit of it enough for people to dress up nicely. So that's always fun. But don't you want to live in a town that every year you constantly get people knocking on your door saying would you like to contribute funds to the holly Hill Holiday app How many times do you punch that person in the face anyway? Number four dead parents? Oh gouys.

Well again, obviously we know we have a dead mom. However, this movie plays KOI with the dead mom because early on in a film you have Andy like talking to her mom and calling her mom and leaving messages for her mom, and eventually it's kind of a reveal that it's just something she does, which I understand. Like that, you know, sometimes you still like call leave a voicemail knowing it's going nowhere. But there's something very comforting about that now about her mom, her fun fact and this I don't think is credited, but I learned this from the interview. We hear a teeny bit of the mother's voice on the answering machine, and that voice, everybody is the original Glinda herself Christian Chenowith, who apparently was friends with Jennifer Love You It's Mom, and Jennifer Love youw had asked her to do it, and she's like, okay, that's my Christian Chenna with impression.

Uh this history of her mom. She was diagnosed with cancer in November. She declined treatment because Christmas, which is a terrible thing to do. Don't do them. Andy went to a job interview because Andy and her mom were having like disagreements about where the business should go.

So Andy's like, fuck you, I'm gonna go be a product manager at another company. And while she was having that interview, her mom was dead. So she's got that like, you know, that sense that she didn't have closure. Uh oh, and she we find this out. This exposition comes when Andy has gone any double date and it's the first date with Mason and his best friend and his wife and like they're just like at a bar having a good time, Beers on the table, wine on the table.

They're all joking back and forth and they get to there's one last mozzarella stick in the you know, appetizer sampler, and I don't know who proposes it of like, who's ever got the worst story gets that mozzarell stick, And I think it's the wave to hear Mason like finally tell what his deal is. So he's like, well, I was engaged and then she didn't want to get married. And then Andy's like, oh yeah, well my mom died and I didn't get sick, goodbye to her, and so she gets to eat the mozzarell stick. So always like I guess what that means is just like hold on to your best tragic stories because you never know when it's going to get you an appetizer. Oh, let's see number five.

There are sassy sidekick. We get a lot. There are quite a few sassy sidekicks. So Andy's best friend is Riley, played by Lynn Andrews, who looked really familiar. I'm sure I have seen her in things, but I ain't click on her name, and I should click on it now, but that's kind of annoying to do when I'm doing a solo podcast and it's hard for somebody else to vamp, So pretend you're vamping.

No, maybe I don't know what she was in. I don't know. She's a familiar face. She is Andy's mistfriend. She's a lisbian.

We will talk about lesbians later. We got a lot of lesbians this year. Uh. She's very sassy. She's got big hair.

She wears big bows and then tiny, tiny Santa hats. She has a secret handshake. Most of her conversations with Andy are all about Andy. Eventually we do get to learn a little bit about her, but it feels very much of this although she does again it's lifetime. We get a little more story or a little more like adult things than we might where we find out the reason why Riley is single is that Riley did fall in love.

Only then she found out the woman she was in love with was in the closet and was married, and it broke her heart. So there's a lot of heartbreak in this movie. The other set, this is kind of weird. So Mason's best friend is a guy named Darren, played by a guy that you've seen in many things, Greg Grunberg. Once you see him, you'll recognize him and he's married to his high school sweetheart, and like they're fun.

They are also there as the Greek chorus to kind of constantly urge these two together. But what's wild is at one point when like him and Riley meet, like they're introduced, and they immediately are like, hey, we want to get these together, right, Yeah, we're sidekicks. We're here to make sure our friends fuck. But also then Riley turns to him and she's like, I'm a lesbian and I don't, and like he kind of immediately is like ohs. And it wasn't like oh, I wasn't hitting on you, more of like a oh damn.

He's married to his high school sweetheart. So there are things going on in this town, and I'd like to know more. Six is are evil woman or our villain? We don't get one again. I mean, I guess Mason's fiance, but hey, if she didn't break his heart, it wouldn't have been opened up Andy.

Now let's talk about montage is for a while, I'm watching this movie thinking like God, what is it with these like first time Christmas movie filmmakers who don't realize the tool that is the montage. They're just not using them when they should. There's a lot of almost montages, Like there's one where Andy has to call to find there's like a flooding and she's got to find a new spot for the Holly Hill Holiday Hot Belong Dance thing, and it's like her on the stairs on a phone call, and then it's kind of a cut of her in a different stair of the staircase on the phone, and then like one more of her like leaning on the railing, and it just seems like, you know, there's a way to edit that differently.

JLH. We after that, Oh, then they have like we only have a few hours to get this place ready for the Hollyhill Holiday hop and you know, Riley is there with your tool belts, and like they're all like, Okay, we're gonna make this happen, and like then they make it happen. We don't get a montage of you know, paint on the walls and dropping a screwdriver and knocking over a ladder and all the things you should be getting in a montage, which we don't get. Eventually, we get kind of a montage as Andy calls her mom and we just kind of see her like in her apartment has is sort of like a loft, so they just kind of aim the camera very high and watch her move back and forth. Finally, we do get the Holly Hill Holiday hot montage, where it's you know, people taking selfies.

There's a Christmas word salad song playing, people are drinking fancy cocktails, doing okay doing. There's like a photo booth right, and that's fine. You know, people are doing things in presents in this, but then there's like, okay, so there's like a photo booth where it's like a reindeer. That's fine, And then there's a tree and people are doing things. That's cute.

And then there's a pile of presents and the top present as a big circular hole cut out in the middle of it, presumably for someone's face. The way if you went to like a nature center or zoo, they would have those kind of you know, two d murals and you stick your head in. But I'm sorry, if you see a present with a hole in the front, is that not a very specific dick in a box reference? You tell me, I leave it to you. We also get moving things from one room to another later when I think when Andy is sad about things not working, and then finally the end of the movie.

One of my favorite things, which we only got like once I think this year, is the recap of the movie montage where we see everything that we have seen in the previous ninety minutes, but edited without dialogue, where maybe there's Christmas music playing over it and it has like a different filter over it. So I always appreciate that slapstick. I don't remember if there was, and I didn't know it any so we'll take that as no sage old person. We have the diner owners who are definitely there to constantly like This plays into, obviously, the other trope I love, which is old people like who really want these young hot people to fuck And they're definitely there to do that and keep pushing them along.

But we don't have that moment of like, I give you wisdom because I have lived longer, So what can you do? And sadly no Santa Claus. So let's move on to the bonus round, the last bonus round of twenty twenty four. All right, the last bonus round of twenty twenty four, starting with public domain Christmas songs, not quite as many as you would think, mostly because there is a lot of word salad Christmas songs. I don't know why there's just a bunch of them here, we do get.

I guess I'll give a shout out to the barbershop quartet of some of the worst lip syncing barbershop quartet ors I have ever seen, uh, And they're kind of do whopping some Christmas. And the best is that like Andy mentions like I got tickets for the family to see them, and I'm so sad they won't. And it's just like on a street and I'm thinking, like you had to buy tickets to like walk down the street and hear this band. But anyway, number two Secret Family Recipe. So a few things going on here.

One thing I kind of like is that in handy Andy for all of her like Christmas, Seness is not actually a good cook. So she bakes cinnamon rolls just for the smell, and we look at them and they look very kind of like what happens when I bake, because I love cooking, but baking shapes is very hard. You know, she had but then like she has to make six dozen cookies for a cookie exchange, and you know when Mason says you could just go to a store. She's aghast at that, so instead he makes the cookies. You know.

At one point when they go to the diner with the old couple who want them to you know, make babies, the diner guy gives the puts down their plates and he says, it's my secret pancake recipe. There's nothing about these pancakes that looks so special. So I'd like to know more small business in danger. No, we just have the idea of the holly holiday, Holly holiday hip hop parae hop thing. Uh is almost flooded out.

What do they do? There's a little mention of the diner and Andy like gives some ideas for them to grow their business. We a little bit of a tidbit of how the woman of the diner mentions like, oh yeah, their son doesn't come to the diner because they've kind of pushed it on him. So I don't know the the future of this diner because I guess where I'm where I'm going with that. So perhaps, uh, this is the other thing I didn't mention.

This movie has a ready built sequel name ready to go, because Andy's business is the holiday Junkie. But whenever she refers to the business she wants to, you know, venture capitalize. She calls it the Holiday Junkie two point zero. So that's next year's movie obviously, and perhaps then she can also buy out the diner and we can go from there. I didn't catch any product placement.

There's a lot of talk about hot chocolate bombs, so the hot chocolate bomb industry would have benefited from the success of this movie. I think number five going child. I don't remember there being kids, or if there were, like we we where's the weird thing? I think in the credits early on in the movie, we see like there are names credited of the uh, the Paisley's and the Palliss hell essays Brian Halisey. I guess so their kids would be Hellisay and like they're in the opening credits.

But I don't remember children in this movie. At the very end, maybe when we briefly meet the rich family, I think the kids like walk by, so I guess that was probably Jennifer Love Hewitt's kids. I don't know whether in the opening credits they're not cloying because I don't have to do anything in this movie. So that's that Number six finding the perfect tree. Yeah, I mean, like her job is holiday, so therefore it's important to her to get the right tree.

There's some issues of the trees that were supposed to come don't come. But what do you know, there's a local place that has better trees. We don't see the trees or the local place. And at one point, you buy something like from Amazon, it doesn't come out right. So so Mason's like, I'll just build you a tree with my manliness, and he does number seven empty coffee cup acting.

Yeah, so we also have empty bin acting. I want to point out at one point, Riley is like lifting things and either she is very strong or all of these like big, you know, fairly like thirty four inch high bins are very light. And Jennifer Love Hewitt. The second scene, she has handled a lot. Because there's a lot of talk about these peppermint lattes.

She might as well, like she's handed this, you know, because they're like, oh, extra pumps, extra pumps, you gotta make it good, and it's you know, poured and handed to her. She immediately takes this paper cup and takes a big zip of it, which, again, isn't it hot? Don't you need to blow on it, burn your tongue, honey. But she takes a big zip because of course it's empty, and then like basically like flips it over when she walks out the door. So love, we gotta talk about that number eight actors not eating on camera.

No, there's okay. There's a moment where the Riley and Andy are just like sitting there eating ice cream and they're I don't know what was on those wounds, but it looked like ice cream and they're putting it in their mouths and taking that smoon out and the camera's still on them, so I'm they e's my ice cream? No real canadianisms, that's not true. There were some stories. I think there's some Canadian actors in this.

I think, uh, warm weather watch so okay, I don't know. I might have missed it. I did not clock where they were supposed to be. Obviously they mentioned the movie. Oh it's not you know, there's no snow, so Andy like got a snow machine for the town.

That's fine. But I ask you, dear listener, has it ever been appropriate weather? Have you ever walked outside and said, you know what, Okay, it's winter. It's sunny. I'm in.

I'm in my winter style because it's winter, which means I am going to wear a low cut sweater that gives me perfect Jennifer lovehw At cleavage. Not gonna wear a coat, but I am gonna wear a winter hat. I know people say like, oh, you lose your you know, oh, like always keep your head warm because that's where you lose your warmth, which I don't think is true, but like, does that mean your cleavage area stays warm on its own. I just the idea that you would be out there with like ear muffs and you know, a big hat, but completely exposed otherwise just it bothered me, that's all. Let's see Number eleven old people matchmaking who Yes, you know, this was a new one I added last year because it seemed to keep coming up, and I am glad we get to end with one where you know, the whole town wants these two to bang on.

The coffee shop owners in particular are just immediately within like ten seconds of meeting this woman, they're like, oh yeah, we gotta get you, we gotta get you there. And then throughout like there's the holly Hill Hip Hop Committee and just constantly like at the end of the meeting, we cut to two members there sitting being like, Okay, what can we do to make sure they bang? And don't worry they do twelve We're gonna close on our favorite fashion moment. Okay, first I want to address something this movie, which is Jennifer Love Hewitt's hair in this movie. Now, Okay, first of all, I might be very sensitive to this because if you remember, not too long ago, Christina and I watched I Know What You Did last summer for the show, and I was like riveted by how beautiful her hair is in those movies.

It's very bouncy, like it's just it's a Panteen commercial. And in in this movie she has a shortcut and it's cute. She can pull it off, looks great, But there's a weird thing going on where over the course of I guess two weeks maybe is how long this movie is set, Like, she goes from bangs to no bangs, which seems crazy. And the other thing about this as somebody who like kind of recently went short with her hair and debated like should I do banks? I don't know.

I think I'm too lazy to do banks. I don't know if they work for me. I watched this movie with beautiful Jennifer love you it too, Who's a beautiful woman, and I think, oh, these bangs are terrible, these are awful banks. Jennifer lef Hewitt can't pull off bangs. What am I fit?

Who am I to think I can pull off banks? So this movie gave me that. But thankfully, towards the end of the movie, she also figures that out and her banks are no longer bangs. I didn't think you could do that. I thought you had to like wait six months and pin them back and it was hell and you hated yourself for all that time.

But she can do it. But that is more, you know, hair and makeup and not style, and we are here for style to close out with our fashion moment um. Honestly, like you know again, Lifetime does not have access to the magical Hallmark Peacoat bag and it shows that. Being said, you know, the Holly hip Hop Hip Hippiarey Jamboree dance ball thing does let Jennifer lef Hewitt wear a cute like red full length gown with a very corsity top that highlights her beautiful cleavage and she's got a like shrug good that is very sequined and it was cute, so you know, looking for that and that was a holiday junkie. Do I recommend it?

Yeah, I it's not really. It's fine. There's some cute moments. As a directorial debut, I think, like clearly Jennifer leew It can do stuff. I think she get the cast I think really clicks well.

You know, she's playing opposite her husband and they like. That doesn't always mean you have a chemistry on screen, but I think they do. I think they're actually very cute together. You want these two people to just bang. They want to from the very beginning.

She's very good in this movie, and she is clearly taking it very seriously. This was a labor of love, and I think you can really see that. But it's just it's not quite as like this is gonna sound so mean. It doesn't have that like pretty nis factor that Hallmark has where like, oh I can walk by like it's Christmas. I just want this on in the back and I'm cheery in this Like this isn't cheery because there's a lot of downbeat stuff to it, and it just also kind of doesn't like it doesn't have enough Christmas music, it doesn't have enough montages.

So I don't think this is going to I think it's good for complete us. I think if you want, you know, to see like a slightly dramatic take on this, I think it's it's perfectly fine. Then there's good things in it. It's just one that like I have a hard time thinking like, oh, you'll love this one because you know, like there's some darkness to it, which is good for the holidays. So it's if you want that, then then give it a try.

If not, then this you know, Hey, I don't know if you know this, but there's a lot of other movies you can choose from. Which brings me to the year end rundowns. We're gonna do this quickly because I'm very tired, all right. So this year we did nine movies. It was a short season.

I had a lot of stuff going on. Uh, And I will start by just going bottom to top. I guess number nine. I am not sorry I watched it, because boy will I remember it forever until I die. But come on, christ gin slash Christmas Mingle is not a very good movie.

It has a lot of things going that made me very angry, and then some things that were soa bonkers that I will forever treasure them. But it's number nine in the list. Number eight. I guess it's the Christmas junkie again. I feel like there's a big, big leap between nine and eight, because I don't think this is a bad movie the way Christian Mingle is a bad movie.

This is perfectly fine. I just don't think it was quite as like enjoyable to me. Number seven. I okay, this is a tough one. I okay, this is by far, no, this is better than okay.

As a it's always hard to do that ranking where you're like quality of film, quality of enjoyment place in my heart forever, and sometimes it's like, come on, the quality of film was really in a certain place where I can't conscience put it any higher than number seven. But the case for Christmas again, I will think about so many things for this movie forever, and it is bizarre in the best of ways, but I'm going to keep it at number seven for now. On number six, Holiday Mismatch, which was the first one out. It was one of kind of the lighter Hallmark movies with Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray and it was cute and I think it was I think everybody in that movie knew exactly what they were doing and did it well, and overall it had some charm to it.

Number five. I'll go with another hallmark from the COVID year, very obviously, and that is the Santa Stakeout, which benefited from having very good comedic timing, all around, good leads that clicked well together, the weird performance by Joe Pantaliono. But it worked. We'll put it there. Number four.

This is one of the movies from this year. Actually oddly enough, Oh No. Three out of my next four are all from twenty twenty four. But number four is a movie that I am wondering because I haven't seen much disgusted about it, and I wonder if it just hit me at the right time or what. But I thought of nineties Christmas was far better than I expected it to be, had more heart than I thought, it touched me more, and again is it just as the season goes on, I too, am human and start to break with the with all of the manipulation that goes into these movies.

Regardless it was pretty and it kind of worked for me. Number three not quite as good as its predecessor, But I thoroughly enjoyed Three Wiser Men and a Baby. No, I didn't because I didn't watch that movie. There's no such movie called three Wiser Menu and a Baby. There is a movie called Three Wiser Men and a Boy.

That's the one I watched. I liked it, didn't like it as much as a first, but if you liked the first, it had a lot of that same humor, skill, all those things. So now the top two, here we go. Number two, who would have thunk it? The silver metal of the twenty twenty four stocking stuffers goes to the sixty six minute film debut of the QVC Plus network.

Can you believe it? I can't that QVC made a movie. They used it to sell hot chocolate, But that feels like a very small part of it. And the rest of the movie is really funny and charming, and that's weird, and I didn't see that coming, and I am happy for it. And number one, and I think this is not just my number one.

I feel like this year will forever be remembered as the hot, frosty year. How can it not be? How can it not be? So now we move over to some of the other kind of superlatives within the categories, and normally I do like best and worst. For the most part, I'm just doing best.

I'm in a positive mood. And again, I didn't hate anything this year, but here and there there might be something that sticks out. So the first thing is our our favorite lead. And I feel like it would be lazy just to say Lacy Shabt because she had two movies this year on my list, and I do want to again take another moment to acknowledge how good she is at this thing, like she almost made Christian mingle work at times, and that is not easy. That being said, I'm gonna instead throw it out to Rocky Hannah Cannigaffney.

I think it is from Holly in the Hot Chocolate Hannah Gaffney. Yes, she's still whiteful. I thought she was very cute and very funny, and I feel like she should do more of these now number two not number two. Just The next thing on the list is the love interest, my favorite love interest of the year. It would be hard to argue with doctor Ted Dustin Milligan from Hot Frosty.

He is playing a reanimated snowman, or as I like to think of it, more as a snowman wearing with a man with the biology of a snowman wearing human skin. That's not easy. I think he is very charm I think he is understands what to do in that role, and it's very cute and it really helps that whole film go far. I'm gonna throw in a worst on this one, because again I didn't have to look at my notes to remember the name of the love interest in Christian Mingle, as I suspected, I will forever remember the name Paul Wood, because Paul Wood does not merit Lacy Shavert converting to Christianity. Just gonna say it.

I'm gonna hold true to it. Our favorite setting. You know, we didn't have anything like really really poppin', so I'm gonna throw out a mention to the Santa steakeout and it's it had to do a lot during COVID and you can see it, and if you look closely, you'll start to notice, Ge, why is nobody in the same room together? Ge, why is Joe Pantaliono standing like six feet away from the characters he's talking to outside, but even within that, they managed to like make a little bit of a town that is Colorado, but it's not Colorado, So I'll give them some credit. And then I think in terms of like the cute small town again Holly on the hot chocolate manage to do a lot with a little.

Next is the montage. Well, okay, honorable mention for the most montages goes to Christian Mingle, which if you remember, includes a montage where at least Shabert opens a book titled Christianity for Dummies. And again I can't not acknowledge that. But the best montage has to be I'm a sucker for it. We know this.

It's catnip and I will always take it. If you're gonna give me a montage, then you will get bonus points if it is a trying on clothes shopping montage and Hot Frosty does that. Next is the Favorite Dead Parents or Dead Wife. Uh. I am going to give some credit to the Case for Christmas and the dark undertones of whatever is going on with Rachel Blanchard's character who seeps herself into this mayor this this weird family unit.

There is a dead wife, and there's a part of me that thinks this woman actually caused her predecessor's cancer. Now next is the sassy sidekick. It's just tough. It's always tough because this can be a really fun part, and I kind of have a tie. Well, first I want to issue an apology.

It's it's not the worst sidekick, but it's like the worst use of a sidekick. I feel like we all by we, I mean Corbyn Berdson Owes a like very very form formal letter of apology to the poor actress playing Pam and Christian Mingle because it's just a very upsetting use of a very good actor. And I'm sorry you cannot make a don't call me over joke to a black woman if you were a white man writing it. It just felt really awkward and awful and I hated it. So there's that, But our best side sasay tide kicks.

I'm gonna give a tie again. This was a very minor part, but Talbot in the Santa Steakout gave us some great slapstick and he was very cute and I liked how they used him. And also it was such a weird choice to have a you know, like twenty two year old Mayor as a like running gag in a movie. But yet Holly on the Hot Chocolate has Steve the Mayer and it kind of works. Now our villain, favorite villain, easy easy Dinah from the Case for Christmas, you know, hardened attorney at law, best dressed of the year hair that the Bride of Frankenstein would envy.

There's so much going on and I love love her for all of it. Slapstick. I'm gonna also throw out some credit to Santa Steak Out and what they do with Talbot. It's just funny every time they do it. Good work on that team.

And also there is one gag in Holiday Mismatch involving Beth Broderick leaping over a wall that I think is also very funny, and I want to give that a shout out there, our favorite sage old person of the Year. It's tough. We had a lot of good ones this year, but I'm going to if I had a big one. God, It's actually very difficult because I'm already thinking like, well, I don't know, but no, no, no, this was my first instinct and I feel like it will never get acknowledged again. The actress playing the mom in a nineties Christmas does a lovely job talking to her daughter, so we'll give her there.

And last of the main list is our favorite Santa. Well, guys, we had the real Santa Claus, the real Canadian Santa Claus in the case for Christmas, and that made the year. Now I'm not going to go through every bonus, but I'll just shout out a few public domain Christmas. I mean, there's always music, right, we get a lot of that all the time. But instead I want to point out the most upsetting potential for public domain and what it can be used for, which we go all the way back to episode one.

How Day Mismatch does two things that, to me as a mortal on this plane, makes me wonder if I'm in the bad place as portrayed in the good place. One is, at one point, a character decides willingly to go buy a ticket and board the Christmas Carol trolley. And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's just bus and you're contained inside of it with like thirty other people and they're just singing Christmas songs. And I'm sorry, but I know I'm not the greatest person in the world.

I don't deserve that, hell, nor do I deserve buying tickets to see a local community theater production of a Christmas Carol walking in, sitting down and instead of Marley was dead to begin with hearing? Can I get a suggestion from the audience, don't do it. Do not turn Charles Dickens or Christmas Carol into an improper routine. You evil, evil bastard. Thank you.

A favorite family recipe, I would like to rewind Holly On the Hot Chocolate and learn a little more about what looked like a very good grilled cheese bree gre air cranberry chutney, grilledgy sandwich. Next would be favorite. I gotta take a pause for favorite product placement, because there was actually a lot to shout out this year in different ways. We had one movie, No, well, we had two movies. One movie that was made as a commercial for its titular subject, right, Christian Mingle.

Corbyn Bernston wanted to make a movie about Christian Mingle and he did. Wow, how about that? Holly On the Hot Chocolate is a QVC movie made entirely to catch a little bit of this. You know, I don't know a lot of people like Hallmark movies. Why do our ratings dip around the holidays?

Shouldn't they go up because people want to buy stuff? No, they love those Hallmark movies. Okay, idea we combine them. Hey, sure if they make movies like this, okay, and then like the one that I actually think another kind of meta take on it. Three Wiser men and a boy not baby have a very funny moment of a non avoiding property that they don't own, which is instead of they're doing a Grinch show, but it's not the Grinch, it's the grump that's cute.

But then, like in the next scene, we get a shout out of hey, this part of our movie has been presented by Balsam Hill, So hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Money doesn't grow on Balsom Hill trees. You have to work for it. I'm gonna give. Let's talk about our favorite flowing child of the year again.

Lily, the young actress in who's now probably like I don't know, well into her college years. But the actress who is in twenty eleven's the case for Christmas? She you know, she's cute, she has to hold a lot of scenes. She has to act alongside Dean Kane. I feel like all of that is not easiest thing to do in a child And also, spoiler alert, we think she dies and turns into a fairy at the end, and that's kind of cool.

Favorite let's see, I'm gonna talk about empty coffee cup acting was not quite as egregious as it has been in past years. I think I have noticed I will if anybody follows Feminine critique on Instagram, where I remember to post once every eight months. There was a Reddit post that I saw that came up in my own email recently that was just all about the coffee cups. So I think it's like more known as a joke now. I think they're on one hand, there are movies that are probably trying to avoid it, but also movies that are leaning into it.

And this year we got a few, and I mean Holiday Junkie actually probably had the worst one, but in general felt a little better, which yes, is a little disappointed. Similarly, characters not eating on camera always amuses me. I'll go with Christian Mingle, which has characters attempting to put sushi in their mouths and not understanding how like mouths work. Also, I don't know where this really goes, but I cannot finish the year without one more time mentioning Christian mingles seen in a restaurant where the restaurant is called steaks and Cakes and we see the food on the table and it is just steaks and cakes made me very happy. Warm Weather watch.

The winner this year is also the case for Christmas with our sweaty Santa, because it's upsetting. You don't want to see Santa sweat. We had a lot of canadianisms this year, far too many to mention. I think every other movie I clocked an actress saying sorry, but again it's you know. The hit of the year has to be the case for Christmas for having a moment where the judge in the titular case for Christmas is wearing what a Canadian judge would wear of the big white fluffy collar.

And last of the big things is the favorite fashion of the year, and who's that's tough? I'm gonna split it to two because I feel like peacoat is its own category. We had some good pea coats. We didn't quite have as many as last year, but we had movies where we and I'm it's gonna be my winner. A character who appears in two scenes in a movie and in both scenes is wearing a different pea coat and both of them are fabulous.

And that is the Santa stakeout where the sister character just happens to walk by in a purple purple drench pea coat and then later like a really nice red one and both look great and then Unpeacoat related, I'm gonna give a shout out to Beth Broderick in Holiday Mismatch, who has this like absolutely stunning green gown, gold necklace, black velvet shrug eight is she has the body for it. She looks fantastic, and I just appreciate that. Lastly, wanted to point out a couple of trends of the year. I was like to kind of see, you know, are there things I noticed more, especially for movies that all came out this year? Are we seeing anything?

One trend that I caught early on I didn't necessarily play out, but I am going to keep an eye on it for next year is the you know, we've long had sassy sidekicks in you know, big dangly earrings and wacky hats and all that, and we continued this year with that of course, even like a tiny Santa hat in this movie. But something I noticed from the very first movie is that you had, particularly the sassy character would be like dressed for Christmas but wearing pink. There were Carolyn ray Whar's pink all through holiday mismatch the I think side one of the sidekicks in Hot Frosty has pink earrings, and it just seemed like something to keep an eye on, like maybe they're trying to be like, ah, look at us, we don't have to be red and green all the time.

I don't know other trends this year. Hot chocolate just cap coming up, like it's a major plot point. Obviously in the movie designed to sell hot chocolate, that's not surprising, but I feel like we have like major scenes of hot chocolate in I believe thinking Hot Frosty, definitely the Santa stakeout, multiple scenes of hot chocolate, even charcoutery boards of hot chocolate. There is a whole thing about it in Christmas Junkie, like there's just a lot of hot chocolate. I don't know, am I missing something.

We'll have to see We also had a fair amount of like Christmas montages around a group of people playing like parlor games but Christmas themes. There is pictionary and charades, although also some question on how people play charades. Here's a great one. We have a lot of lesbians this year, Isn't that cool? We had lesbians in let me see in a very nineties Christmas.

We had I think like at least two and I think Holiday Miss Matt Okay, Christmas Junkie like nice to see again. We had gay characters in several movies, not Weirdly, not Christian Mingle. I can't believe it, can you? But again, nice to see more variety. And it was not just like Lifetime like you actually had Hallmark putting it out there, which is great.

A Lifetime I think this year put out what I believe is the first lesbian Christmas romance, which is awesome. I did not get to watch it, but that was that's actually a step forward because as much as I don't know Weirdly, there's a probably perception that the way I know Hallmark kind of introduced a gay male movie was Jonathan Bennett, who had been the leading man in many hetero sexual Christmas Romances, who is an out gay actor, so they would kind of like leaned on using him to those movies, so there's probably like a comfort factor to it. Lifetime I think similarly, just the movies they've done have been gay men, and so this I believe is the first time we've had a lesbian romance. So that's great, keep it going, Let's see what else we get next year.

And the last thing I would like to point out is just you know, the I did account of it because it felt this year. I'm like, you know what, I thought, we have a lot of dead wives. Where we always have dead moms. We sometimes have dead dads every now and then a dead husband, but like, it seems like we had a lot, So I did do account. So your breakdown of the nine movies I watched this year, And I have to be clear about like because obviously if you have a dead wife who had kids, well, is she a dead mom or she a dead wife?

I'm basing it off of like to the main character, what is or within the frame of the story, how is this person treated? Are they treated as a dead mom or treated as a dead wife? So what we had two dead moms, three dead dad adds one dead husband and three dead wives. So again not an overwhelming but it is you know, you had one husband, three three wives. There's something to be said for that.

So I'm gonna put that out there. And that was the twenty twenty five season of Stocking Stuffers. I had a glorious year doing this, getting to talk to so many friends, so many wonderful, intelligent, funny people, some of whom you know are good personal friends of mine who you know I get to do this with every year, some of whom are newer people who I think brought so much interesting perspective. I was very short on time this year for other projects, so I did not get to have some of my favorite guests from the past. I have already pre booked for twenty twenty five a few of those great, great people to come join us, along with everybody we heard and probably more and all of that.

And also what this means is the next time you see a f and Critique episode pop up in your podcast feed, Christine will be there, yay, and it will not be a Christmas movie most likely. So again, thank you to everybody for taking this journey with me. It is something I look forward to every year. I you know, the calendar's turn and I get you November and I think, oh my god, it's coming. Oh geezh, oh my, And it's a strange thing to do.

I realize that especially of strange things to do for ten years, and it's evolved, I think, I as I kind of say every year, I think I started this very much in the snarky look at all the things I have clacked about Hallmark films, But then you watch them and you grow as a person and you still see a lot of that, but every now and then one kind of touches your soul and you can understand why this is important to people. And it's so much fun to talk about it with different people who come at it all from different levels of experience with this genre or just in life. It's just a joy and anybody out there that's listening who gets some joy from it, I am very pleased as hot chocolate punch to be able to do that.

So now I will bid you ado for the season, thank you for taking this wild sleigh ride with me, and I am going to leave you with a gift of sorts. So some of you know earlier this year, part of why I didn't necessarily get to do as many stock and stuff as I usually do is that I did an incredible wacky performance of sorts with Kevin Marr for Kevin Geeks Out. We did our version of a Hallmark Christmas movie. More details will come on that later, but one thing that I can give you now that came from it is we talk a lot about the Christmas salad word song and how joyous it is, and it's a big part of the Cozy Cardigan and Christmas world. So our Cozy Cardigan and Christmas movie could not not have one.

And there's there's something that's gonna play now and it's pretty cool. So lyrics by Kevin Maher, music by Adam Bernstein. We have the list of Christmas thing song. Enjoy, happy holidays. We will see you next year.

Temperatures outside get in low. I hear a snowblower starting blow. It's ginger, blood flowing abistoles, toe marsh bell lows in my hot coat coat, it's. Snowman wave in and a hand held. Clow Aurora boreal.

Let's start in the stroke, warm it up inside my long heart rod. For Christmas memories. Throw my frontal low. Oh, it like Christmas. It sounds like Christmas, feels like Chrismas.

Smash always smells fly. Christmas tastes like Christos bas be Christas Sign Sign with you, beyond with you,