Stocking Stuffers 11.12 A Pickleball Christmas and Finale Wrap Up

Pickaballers have convened for the biggest Christmas Day. People actually watch pickleballs, fastest growing sport in America. They want to see a big time tennis player actually playing this new sport. This is a serious turn with serious players. You have to get good enough to win the money.

I'm a tennis player. I probably don't need your coaching. Sure about that. The lost time you buy my loveday if he is. Not nine, tame, smoking hot, I'm your coach, so we should probably establish some boundaries.

Yeah, we would want to give I'm professional. I know pickleball silly, but it's given me community and friends. I'm really glad you found it. Battles Ball. We have to win a pickleball Christmas from your Saturday, December twentieth, the day part of It's a Wonderful Lifetime, Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper.

I didn't actually get to meet Ted Cooper or learn about his saga this year. I expected that to be my final episode, but apparently I don't know how to work my own DVR, because not only am I old enough to use a DVR, I'm too old now to understand when they do an update how that works. So instead of Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper, a Hallmark movie that I have heard very good things about. This year, I had to scramble for the season finale of Stocking Stuffers eleven and find something quickly that I thought I could do. And I looked at the Hallmark lineup that evening because then at this point, like I figured it out, I knew what to do with my DVR, so I was ready for it.

But I looked at nothing that exciting. So I'm like, hey, I know I haven't don a lifetime once in a while. Let's see. And sure enough, airing I think three times over the course of eight hours was twenty twenty five's a Pickleball Christmas. And guys, come on, it's so up my alley.

I had to do it, had to close it out this way. And so for those who don't know know how we do a season finale around here, I start with an episode, obviously this year a Pickleball Christmas, and then I will do a kind of roundup of the season. So I like to rank the movies I saw, you know, worst best, and also kind of go through the tropes and the extras and see kind of what was our favorite things from each one? What stood out all that fun? So to start off, I mean we're just going to dive into it.

Let's talk about pickleball. I have never played pickleball. I understand it enough. Each feels like if you were going to make a pickleball Christmas movie, you probably should have done that about six years ago. I don't think it's quite as what's the word like, it's not really the buzz thing anymore, but pure lifetime you do you, you know.

Pickleball Christmas is directed by Monica Mitchell, who also did The Night Night Before Christmas on Netflix from a couple of years ago, and then has done plenty more these movies, rotating with lifetime thrillers, of course, because that's how we roll around these parts. So things like Deadly Invitations and there was another one that looked creepy and now I can oh Deadly Midwife following that up with A Pickleball Christmas written by Blake Ruttledge, somebody who's done a whole lot of TV, not that much TV, a fair amount of TV. A Pickleball Christmas, guys, So pickleball. Haven't played it. Vaguely understand it to be kind of a tennis esque, but for you know, if you less taxing on the body, if you will, Although the other thing I know about pickleballs is that people are getting weird injuries from it because we have not kind of tested out what the body can handle at that stage.

Now, I don't want to be dismissive of a pickleball because I'm sure it's fun. I feel like if I learned how to play it, I'd be a very good and be very obnoxious and competitive, because that's what happens with me. I have a little history with a sport like pickleball because I in high school, my varsity sport was badminton. And some of you are listening and going, yeah, okay, that makes sense, and others are like, badminton, that's not a sport, that's something you played barbecues. Well fuck you, is all I have to say to that, because it can be a very competitive sport.

It's in the Olympics, so there. But I did have to deal a lot with people kind of mocking me as like, oh, that's what you did in high school, huh. And I will be the first to admit that the hardest played badminton game is still easier than the hardest played tennis game, but it still give credit where it's due. So I'm sure people that play pickleball competitively are working very hard and are probably very athletic. Could probably kick my ass.

But we're not here to talk about the sport. We're here to talk about the movie that uses the sport to tell a love story, a love story about two very attractive people who occasionally do not communicate well with each other. So I'm going to go through the quick plot of this movie. A Pickleball Christmas, stars James Lafferty as Luke Hollis, who I wrote in my notes is like a John McEnroe type. And again that tells you how old I am, because I'm sure there have since been other tennis players who are like the bad Boys of tennis, but my reference stops.

I don't know in nineteen eighty seven, so Hollis has just won some big one of the big opens, I forget which one, and he decides to retire. So he is going to spend his retirement moving back to Florida where his family, his parents and his younger sister run a badminton. Not a badminton. I wish it was a badminton court. No, they run a club, a tennis club, and Luke is kind of flabbergasted to discover since his time in the pros the club has been converted to a tennis slash pickleball club.

Now. Granted the name of the club is the Sandy Lake Racket Club, so presumably anything with a racket. However, we can see no racketball, so just be clear on that. So Luke isn'tn't happy about this, but he you know, what is he going to say about this? Uh, he hasn't been doing any work for this club and quite some time.

The person who has been working in the club pretty hard is Caroline. Caroline is young and attractive and looks very good with Luke. Caroline would I have played tennis competitively in college, but then somehow has ended up here in Florida as a pickleball coach. So she's very passionate about pickleball. And my gosh, every time I say pickleball, I feel like a strain on my lips.

So this is gonna get very tiring. Solo episodes are hard, guys. Give credit to anybody that does solo podcasting. A lot of people are out there doing it. It's good for you and it tip avoid words with a lot of peace, because they really do a weird thing where they puff your lips up.

Anyway, what do you know, Caroline Luke, they start to work together because the club is going to have a big Christmas tournament see the club club Shock. I know this is shocking. The club is in financial trouble and they need to dig themselves out of a hole. Luke's parents have decided they're going to sell the club and just take the money, kind of retire and figure things out from there. But Luke is like, I just retired.

I have nothing to do. I came home to run this club, so I need the club to stay open. So they come up with a plan, which is they're going to have a Christmas Day pickleball tournament, which seems like a very odd thing to do. And somehow as they start publicizing this, things get away from them and there's a huge cash prize. But all of the cash prize is going to go to the winners of the tournament, so you know, whereas they set this up so that Luke could probably win and then save the club with the prize, like no, no, no, Now, it's all or nothing.

All of the money goes to the winner. So again Luke, retired tennis pro, is like, I can do this, and Caroline's a good pickleballer. So the two of them team up because apparently it is a pair sport you cannot do it alone. And they very quickly hit it off like they're you know, at first, they're bickering for about five minutes, and then very quickly it's like, guys, I gotta tell you. It is not just like, oh, no, I think I'm softening to you.

I think I like you. I think I like you too. No, it is fucking like I'm period. Like that wasn't an adjective. They sneak off to a storage shed in a montage like three times, and other characters walk by and look at them and like smile to each other, Like these characters get I hope there are condoms in that storage shed.

Anybody who plays pickleball? Tell me, is this a thing that happens a lot? Like? I get it. Sports can be very energizing if you will.

But this is a Christmas movie. We're not supposed to have sex in a Christmas movie. Again, it's Lifetime, which aims itself to be a little more adult. Sometimes. I wish Lifetime just went with that and said, you know what, we are not the network for Hot Coco.

We are the network for save Sex. And they just went for it because it's clear in this movie that these two characters have fucked several times on surfaces and in places that are not conducive to doing such things. And again, this movie is still TVPG. I guess it's good for like wine moms who are like, yeah, I can have it on, like my kids aren't paying attention. It's fine, But I just kind of wish at this point just push harder, just go with it, give into it.

Be TV fourteen. We can take it, we can take it anyway. Things are going great, except what do you know, there's a misunderstanding because see Luke. Early on, he's like, I'm gonna make this a tennis club. It's gonna only be tennis, And after like a few weeks of training he has decided already like no, no, no, it's gonna be tennis.

Pick a ball, but he just has not like committed to saying this out loud. And so at this big banquet party, there is one of Luke's investor friends. Something is they're talking very loudly across the room to where Caroline can hear him, and the investor dude is like, yeah, Luke's skinning tune. This, this is the way he talks. Luke skinna turned this place back to pickleball, wrecked to tennis, none of the stupid pickleball.

Sof and Caroline here's this and is like, oh my god, he's been betraying me. This is awful. The next day is the tournament and should be easy for them to win, except for two things. One, now Caroline is pissed off at Luke and is like I don't care whatever, like throwing the tournament. But more importantly, there has been a surprise entrant to the Pickabor tournament, and that is Luke's former rival nemesis tennis player and his cousin that he is definitely having sex with.

We're going to get into that. There is a lot of weird things going on here. So it's like, oh my god, they're down eight to two, are they going to win? So finally Luke is like time out and takes like a ten minute timeout, which I guess is allowed in pick aball. I don't know, so may can tell me it's Christmas Day.

Maybe they stretch the rules of it. So they talk. He tries to tell Caroline about five times, like dude, like I have a box for you that I said you need to open because in this is a T shirt that tells you I am changing the name of our club to my name and your name and it's going to be half tennis, half pickleball because I love you. Caroline eventually is like, oh, yeah, I'm an idiot. I should have just listened to you and you said you had something to tell me, rather than jump to conclusions and almost drive our chances of winning this tournament into the ground.

So they go back to play. They're down, but don't worry. There's a montage we see them coming up, coming up, coming up, and then it's the game point and oh my god, the uh oh this okay, it's Luke's fault again. So everybody is really wrong in this movie. Luke, So there's Luke decides as they are like up fourteen to thirteen, that this is the time to tell Caroline that he loves her.

I think they're tied at this point. I don't know how pickleball works. I assumed it was like badminton, but maybe I'm wrong. And so it's like the other team gets the serve and it's tied, so it's game point. Whoever misses this loses and the other team serves it and Luke says, I love you, and she's like, uh what, because yeah, don't say that to some when they're playing a tournament that's going to save the town and the pickleball community of Florida.

So Caroline misses it. But guess what. Early on in this pickleball movie, where we learned some mentory rules about pickleball, one of the first things we learn is that the kitchen is a place you do not enter. The kitchen is the space above like where the players stand. There's a little box, and you cannot at any point go into the kitchen.

And to the movie's credit, they say this in like the first eight minutes of the movie, and then it is the last like five minutes where this comes into play, and we have not talked about the kitchen for the whole eighty minutes in between. So Lifetime actually respecting the intelligence of their viewers to say, check Off's kitchen. It was there but you weren't thinking about it the whole time, so you think, oh my god, they lost, but guess what, mean guy stepped into the kitchen, So no, they actually won. Who we got a coda, which is always exciting because we do want to know what happens to these people. And one year later, it's basically the same exactly.

There's still the pickle ball training and such, except then tennis guy whose name I've already forgotten, Luke, his sister will get to her when we get into the list, comes and runs and says, oh my god, Caroline, you have to go help Luke. He's hurt. So Caroline runs to help Luke who's down on the ground, and she comes down to help them, and what do you know. I don't know if he saw this coming, but in his hand is a pickleball that has been chopped in half because he opens it and reveals a ring, and they get engaged, and that is a pickleball Christmas. So I know the first thing you were wondering about this movie is how truthful to pickleball is a pickleball Christmas?

And also how many more times can we make Emily say the word pickleball? So I was curious. I looked at the IMDb reviews, which is always one of my favorite things for these types of movies, and it's this is there's only one review for this movie, which is a little disappointing because we'll get to whether I like the movie or not. But I feel like this deserves a little more love. But the one review, the only featured review for this movie is a three out of ten star rating.

And the header is not for pickleball players, and I quote these actors have no idea how to play pickleball. They don't know how to hit the ball correctly or where to stand on court. At one point, the ball is clearly out, but the players act as though it was in as a pickleball player. It is very frustrating. Is a very frustrating movie to watch.

The writer has obviously never played pickleball before. Disappointing. So that's the movie. One thing I do want to point out again it being Lifetime, it just feels a little bit slight, ever so slightly real world compared to Hallmark. One way you notice that is that this movie makes actual references.

They say the words out loud COVID. That's why the club is in such a disarray as that they've never recovered from it. But it's weird to hear that set out loud in these kinds of movies. Also, there's a reference to NFTs, not something I though I would he out loud in one of these cozy card again Christmas movies. So let's just dive on in.

It's our last time to do it in season eleven's the first thing being our lead in need of a lesson. They so obviously this is more Luke Scott has a bigger kind of journey, but it's you know, Caroline also kind of has to learn not to jump to conclusions. So I'm gonna talk about them one by one. Well, we'll start with Caroline, just because we're gonna start with the ladies as is I don't know the old way of doing things. So Caroline is played by Zibbi Allen, which is a very fun name to say.

I was not familiar with her others, maybe because she's done a fair amount of TV. She's been around. The Other thing apparently she's known for is she used to do a podcast with Yardley Smith, Lisa Simpson herself. I know it was like a true crime type thing, and it was very successful for a while until they stopped doing it. And they both suit each other, so I don't know where that lawsuit stands.

But that's zibbie Vaalin for you. And I liked her in this. I could definitely see her doing either like cheery Hallmark or like dark Lifetime movies. She's very pretty, she's very snappy, like she's you know, doing this as a pickleball person, and thought she she had a good energy to her. I'm gonna say other things about the character.

My note said she wears an awful lot of eyeliner for pickleball because it's Florida and it's gotta be really hot, and I feel like you should be sweating a lot. But her makeup stays pretty well. And her other kind of maybe real feature that she's got to maybe redeem. She is so into high fives. Remember the Seinfeld episode where Putty was like high five, high five.

This is kind of the female equivalent of that some twenty five seven, eight years later. And also, you know something we haven't pointed out so much this year because it hasn't really come up as much as in future in past years. Christmas theme name right, I kind of wish they just called her Carol because that would have been more appropriate for Christmas. But Caroline, I guess it's supposed to be something. Moving on to her Bland love interest, Luke, who is played by James Lafferty, I guess is most known from One Tree Hill, was also in Oculus and another and also I don't remember who he was in the Hottinger Hill House, but to Mike Flanagan projects, so I feel like that is a like endorsement to him, and he's he's decent in this.

He's again, doesn't It would have been fun if he was more of a jerk at the beginning to have the journey mean a little more. But he makes it work because he is not cookie cutter. I think he kind of has enough edge that it does what it does. And what this movie does that I kind of appreciate is they make him like he's not a bad guy. He's not a sociopath, he's not mean.

He's just kind of a man child, which if you've ever like really read the lines between interviews with pro athletes, you kind of gather that they're all like that because they are usually thrown into this very competitive, high stakes adult world very young and they don't actually develop as people. It's like one of the most disappointing things for me as somebody who loves the Olympics and I'm you know, become like fascinated by these athletes and what they can do, and then you hear an interview with them and they're basically just very usually high voiced, and have like nothing of interest to say. I think that's true of a lot of athletes who just have to focus a lot on the physical maybe, but again, he has an arc, and something that works well is he the movie lets him acknowledge his own mistakes.

So the relationship with his sister, who is you know, one of the sassy sidekicks where it's very brother sister fighting, bickering back and forth in the beginning, and you understand that she's got a lot of resentment for him. He kind of stops to say, hey, it must have been really hard for you to be my sister, and I'm what I put you through, and hey, that's nice to see in a movie like this. Number three, Let's talk about the setting this case, you know, I we have the it's not really a charming small town because they don't push the fact that this is a town. At first, it's very much the here's our tennis club and that's our community. But then they sort of spread it out a little bit to be more inclusive of Pinecrest, Florida, which a Christmas name for a town in Florida.

I don't know if that's a real place. I'm just assuming it's not. Apparently nobody reads in this town. That is a comment that's made, which is very funny because it feel like it meant somebody here had rightful beef against Florida, and it's it doesn't get a lot of personality because again, like it's focusing on the club, not on the real town. But even within the club, there's not quite enough details that could have made it a little more.

Oh no, if we lose the club, that means the two old lesbians have nowhere to go and play pickaball. So I feel like they could have pushed that a little harder. But oh well, and number four dead parents or dead wife. We do have a dead mom. So the reason Caroline is here is that she was at Columbia I believe where.

She was there on a tennis scholarship, and while there she befriended Luke's younger sister, but she had to drop out her last year because her mom got als and she went home to take care of her and then kind of just you know, fell down a dark tunnel, as many do. Second or third time we've had like a real disease condition like spoken out loud in these movies, which is something a lot of them don't do. They just say when mom got sick. But in this case we actually have the specific thing she got, which is something we'll get back to when we do our roundup of the year. So number five our sassy sidekick.

So we have a few like smaller ones there is. So Luke has an agent who who we see on the phone two or three times. Always on the phone. They managed to again like I Monica Mitchell, like you're doing some good work here, managed to get a little personality in because whenever we like we understand this woman without ever seeing it that she has a bunch of monster children who are terrible and like make noise and she's dealing with them while on the phone. She also has a joke that I found in the way of like lifetime trying to be more current but also being like four years behind.

She mentions how she's busy because she is a client who just discovered Twitter and it's twenty twenty five and is like, I still call it Twitter, but remember I'm old for my age, so you know something to know we also have something. My biggest disappointment in this movie once we get to the tournament, there is a pair of newscasters, Tom and I think Mary Whittier, and they're both just newscaster, like local newscasters, and they're doing the play by play and so on, and I was like, Oh, this is a really specific choice here to have these two people like front on camera, like as if they're going to be something. And I was so hoping it was gonna go one of two directions that it was either going to be Best in Show style where one of them knows pickleball and the other doesn't and it just like goes down as any path or the other route that I'm always waiting for in these movies was like a kind of Virginia Wolf style divorce where they would you know, kind of continue with Wow, that was a great serve on Team Pickleball.

Yes, Tom, just like I've served you divorce papers something like that, but no, it's they're just there. But the real sidekick in this movie is Jordan, who is Luke's younger sister. And again, actress is fine. It's one of these things where it feels like there was more, like the script had more behind it than whatever made it to the page, if that makes sense, or the actor and the actors had more or heft there. But because we find out Jordan is kind of bitter, and it's because she's had to live in Luke shadow her whole life and it's really hard even though like, look, they have a common last name, Hollis.

Okay, oh are you Luke Hollis's sister? Like, I don't like what I'm trying to think. What are the names of famous Williams right, Venus Williams, Serena Williams. Do you think every person whose last name is Williams is asked if they're Serena Williams sister? Probably not?

And you know what you could also be saying, you'd be like nope and then like move on. But no, for Jordan, this has apparently hampered her life and she wants to be a writer, but it's really hard to write when you're the sister of a tennis stark or something, and also because she has to help her parents out so much, so she kind of I really thought she was a lesbian, just because it felt like she could be, and then why not have that in this movie? Her and Claire are really good friends, so I also thought there was gonna be a little bit of something going on there. There's this isn't that kind of leftime movie? And her arc is Luke says to her, well, he keeps wanting her to go to La to be a writer, but she's writing like short stories, so I don't know that that's like the mecca of writing.

But I don't, I don't, what do I know? What do I know? I can barely say pickleball five times? But they become friends, so it's all good. Next thing is our villain, and we actually got a couple here.

So we have the investor guy who you know talks you out about a stupid bit stupid pickleball is that's fine. We have his rival played by Matt Finocchio Fineo Chew. I don't know how to say his name, but you'd recognize him. He's a very distinctive face and he was in a couple of feminine critique highlights, including Russell Mania or Russell Madness, the Dog Wrestler movie, and also in Final Destination Blood Lines. Hey, you know who else was in Final Destination Blood Lines?

This woman in this movie whose name is April Tellick. April Tellick played my favorite character in Final Destination Bloodlines, which was the aunt who has a family secret that is revealed in what I think is the best moment of that movie. And I recognized her watching this and I couldn't put it together, and then looked her up and immediately I was like, oh, yes, So this character Phyllis and her son Keith maybe I don't know which. I didn't write down the Sun's name, but Phyllis en let's just say Kenneth for in case I'm wrong. They're a mother and son who are like avid pickleballers at the club, and they're also very like I need to speak to the manager type people, like they complain about everything and get their way all the time.

And Caroline like is really annoyed by them because they make her life hard. So Luke kind is like, let's play them and beat them and we'll be great. There is some weird things going on between this mother son and I am here for it. I wanted a little more, but every time we like deal with them, there's just something strange going on, and I appreciate this movie for going there, or like making the very vague suggestion to me that they went there. Moving on our montages, we actually do get a few.

The opening credits are kind of a like setup of like newsreel of the retirement of Luke. They're done very cheaply. It's just himbling on a tennis court and like a crowd cheering, but there's never anybody else in the background of any of this stuff. He does a lot of one sided phone calls. I mean, gets sort of a montage of that I wrote the that we just fucked so now we're working montage.

So after Luke and Caroline hook up, suddenly like they're just popping champagne, they're planning, they're decorating, they're doing puzzles, they're making out against a car turning making the alarm go off like whoa again, yes, lifetime Yes. And then last during the pickleball, pickle ball, God damn it, pick ball pickle ball tournament, we see a lot of it to via montage. And here's a thing now, not every sport is cinematic. I Remembersen and I were talking about this not that long ago, Like beach volleyball so cinematic, and not just because it's women in bikinis, but because of the way the sport moves. You can always see everything and it's visually very very entertaining.

Baseball very cinematic because of the nature of it. You kind of can direct it in a way. Soccer to me, kind of boring because it doesn't move fast enough to work the same way. Pickleball not very cinematic, especially when you're trying to cut it together as if it's moving faster than it is. Yeah, still still not gonna get any like Sports Illustrated thirty for thirty great riveting footage, just yet at a slapstick and I didn't write any down.

I mean, we have some like pickleball fails, but nothing overly of an interest. Interesting that there are no injurer Like I know, pickleball injuries were a thing that people were talking about for a while and there are none in this movie. And I wonder if that's again we haven't gotten to a product placement. I don't know if Pickleball was involved in financing this film at all, but it puts it in a good light. Overall, our Sage old person number nine, we do have Luke's parents, and his dad, who's ready to retire, gives a kind of speech about how basically the nature of this is Luke being like, yeah, I'm retired, and his dad like, you sure, like you don't have to be you could still play tennis, and Luke being like kind of a mature man, is like, no, I really think I gave it my all.

I think I'm done. I'm ready to go on and teach. And the dad's like, you can always cage, but he can't always play. You should be competitive as long as you can. So I'm saying, Sage, I don't know how good that advice is, but it's worth noting.

Sadly we have no Santa Claus because these people live in Florida. Onto the Bonus round just public domain holiday music or word salad. Not a lot of salad, not a lot of Christmas overall, but there is a lot of jazzy jingle bells, jazzy Mary with treo, Merry Christmas, I think, and the tournament I should mention has a very clever title, which is a dink the Halls. Dink is a term you use a lot in Pickleball, like the kitchen number two, secret Family recipe, needlessly complicated cocktails or hot chocolate to represent sexual so after oh yeah, hot chocolate in this case, Normally it's like the substitution for sex. In this movie it is more the like cigarette after sex, because they're walking down the street drinking some after they have clearly hooked up.

We also have these two old ladies who will come back. One of them is named Barbara, and at one point she's offering drinks to everybody and says, come on, have a barber rita and that's great. Next small business in danger. Obviously the club is in dire dire straits Product placement number four. This movie is endorsing pickleball.

A pickleball Christmas, and if you play a pickleball Christmas, you will fall in love and get proposed to a year later in a pickleball in the kitchen of a pickleball court. Cloying child Nope, no children at all in this movie. We have a grown son, so that's something, but nope, nearry a child in sight. Number six perfect tree, No, but they decorate a tree. Number seven empty coffee cup acting.

We do have empty hot chocolate cup acting also on a really hot day because it's Florida. Why are they drinking hot chocolate and why is he guzzling it down like it's catering? Number eight actress trying hard not to take a bite out of something on camera. So every time we cut to his agent, she is cooking and like stirring a pot. But there's nothing in that.

But you can kind of see there is no real attempt to put food around her, even though the whole thing is like, ah, I'm cooking dinner. Nine is canadianisms. I gotta tell you, guys. This is the last movie of the year, which means I have watched twelve of these movies this year and not just watch them, but like actively engaged taking notes while I watch them. And you hit a point where you think, surely they were canadianisms.

Half of the actors in this movie are from Canada. I don't know where it was filmed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's Canada. But you also realize I didn't hear any boots, any stories or spot anything like that. So was it the movie was really good at masking matter or was it just that I'm very tired? You choose number ten warm Weather Watch, Well, it's set in Florida.

Nobody has long sleeves the entire movie because they're in Florida. They don't have to smart smart choice. Here eleven is our old people aggressively matchmaking the leads. Yes, Barbara and whatever her lady friend's name, and in my mind like they're a couple. They are absolutely two ladies are having more storage shed sex than Luke and Caroline, and they are actively like pushing them together to war.

I think it's Barbara like whistles at Luke is and like then is like she did it to Caroline. So that's cute. I liked it. And last, our favorite fashion moment, no pea coats. How can we have pea coats?

It's ninety degrees, right, we have to. We're getting all of our heat from the hot chocolate that were guzzling, not from a peacoat, non peacoat based. We do have a like the wow moment, which is like every three movies, we get a lot of like sprinkle sound of head wows when the woman reveals her holiday gown and she's got like again Libby allan attractive woman. She has a very nice dress. That is a I wrote a deep green booby lace dress.

I don't think it was les. I thought it was more velvet. But again I'm tired. For all I know, Layson velvet are now the same thing. It is very low cut.

It highlights a necklace that her boss boss's mother gave her, which seems like a very nice gift and a bit odd, like that's a like you are my daughter in law, you go seduce my son in the storage shed. I have been stocking it with condoms for that very so that works all in all. So ultimately do I recommend a pickleball Christmas? Kind of? I'm tired?

And what happens then is I start to be usually a lot more forgiving of things. And I gotta say this one was a bit refreshing because it looked different from a lot of the other movies, just for it being set in Florida. And I am saying that having said that Christmas Trade was set in California, and I hated the look of it. I hated how like it wasn't winter this I think because it commits to we're in Florida, this is what Christmas is here. So it is sunny, it's bright, it looks like spring.

And that was okay. The leads are good. They had chemistry, like again, they fuck all that. The pickleball thing to me was just amusing because I know about as much I probably know as much about pickleball as the creators of this movie do. Uh, And they made a movie out of it, so, you know what, good for them.

It's not going to change your life. It is not one of those conversion movies where it's so good that somebody that doesn't like these kinds of Christmas movies might watch it and say, y'all, watch more of them. This isn't that at that level. But it was more entertaining, felt like it was made by human beings a little more than some of the other stuff we get. So that brings us on to the big wrap up.

We got a lot to do here, so let's dive in. First. We start with our ranking, all right, from bottom to top. How did these twelve movies fare? So in twelfth place?

Last place? The bottom of the barrel, the bottom of the litter Box if you will, It's lifetimes Grumpy Cat's worst Christmas Ever. It pains me to say it, because oddly enough, you're gonna see this movie come up a couple of times in like The Little Bests. And that's more frustrating because this movie had potential. It had people in it and behind it that could have made it something never great, but it could have been clever, it could have had fun with its concept, and instead you feel like elements of this movie wanted to do that, but overall something was holding it back, and so it never It feels like it doesn't care and it's apathetic, and that is the worst thing any project can be.

So that's number twelve. Number eleven is just not a very good movie, and that is aforementioned Christmas Trade, the body Swap Billy Baldwin movie where he body swaps with a child who seems like a fairly mature child and then becomes a three year old in the body of Billy Baldwin. It's just not very good, so it's gonna live there. Number ten is a movie that I think, weirdly enough, is more fun than some of the movies above it because there's so much dumb about it that it's a good riff tracks type watch and that is the Great American Family Networks A Cinderella Christmas Ball. I think what is fascinating about this movie When you watch it, you just see so many decisions that you understand, Oh, this is what happens when you don't bring the good crew over to your network and you get a movie that on paper is the same as any Hallmark movie, but just feels so much worse and yet kind of entertaining in that.

So Number nine, I wish this could be a few stops steps up the ladder, especially because of the nature of its existence stems from the creation of the Great American Family Network. But number nine is A Cozy Christmas In if you remember that is the sequel to Christmas under Wraps, which was the big hit for Hallmark that made Candice Cameron Beret a star and then cut a few years later where she leaves them to go make heterosexual, boring, dull movies on Great American Family Network. A Cozy Christmas In is the we don't care about her. We're making a sequel with Pouder and I love the SaaS and that, but the movie just isn't that good, And it's a COVID relic and it feels very obviously made during COVID, which is amusing on some levels, but also like, oh yeah, remember when we couldn't have anybody come near Brian Doyle Murray because that would have been dangerous, so we just had him call in all of his scenes.

Yeah, it's that movie. Number eight another movie that is not very good, but boy is it fun. That is Christmas in Vermont. If you remember that is the Oh that's right, I forgot. That is the second David O'Donnell.

He is right there in numbers eight and nine as our love interest. This was the Chevy Chase movie. It's Fred olin Ray directing and making the most of what he can do in six days with probably I don't know eleven thousand dollars. Has a lot of just watching it, tilting your head saying like, kind of grown up make this movie, but again that makes it kind of fun. Number seven is a good like is a fine movie, and that is jingle Bell Heist Flicks movie from this year.

It's pretty, it looks very sharp, it's very stylish. Lead actress is great. Movie doesn't quite push again a problem A few of these tend to have it can't be adult enough, and it's not, but it's a little to adult to sort of satisfy that, like pure sweet Tooth doesn't find the hot Frosty magic, if you will, because I feel like hot Frosty is now kind of the benchmark for how you do this kind of thing. Jingle Bell Heist doesn't get there, but it's charming enough, and it was fine. Number six right in the middle.

Eh, you know what a pickleball Christmas? And I watched this movie earlier in the season. Things might be different, but having just done it, I'm gonna say, yeah, we're gonna put it right there. Number five another movie that is probably better made than a lot of the other ones on here. I'm looking at it and already thinking, yeah, maybe I would bump this up a bit.

But it's so funny how this was the third movie I believe I covered. I governed it with Christine, who liked this so much more than I did. And yet this is the one that I'm immediately looking at number five and saying, like, maybe I should bump this up a few spots. Oh well, too late. A Merry Little Xmas starring Alicia Silverstone, who is wonderful in the movie.

I think who elevates it? The movie's fine. The more I think about it, the more I actually think there was. It's more memorable than I initially thought. But I already wrote things down and guys, it's it's been a long year, so we're gonna keep it there.

Number four is yeah, Number four is definitely like should be number five. Swap those. The next one is a Christmas romance, the nineteen ninety four made for CBS original movie or based on the book, starring Olivia Newton John as a widowed mother of a drunk driving husband, and it just is a fun thing for seeing that template early days of it get set and Olivia Newton John is absolutely charming and it made for a fun watch. Number tho three bronze medal position. I don't know that it deserves it.

It really doesn't. I'm gonna miss Okay, this was like what happened at the twenty twenty four was it twenty twenty four basion No. Twenty twenty four Paris Olympics in gymnastics floor routine or the twenty twenty two Beijing Olympics in team figure skating. We're gonna have to have a medal mix up and move. We're gonna move a very little X mess to the bronze medal position right and fourth place.

Now there was a scoring discrepancy and we figured out that something was not scored correctly. Good. I don't know, twelve days of Christmas Eve does not deserve a bronze medal? What am I thinking? It's fine?

That's the one from two thousand and four, a decade after a Christmas romance, and my god, to over two decades before anything this year. This was the Stephen Weber Mollie Shannon one old school again template setting a little bit sharp, which is fun to see. But yes, we're pretend that was number four number the real number two silver metal position, and I'm gonna keep it there. Hallmark twenty twenty five At Christmas above the Clouds. I love a Christmas Carol type riff.

I think this one found a fun approach to it, kind of doing scrooged but you know, gender swapping it and having some heart to it. Again. This might have hit me at that right time of the season, but this one I found actually very touching and just well done for what it was, and that brings us to number one. Drum roll. The gold medal winner of this year.

It's a Keller Family Christmas, even though I hate the title and kept wanting to say Christmas with the Kellers or a Killer Christmas Family vacation points off for the title. But that's okay, delightful, well acted, very funny, charming cast, did cool things with sibling dynamics and you know, touching, and yeah, I'm gonna say that was the best one I watched this year. So now we go into the other superlatives, which is our best some of our worsts of the lists, Right, you got to everything again. Think of it now like gymnastics Olympics, where you had the team event, you have the all around, but now you're doing the individual medals, So individual medals for our lead, I would say easily the best lead of the season was Alicia Silverstone.

She was charming in Mary Little X mess. It's the right kind of vehicle for her, but she manages to not make it feel like every other one of these, like she brings a lot of spark to it. So happy to see that. Shout outs to Steve Webber, surprisingly watchable and likable in his movie. And Olivia Holt, who is charming and I think has a great career ahead of her.

The worst Billy Baldwin, keep trying, keep trying, our favorite love interest. This was a pretty clear winner to me. Did I write his name down? No, I've got a lot going on, guys, I got a pack soon. It's Christmas Eve.

Things are going on. You know, you know how it is. But in a call Er family Christmas, Jonathan Bennett's boyfriend the hot surgeon or doctor. I don't think he was a surgeon, but he was a high level doctor. I'm sure there's a different word for high level doctor.

He was a doctor who knew a lot of stuff, and he was very handsome, and he was very very funny and polite and also seemed like a good doctor. So him our worst love interest. This is an important thing to shout out. I feel very mean saying this, but because I'm sure he's fine in these movies. I've actually never had a problem with his performance.

But how is it that I keep finding the David O'Donnell Christmas movies and in every movie they have made him the you know, the lead male, right, he is the love interest and it's not even his fault. His character is always written as the most mediocre white man you've ever met, and yet women just throw their career away from him. Twice this year, right, Jody Sweeten did it in a cozy Christmas in and the very tall blonde woman did it in a Christmas in Vermont, both of them motivated career women meet this guy okay looking not you know, not like stunning, not chat from a very very little Xmas like good looking enough guy who's really bad at his job in both movies, and both of them are just after a day like I am throwing away my career to move here and work with you and give you babies and save your town.

I just don't get it. I just don't get it. Moving on our favorite setting, and this is gonna this is shocking, I think because again, as I as I forewarned, Grumpy Cat's Christmas is gonna show up in some of the best things. And you know where it's the best. It's setting.

It is set in a mall, in a two story mall with an escalator, with a well, with a Santa Claus, with a sporting good store, with a car with glass doors, all of that it's exciting to me. So yep, there you go. Group can uh, we're sitting. I just want to take a moment to remember how inept greative American family network is because in a Cinderella Christmas Ball, the movie opens with your usual stock footage of New York City skyscrapers, and you say to yourself, oh, I guess this movie starts in New York City And then it cuts to an overhead drone view of suburbs, like pure suburbs, a bunch of houses covered in snow looking the same, and you think, oh, okay, I guess we're moving out of the city and the story is going to be about this woman who lives in Westchester or Long Island.

And then quickly Danica mckeller moves to a fake European country and you just have to sit back and say, why did we open on a shot of New York City? What did it have to do with the story at all? Why were you trying to ground us somewhere that we didn't have to be. Was it just because you like the notes on your you know, little Christmas path say like New York City Christmas, and you know that's important, that's a thing that people like, so you put it in your movie. Mate, no sense, and I just am not gonna let that go easily.

Okay. Next is our montage. My favorite montage, Christmas in Vermont has a let's uh, let's sum up everything we saw in the movie ten minutes earlier montage in a different hue. I always appreciate those. It also had the epiphany montage.

I love a montage that ends with an epiphany, and this was when the tall blonde lady walked around town and like figured out how to save the company. And it made no sense at all when she explained it, because when you're watching it, you're not putting the pieces together, and then when she explains it, the pieces don't add up together. And I kind of appreciate the audacity of them, being like, it's fine, nobody's gonna they get it. We'll just keep moving on. A worst montage.

We're back in Havenshire where in Cinderella's Christmas Ball we have my favorite kind of montage abuse, and that is a tryang clothes montage, which is the best kind of montage. And in this case, it's trying on ball gowns. And you have never seen a sadder woman put on sad ball gowns and look glum. And I don't want that in any movie, let alone a Christmas movie. Next, our Favorite Dead Parents, I am going to say, oh, okay, Christmas trade, give it a little shout out here.

And there did some things right, has a dead mom early on, And what that means for us as the viewer is that we get other women constantly commenting and calling Billy Baldwin the hot widow dad. And that was amusing to me. Our worst dead Parents. Okay, two things once again. Look, I know I'm beating a lot on Cinderella's Christmas Ball, but fuck Great American Family Networks, So that's gonna happen in that one.

I just find it very amusing how much Danik McKellar's character is committed to saying my mother's my father, my mother married him, my mother's husband, even though it's very clear, like his name wasn't on your birth certificate. They weren't married. Girl, you were born out of wedlock, your parents had sex. They're going to hell in your world. But the movie just cannot fathom suggesting that, so they do the other kind of dark one.

I was gonna say and this is where we see evolution in cinema. In nineteen ninety four, it was okay for your dead parent to die in a drunk driving accident that he caused. That wouldn't fly today. Christmas romance hoo. Yeah, if you're getting remade, we're taken that part out.

Next is the sassy sidekick. I have two shoutouts, honestly, like we didn't have great sidekicks this year, but I have to give a little credit to seeing Melissa Joan Hart as a sidekick, which is just unusual and kind of jarred to me, but I liked seeing it. And I again am still intrigued by her wardrobe choice in this movie and whether it was like her choosing the clothing, because I have pointed this out before, now that I'm thinking about it, how do I say this in a nice way. She's never dressed well in these movies, and it feels like she, obviously we know, has a lot of clout now in her career with these in this genre, and it's hard to believe that she would consent to wearing clothes she didn't want to wear.

So I feel like this is her like part of her contract is that she can like be heavily involved in her styling, and in this movie again she looks like a Long Island medium. It's a weird choice, and I appreciate it for that. I also put the big dog from Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever in here. I still have to go back and see if it was his penis or if it was his tail, but it just, I mean, it was a cute dog if nothing else. Let's see, I don't have a Worst Sidekick for that, so we're gonna keep going our Oh no, yes, I do for worst sidekick.

I feel like we did have multiple movies this year where we had one of the only characters of color in the movie be a black woman who exists only to be on the phone with our white lead and tell her how great she is and what she should do, and never do we ask about her. Happened in Cinderella, and happened in Coz Christmas, and and I just I don't like when I see that because it this, you know, this category itself kind of started as a joke, and I still like laugh whenever I see like, oh, no, here she is, Here's Oh isn't she's hassy? We should be past that at this point. Number nine is our villain, my favorite villain, not really a villain, but Jimmy Jamil in Mary Little Xmis very funny. She's basically playing her character from The Good Place, which was a funny show, so it works.

I liked. The only thing I liked in Christmas Trade was the villain who was a very overworked boss who was overacting her ass off, and I appreciate that because nobody else is in that movie. And I am also going to give a shout out to the I mentioned them, the pickleball mom and son adult son, because there's something creepy going on there. We're gonna rap back to that side. Okay, slapstick, I do want again, as much as I have issues with the use of Harry Potter fandom these days, the Harry Potter good daughter's boyfriend in a Mary Little Xmas there is a moment when he first meets Oliver Hudson's character and he like accidentally awkwardly kisses him on the neck and Oliver Hudson's reaction to that is very funny and I still think about that and it makes me laugh.

Our favorite stage old person, I'm gonna say it is in Christmas Above the Clouds because we have lovely beloved character actor Gabrielle Reese also in Final Destination, Blood Lines Who Knew Final this tenation blood Lines Christmas Movie, Who Knew It? But in Christmas Above the cloud she plays the Jacob Marley character and it's kind of fun. And then last is Santa. We like only had two Santa Claus's this year, and like his heart, it's actually there's a clear winner, which is I'm not gonna say Brian Duel Murray is the worst Santa because he's he's not at all. It's just sad to see him like literally phoning in a performance.

Our best Santa, oddly enough, was in Grumpy Cats Worst Christmas Ever, because we have a Santa and he doesn't look like a Santa. He looks like a fake Santa, but he is the real Santa, and the actor is doing a lot of work to make that work and it doesn't. But he's funny. So okay, now the bonus round wrapping it up our favorite music, I mean usual, you know we have what we have right, We have the word solid Christmas songs, we have lots of repeats of jingle bells, Silent Night, We wish you a merry Christmas. Oh come all, ye faithful, hark their old sing Noel Oh Christmas Tree.

Right. These are some of the movies that the songs that are public domain is therefore we hear them all the time. I'm just going to do a shout out to how racist the music choices in Twelve Days of Christmas Eve were where we had both like Brazilian music playing when we meet our Brazilian character, and we have children dressed up in ethnic stereotypes singing Christmas songs and weird choice for two thousand and four our favorite product placement. I mean, we had a Pickleball movie that was about pickleball, right, We had a Grumpy Cat movie that was there to sell grumpy Cat merrich. But my favorite, the thing that really I think shows a real moxie in marketing is Fred Oldin Ray choosing to use his own past work as background in his town.

So when our love interests walk down the street, they walk by a poster of a Christmas print, No, a Prince for Christmas whatever. The title is not the Netflix movie, but it is a Fred Owen Ray movie, and it is there very prominently to make sure you think to yourself, I should check that movie out. David O'Donnell stood in front of that poster. Our cloying child is next. So we have, I mean two notable standouts here for cloying children.

One is I liked Christmas Above the Clouds quite a bit. I thought it was very good, very well cast, except for Tiny Tim, who is clearly somebody's kid that has got to be an EPO baby. Otherwise, wh is this deadpand flat actor doing the Tiny Tim roll? It felt like any community theater you've ever seen where they had to really rope in a kid to do the part. And also I want to give or maybe like a moment of silence, appropriate silence to the next like like horror novel.

I want to read the mute Children of Havinshire, because if you remember in Cinderella Christmas Ball, there were a lot of children littered in that movie, right, a lot of foster children, the whole thing about orphans, and none of them spoke. None of them could speak because that would mean we'd have to pay them, and this movie was not going to pay children for their free labor. And of course, in my mind I have turned it into like these children ritualistically have their tongues cut out at a certain age and yeah, great, great, number nine on the list, Yeah yeah, Cinderella Christmas Ball okay, ten, Okay. My favorite Christmas cocktail is probably the Barberita. I don't know what's in it from a pickleball Christmas, but it sounded tasty enough.

Also, I would hope it had pickles in it because it's pickleball, and it made me sad that I don't have a name that's easily punnable on a cocktail. I'm working it through. I'm not there yet. I'll come, I'll circle back. Our favorite empty coffee cup acting sorry, I'm laughing because I have thought about this and I need to play it and repeat on my It will be in repeat on my head forever.

Is thinking about how Chevy Chase's daughter serves coffee in Christmas in Vermont, and the weird, weird swirl she does, and how she fills up a cup about a quarter of the way and just goes to show that you can learn a lot of things in this world. But apparently learning how to poor coffee is on the list of more challenging ones. Next, our favorite not eating on camera. Another thing that I keep thinking about going back to Vermont, guys, because the way this woman attempts to eat a cupcake and not eat the cupcake, only to then have a character just take her half eaten cupcake and shove it in his whole mouth. It's a thing of beauty and you only get it in the cinema, the magic of Christmas cinema.

Guys, all right, last hour not quietly lost our favorite canadianisms. I think Twelve Days of Christmas Eve has a lot of actors that just not even bothering wear in Canada. Go with it our favorite fashion okay, so again splitting it up peacoat and non peacoat, our favorite pea coat based dank and mckeller again sometimes Christmas Cinderella thingy did some things. Okay, she's got two peacoats, one is green and one is red. And because it makes no sense for somebody to pack two coats in a carry on luggage for a four day trip, I in my head rewrote this that she has one pea coat that is reversible.

And I think that is a brilliant, brilliant product idea, and I want it in market now. Thank you. And our favorite non peacot based is everything A Lucia Silverstone wore in a Mary Little X meus. She looked great, as Christine said, very age appropriate but stunning and with style and all of that. Last just to walk through some of the trends last year, some of them stayed, some of them went.

You know, last year I think was when we first introduced hot chocolate as being here, not just like, oh, it's hot chocolate, well it's Christmas, of course it's hot chocolate. No, specifically, hot chocolate is used in these movies now as a way to be horny without being horny, without being like blatantly TV m a TV fourteen horny, And sure enough we had a lot of it. Keller Family Christmas it was there. And Pickleball, right, it was again. The cigarette after sex even though it's Florida, they're guzzling hot chocolate.

Dow Our old people. Matchmaking are also like aggressively pushing characters together showed up a lot this year. Once again in some of the twenty twenty five movies, like Pickleball and Keller. We did not have this year that we had a lot of last year. And am I right that we had none.

I don't think we had any lesbians, and it seemed to be a trend that was growing, and that's disappointing to see fall away new trends this year that I would call out. One is the specifically sick parents. So in the past, again, it was usually like lashety disease or my mother got sick, and this year we had actual like, oh no, my father has dementia. Oh no, my mother died of als. And it's just something that I'm not used to hearing.

So I don't know if that's going to continue or what. And the other trend I wanted to call out is the sibling dynamic, because I you know, this is something we get here and there. But this year three of the twenty twenty five movies all had siblings as a like major part of the character growth. Right. So Keller Family Christmas, where it's very much about these three kids of Christmas Above the Clouds has a I think the most interesting relationship in that movie to me was the sisters, and I thought it was handled really sweetly.

And Pickleball Christmas has that brother sister thing where they do kind of learn from each other and come around. I didn't. I did not put it. It was actually never came up as siblings. But the amount of weird inappropriate relationships now that also have the potential to be there.

I'm just saying the pickleball mother and son had something going on. And maybe it's because it was Lifetime, who airs a lot of VC Andrews movies, and as we know, I was a big VC Andrews reader as a kid. Maybe it's something I'm just always looking for out there. So we'll see if twenty twenty six is the year of more incest in these movies, if we added to the list or not, I'm not sure, let's think about it. That is a wrap on Season eleven.

Thank you to all of the wonderful guests who joined, some of whom were luckier than others in terms of what they got to watch had to watch. In some cases it was a pleasant gift under the tree. In other cases it was col in the stocking or Cole in the litter box, if you will. But it was wonderful to chat with so many wonderful people. I hope everybody looks up all of the guests.

I had tried to put all of their links in the show notes for their respective episodes, so please go back and find that. If you were looking for somebody and like couldn't figure out where to find their work online, then feel free to message me. I am on Gosh. Sorry, I needed a minute to look up and figure out where I am on social on Blue Sky, I am Deadly Dolls on Facebook. I'm Emily and Trevia on Instagram.

Our show has an Instagram that I never remember to use. We Are the Feminine. No, We're not the we are Feminine Underscore Critique underscore pod. That's probably why we don't use it, but you can find us and to share your thoughts on this season recommendations for next year. Thank you to everybody who watched the Lost Home or Christmas Movie live, whether it was live or not live.

Much appreciated that. I'm not going to push it anymore because I believe it probably is expired by the time you have listened to this episode, but thank you very much for all your support. I look forward to coming back with Christine and talking about movies that don't involve such things as sucking down fay Ca hot chocolate or high fiving or trying to count the minutes before we get a mention of a dead mom. We'll have something non Christmas related very soon for you. Until then, I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season, whether you celebrate the holidays or don't.

And that is a whole different set of life you're living, and whatever it might be, wish you joy this time of year. Thank you, m. Park another deal, sweet tangy dels hang on the tree for also see Christmas is here, all full of cheer from here and far sealed in a jar, loading in Brian fresh all the time. Great on a dog, not with that dog on the tree. They're hong bee.

Hold the joy, be hold the fun far of for one blook up and in fine nuger can for then you win special something. It's in the tree between you and me, and so well pleased in the town. Peter picked bad. Glics sweet tasty. High they too.

Eat weed garlics sweet tasty? Are they to eat? We're in the way. Media