Stocking Stuffers 8.13: A Gingerbread Christmas (2022) & the Big Finale Wrap Up!

Gingerbread loo for Hazel. Oh that's my discovery. BLUs knows just what this season needs. A gingerbread show now for this year's winner, one hundred thousand dollars. I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry. There's no way of giving that job to that ding dog. He should know. We're giving a job to bat When her career as an architect turned sour, why not take an extended breakback home. I suppose I could go help my dad with the bakery.

She'll head home, sweet home for the holidays to find the handyman hard at work. Just my first baking job. Your dad hired me on as a contractor to do the renovations, renovation and the family business. This is a disaster. That's why I'm fixing it.

In a sticky situation. I think I know how to save the bakery in the new original film. It is my pleasure to look you all to twenty annual Christmas Bay that finds food and family. Your mother would be so proud. Are the best recipe for the greatest gift of all.

I couldn't have done it without you. I'm only happy when you're in the room. The thing It's perfect. Don't miss Tia Sircar, Mark Ben David and featuring foot Networks on de Cood the moment We've all been waiting for, and the Discovery Plus original films up my favorite two Gingerbread Christmas only on Discovery Plus and also The Food Network, which is where Emily Dvar did And with that, we're back for the finale of season eight of Stocking Stuffers. It is just me.

I'm alone today. I say that I have one of my kittens next to me. This is the first time I'm letting her in the room when I record, because usually yeah, no, that's not going to work. She is currently staring at garage band attacking the I wouldn't say attacking. She is narrowing her eyes.

Oh no, now she stepped on there. She just paused it. Okay, we're gonna We're gonna pause it. That's right. Let nobody ever tell you that we are not a professional podcast.

Okay, so that's it. This is the final episode. Here's what we're gonna do. We are going to first talk about the movie you just heard. Discovery Plus is slash, the Food Network Slash mar Vista.

They are production of a Gingerbread Christmas and then after that we are going to go through our best of the year, our worst of the year, not really worst of the year, but you know where where merits a call out. I'm gonna give a ranking of movies I covered this year and call out some of the things that we learned over over the course of this past month. Thank you for joining me on this ride. It has been quite a big one. But before we get to you know, going through like everything, here a gingerbread Christmas.

Now. Last year, the Food Network debuted their first original Christmas movie was A Candy Coated Christmas. Last year, I had no ability to watch it because it was only on Discovery. Plus I don't think they were even airing it on the Food Network when I when I would search my DVR, sich cable, I couldn't find it anywhere. So I gave up.

And I'm like, I'm not I'm not paying to watch any of these movies. I refuse. But a year later, here we are. Food Network this year put out two originals. One I think was like one Delicious Christmas, which I had on for about five minutes the other day and it looked very dank and sad, and I did not care for it.

But again I don't know. Maybe maybe it had a delightful tournament, Bobby Fleay showed up, I don't know. But instead the one I picked to watch was A Gingerbread Christmas. Now I think I'm the last episode. I talked a little bit about this with Christine on like can I watch these movies for fun?

And the answer is really no, no matter what my brain is working when they're on. And I did a project where I thought, you know, this is like their second movie. I feel like I should have watched their first one just to know how they did it. So I did. Indeed, because it aired right after this one's, I was able to DVR both together.

I recorded and watched A Candy Coated Christmas, which has the fun credit introducing Red Drummond. Now you probably know Redrummond is a pioneer woman. I enjoy her recipes. I've actually cooked a lot of the stuff she has put on her website. And I don't know much about the woman in real life, but as a TV presence and cook she works for me.

I do take a lot of inspiration in the kitchen from her, if you will, And we did decide recently that if I was ever to do Snatch Game. I think I might actually do Redrummond, and I think i'd do a pretty good job on him. But anyway, that's Candy Go to Christmas, which I watched and I was thrilled when I realized it was a Marvista production, which just threw me off. But I guess Food Network didn't. I don't know how that worked.

I guess they wanted to make a Christmas movie, which does make sense for their brand, and they went to a studio, and I do wonder if they like first went to the Big Guns and then like work their way down budgetary wise and found mar Vista. But it it was your typical one of these. I would say. Why why I was curious for these movies was to see how much they integrated the Food Network brand into the movie, and Candy Go to Christmas really did very little. Redrummond was in the movie, proving that an important point because I think it's really easy for anybody who is not an actor, myself included, to watch a movie and say, my gosh, like I could do that better, because you kind of think like acting looks pretty easy, right, especially in these movies, and then you watch somebody who was on screen a lot like in her daily life, like she's a TV host, she does a lot of these competitions.

But you watch Redrummond act quote unquote and a Candy Coote to Christmas and you realize, oh, no, acting is hard. Yeah, not just anybody can do it. So that really was Candy Go to Christmas. But moving on to the important movie, because oh, I did want to say, what surprised me was that there was a lot of food. There's a lot of baking, but there was no call outs.

There was no like, hey, you know, if you if you don't have flour, you can always substitute cow's blood or something something I don't know, like food tips that you would normally have in these you didn't get them. And as much as there were clear foods and baked goods being presented to us of would you like a chocolate chip, marshmallow candy cupcake, it wasn't you know. I was expecting like a QR code to come up so that you could scan and then get that recipe, but there was none of that. And I will spoiler alert say the same thing happens in a Gingerbread Christmas. There's a lot of good looking food, mostly of the baked variety in here.

But no, actually I didn't learn anything, and I something I really like about the Food Network is that you watch it and you do learn stuff. You learn dips, you learned tricks. It's handy. I love to cook, and I have learned a lot over the years, but not not from these movies. But here we are twenty twenty two A Gingerbread Christmas, directed by Pat Keeley, who has made a lot of these movies, including one I did a few years ago.

I can't remember the name of it, but it was the one with the Alley Stroker and it was not very good. This one does again have the Marvista title card, which makes me excited and similar. I won't say it goes the same route as Holiday Harmony, Harmony, Holiday Harmony and Holiday Holiday in Harmony, But remember how when we watch that one we kept kind of remarking on the lighting and how it looked like a real movie. The lighting in a Gingerbread Christmas. It's not like full real movie, but it's not Hallmark cardboard movie.

It's sort of a cross in between. But it does look a little different from the typical movie of this and then randomly I did have the other that one Delicious Christmas on and it was shocking how weird the lighting was. So I don't know what I can say about that. I am not I know nothing about lighting film sets, but there's something to see there, so your eyes on it, go for it. The big Food Network star in this one is Duff Goldman, who hosts the Holiday Baking Challenge, the Thanksgiving Baking Challenge, the Halloween Backing Challenge, the All Hallows Eve Baking Challenge, the All Saints Day Baking Challenge.

I don't know how these work, but there's a million of them, even for every holiday, So what's really weird about this? For some reason, he's not playing himself. Even though he is playing himself, he is playing a Food Network personality chef who hosts baking shows, to which they use footage from one of his shows in this movie. But yet his character's name is Mark Clements. I do not understand why they couldn't just have him be Duff Goldman playing Duff Goldman, who knows Maybe there was something in his contract where he wanted to say no, I want to act, and I can only act if I'm playing a different character.

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's his real name. Duff doesn't seem like something that he was born with. I don't know how this works, but that's that part of him, and let's get into the story.

It follows a young architect named something That's Something is Hazel. I don't know how I could have forgotten it, because it's actually a huge part of a movie. But Hazel is played by Tia Sircarr. I hope I say that name right, even though I tried to look it up beforehand. You would recognize her from the good place she played.

I don't want to say who she played because it's kind of a spoiler, but she played Eleanor another version of Eleanor. She's very cute. She is a hard working architect in the big dad city of Chicago. I think or she New York and then moves back to a town outside of Chicago. I honestly have no idea where this movie is set, but anyway, she's an architect, she's working hard.

She's trying to get a promotion, but basically she loses the promotion to the dude, and it's very clear that she lost it because the dude's like a dude, and rather than stay in the city and be sad, she goes back home where her recently of two years widow dad has been struggling to keep the family Bakery afoot. So the family Bakery was her mother was the baker. Mother died two years earlier, and Dad's still running it. But you Hazel walked into the bakery and doesn't understand where there's nobody in there, but yet across the street there's a line outside a door for a rival bakery, which is being run by her a former best friend turned mortal enemies, Shelby. Shelby is also her godmother's daughter, and her godmother was her mother's best friend.

There's there's a lot of weird relationships in this movie that don't seem I don't understand why they had to be so intertwined, but they are, so we go with it anyway. Dad has hired a contractor to fix up the bakery, and then he stayed on and became the head baker, the only baker, the only employee. I don't know if the dad actually makes or just this guy does. The character's name is Mark. Mark is a good looking single man, so naturally sparks will fly, but how do they fly?

How how do we get these two together? Well, Deff Goldman, I'm sorry, nay, Mark Clemens is wait a minute, see if they did it again? They fucking did it again in this movie where deaf Goldman is playing a character named Mark, actor Mark Bendavid is playing a character named James. Her love interest's name is James, played by an actor named Mark. Why do these moans keep doing this?

I don't know. There are a lot of names in the in the language that you've spoken in these movies. I don't know why we have to keep using the same ones as actors in the movies. Anyway, I digress, So okay, Mark Clemens slash Duff Goldman is holding a big baking architect gingerbread competition that's all about like making a really elaborate gingerbread house. And the grand prize is one hundred thousand dollars plus I think a spot on the Holiday Baking Championship where you could win ten thousand dollars or twenty five thousand I think now is the going rate.

And Hazel figures out that well, she is not a baker. She actually did not take up her mother's mantle. But she's an architect, so she can design a gingerbread house. James can bake the gingerbread house and they'll win one hundred thousand dollars, which will pay for half of that will pay for the bakery to pay back its rent. But there's no actual business plan going forward on how they won't be in this position a year from now.

I digress. They get together, they start making gingerbread house modeled after the town hall building in this little town buddies in Canada, but Shure is somewhere in the Midwest, and they fall in love. I guess, I don't know. It's kind of confusing. She's afraid of committing.

There is a big accident where she and James have an argument and they knock into the gingerbread house and it breaks, and she's ready to give up. He storms off. Her godmother enlists Shelby to come help and says like, no, no, you two are going to hash this out. Shelby, you fold already, because Shelby is also in the competition. Shelby, you finished yours.

Now help your friend. You screwed over by opening a bakery right outside of her father's dying business, so she does. They make up. They go to the competition. Guess what, They don't win.

Whoa what? Instead, the nice young Iranian woman who made a cinemasque wins, as she should because it was way better. But it's all good because Duff Goldman Mark Clemens is impressed by the storyline between Hazel and Shelby, so he decides like, hey, both of you should come on my baking show, which doesn't make sense because Hazel isn't a baker, and also think about a business plan together. I don't know. I didn't really understand how this movie ended, but it did and everybody seemed happy.

So we'll go with it now going into the details of it. Let's let's go. It's our last time this year. Let's let's make it count number one. Our lead need of a lesson, I lead need of a lesson is Hazel.

I don't know what she needed to learn. She was working very hard. I guess what she needed to learn was to not keep subjecting herself to an industry or that type of that part of the industry that was never going to respect her. Because at one point, the architectural firm calls her and says like, hey, we're sorry, we should have given you the promotion. Please take it, And by then she's kind of course fallen back in love with her old town, so she's like, no, I'm not gonna because also there is a new architectural firm in this small town run by a woman.

So she's like, no, women business. That's what I'm going to do, a woman business, which is a a good mesh a message, I guess, you know, kind of I want to give it credit for not just being a oh don't give up the way some of these movies are very just give up your career doesn't matter. I feel like this was sort of kind of saying like, oh, don't don't subject yourself to the grind when you don't have to maybe put yourself through misery to get where you think you want. That's what I want to say. Where the movie's heart was.

I don't think it was just saying, oh, stop trying, because a woman, especially a woman of color, in this industry is never going to make it. I don't know if it comes out that way. I'm sure somebody else could read this movie a little bit more hard nosed and say, like, this movie just told this woman to give up on competing in the big leagues. It kind of did fuck this movie. Okay.

Anyway, moving on number two. The setting big bed City, charming small town, magical, winter wonderland. I mean, the big bed City obviously is bad. We know it. They don't give her a promotion.

This charming small town I was very confused by. Again. I guess they said where they were in the beginning, but I didn't really get it. We know it snows there, we know it's somewhere near Chicago. I think it is a small enough town that you can very quickly walk down the street and know everybody.

But it's a big enough town, according to somebody at end of the movie that you can have two bakeries on the same street and still have business for both of them. I don't know that I believe that. At one point, when they are looking at this fairly impressive town hall, which I'm sure is a real building somewhere not in the small town, there is some weird green screenery going on where they're just you can see the pixels behind them that are simulating this winter setting. Anyway, Number three Bland love interest. So this guy, Okay, he is a handyman turned baker, as you heard from the trailer, which is great because it hits everything that you want in these Like again, they they've done their research and they know the things that women want in these he and he says early on, you know, being a single dad's hard.

You're like, oh dead, no, not a dead wife. A divorce. We don't get divorced in these often because again, these movies are all supposed to be about happy puppy, you know, don't think of anything negative. But in this case, it's very like he goes out of his way to make it very clear that it was a nice divorce, that him and his ex wife are on very good terms and they co parent and it's great, and even a little girl at one point it's like, I have two really great parents who just aren't together, So don't worry, Like you don't have to feel bad about this. For about twenty minutes in the movie, he's just not there and I had forgotten about him, and I really thought we just we're never going to see him again.

But then they do bring him back. I don't really know why. Number four is the montage now A mixed feelings of the montages in general, I feel like this year will get to it at the end of this episode. But this is kind of a wash for montages. They're not up to the standard they used to be.

We get I think three that I counted, and they are all baking related, which is fine. It's Food Network, it should be. The first one is kind of the greatest one because Hazel has said, like, look, I don't know if this guy can bake, Like, yeah, I had a scone, it's good, but let me watch him bake. So he has sort of an audition and it's the most hilariously gratuitous bare chested shot I've ever seen in one of these movies where m Mark or James, whatever the character's name is, like walks into the kitchen, takes off his T shirt to put on a chef's coat, and as he does that, you just see his exposed torso. He's he's an attractive man, but like he's not, Like it's not a torso that.

If I was directing this movie, I would say, whoa wait, dude, we need to show your bear chest in this movie. Like he is kind of a pasty white guy, like he's trim, but he's not. I don't know. I'm not like, look not he's fit. He's great for a guy who's bakes a lot.

I guess he just doesn't eat his baking or has a really good metabolism. But there's nothing. It's not one of those moments that like, really is gonna please I think a lot of people out there anyway. And it made my husband very angry because he's like that, that's just you can't. That's just so gratuitous, like fun and pretty much all of these so the first two are pure montages, are pure baking montage, chopping the basils just in the lemon mix in the mix, and both of them are not too Christmas music.

They're too kind of like sort of do what I would think of as like Cuban big band music, but they're not Christmas Eve, and I what what are we doing? What do we know? What movie we're making here? And then thankfully the third one, which is just yet another baking montage idiots deck the halls, same style of music as the other two, but hey, at least it's Christmas now. Number five they're dead parents or dead wife.

We have a dead parent wife, a dead mom wife. Judy was her name, she was baker, she was apparently the greatest person in the world, and she's no longer with us, So all right, yeah, that's what we like to see. Number six, our sassy sidekick. This This is upsetting because I don't hate you this every year. I need to find a way to not end on a dud for some of these categories, but we kind of do.

There's not earlier ass a sidekick. Hazel be friends m Yasmine, who is another entrant in the baking competition. She is again, as I said, she's Iranian, um kind of fairly new to the country. She's lovely, she makes a much better gingerbread house than anybody else, and she wins, so good honor. But no sass, no you know, fire, no dangly earrings.

We move on number seven, evil woman or villain. So in this case we have a you know, we have her boss, who is impressed by the white guy. The white guy is presented as if he's going to be a big problem, that is Ben Smarmie Harvard grad, but he goes away pretty quickly and then really the the oh, there is a sassy, mean gay rival baker in the competition who's just very, very bitchy, and I did love him and I would have liked him to be in more of the movie. But he is not the real villain. I guess is Shelby who.

Okay, look, I think Tia Sakar is probably about my age, Like she's I'm forty. I think she might be. She looks like she is in her mid thirties. Are you still mad at your friend in high school for form hanging out with cool kids? Like is that a thing that you hold onto for almost twenty years?

Because she is, and like, fuck, get over it, Get over it now. Shelby is interesting in that, again she has opened a bakery across the street from her godmother's. Oh no, from her mother's best friend's bakery. If this all comes together, and that's kind of a dick move, I don't really And they never really explain why, because again I guess that was the only real estate in town that made sense. But the fun twist of that is that Shelby also is there and she introduces Hazel.

Oh by the way, I opened this with my wife, which is again, this is a very inclusive movie. This we get a lot of different different ethnicities, different sexualities. All that's great and I appreciate it, and it's more true of the landscape of the world. Movie doesn't do much with it like they actually do make a point of saying like Shelby kind of justifies her actions as saying like, look, I didn't yeah, I stole your prom date because I didn't want people to know I was gay. Cool, Okay, sure, again, just a small part of this movie, which is really the way it should be done, where you don't necessarily have to make it about that, but you sprinkle it in now.

Granted, of the two IMDb reviews that were on there for this movie, one of them was just angry at that and how quote unquote woke this movie was fuck that person. I enjoyed it. There we go, Number eight, Slapstick. It starts as if there's going to be a lot of it because in the very first scene, Taskar, who is a good comedic actress who can probably pull off a lot of this, she has like a good spit take in a coffee shop and then she goes to throw her coffee cup away and it doesn't land in the garbage can. So they're kind of pulled like really pushing a clumsy narrative but that goes away really quickly, so I don't know.

Number nine sage old person. Her dad is there and he's pretty supportive and occasionally gives good advice. There's also Nina, her godmother, who is her friend's best mom best friend, except again, she's also kind of villainous because she has helped her daughter put her former best friend's husband out of business. And Tan Santa clause, God damn it, not a Santa again again. Guys, remind me, because I'll forget next year.

Make a rule that I have to do the final episode on a Santa movie. So the bonus round. Moving over. Number one. Public domain holiday songs not nearly as many as there should be.

There's a lot of non Christmas music. I don't get it, but specifically a lot of Joy to the world in various forms, like there's a slow joy to the world, there's Caroler sing and joy to the world. I don't know why they kind of stuck with the theme and went with it. Number two is our secret family recipe before a movie produced by the Food Network. You would think there would be more recipes in general, and there's not.

Just like there's baking, but you can't follow along with it. There is one scene where the Dad's like, I know how to make you feel better. It's the secret Banana Split Sunday, and we do watch him make it, and it's I mean, I'm not a big bana split person, Like if I want ice cream, I want ice cream. I like banana and sweets, but not an ice cream. But apparently the trick is, you know, you you layer the foundation as the banana, then then you apoloitan on top, and then the whip cream and then chocolate sauce as well.

But again, like there's mentions of cupcakes this movie, but not details on them. They're making a gingerbread house and there's a little bit of like, oh and my mom's recipe. She calls for this, and baker contractor is like, what you can't use that? Oh? It worked, but like, can can you tell us like or is this educational?

No, it's it's not at all. So Number three small business in danger. Obviously it is Hazelnuts Bakery is the name of it, and we know it is in dire dire straits. Number four is product placement. So here's where I'm just my mind just is boggled.

I don't understand stand why they quite did the movie the way they did, because it's a Food Network produced Christmas movie airing on Discovery Plus but also airing on Food Network. I imagined watching this because I had seen promos. I had seen a lot of m Duff Goldman, Mark Clemens doing like little bits of like don't Forget how to watch Generate Genera Christmas on Discovery Plus my movie where I star, And so I figured like, Okay, there's gonna be tie ins, right, There's gonna be just a lot of it, and it's really weird that there's not. I went to the Food Network website, assuming like, well, this is probably gonna this and the other movie. You're probably gonna be really prominent.

It's probably gonna be like like here for bios and for you know, links to the recipes you saw in the movie. There's nothing I had to like, you know, when you try to go to a site and search it and you can't find anything because of the way the site's organized. So then you separately you google the thing plus the thing, thinking that will direct you better. And it did a little bit, like there is one one link to Duff Goldman's recipe for gingerbread cupcakes and it says, you know, as seen on this movie, But there's nothing. There's no like tag on this recipe that brings you to a landing page like categories cupcake, Gingerbread, Christmas Dessert.

Normally they'd like a giant you know, Papa bad or just link direct to learn more about what you saw in a Gingerbread Christmas. So bad marketing for a movie that I assume was made to market the network. Even Duff's book, Like in the beginning, I have to go back. I meant to try to get a picture of it to see, like he's sitting there with a book in front of him, and I don't know why it wasn't his real book. I assume it wasn't because otherwise it would have his real name and not the character's name.

So much going on, so just weird choices. Number five plowing Child, So we know that James Mark has a child. Oh she's fine, she's like probably like eleven. She likes cookies like their dad's a baker, because I mean she gets eat cookies and yeah, that'd be great. Like she's kind of aggressively mediocre, where there is no attempt to make her cute but also no attempt to make her annoying, like she is just perfectly there.

And you know, again, as we know, I like a terrible child, so I was disappointed. Number six character of the holiday theme name Hazel, gives us hazel nuts, so we'll take it. Number seven finding the perfect tree. No tree, no real decorations, no holiday cocktails, jumping to nine empty coffee cup acting now, let's talk about that. Here.

I am watching this and there's a couple of different scenes of characters drinking coffee where I'm thinking, like, well, you know, they actually know how to do this. This is a higher quality than I'm used to. And there's specifically a scene where our two leads are drinking hot chocolate outside and I'm going with it. I'm believing that that has hot chocolate now. And then there are carolers that just sort of accost them and start singing at them, and they are like smiling along and they start clapping while holding the cup, and okay, maybe by this point you're done with the cup, so maybe there's there's like almost something left, But it immediately cuts to a caroller, cuts back to them and their hands are empty and they are applauding, and where did the cups go?

Earlier we saw Hazel make an effort to make sure her cup went in the recycling then, So I do not believe that they littered Charlie Bucket style in this movie. But it was at that point I was like, no, I literally just finished writing, they're actually pretty good with cups, and then that scene happened. Now number ten actors trying very hard enough to take a bite of something on camera. Well, it's a Food Network movie. There is a lot of food in there.

And there's a couple of scenes early on where it's like, this cupcake's amazing. Can't you tell by the tiny, tiny, tiny eighty eighty vity bite that I took of it so as to not mess up my lipstick, which I'm wearing a lot of lipstick for somebody who's just wandering around their old hometown. So there's a few things like that. There is a champagne toast where nobody actually drinks it. However, I will say, too, well, one thing.

At one point, Dad is eating a cookie and we see the cookie in his mouth as he's talking. So good on him. That's method. But one thing this movie does well and this is like, oh right, because their Food Network, this is how they do most of this, because I'm sure we all wonder on like Holiday Baking Challenge, how much do the judges eat, like is it a bite? And then they spit out the rest and then they like slash water and then take a bite in the next one, Like it's it's hard to know because obviously the food looks very good, But if you are eating ten of them that day or maybe that morning, because I'm sure these shows are filmed like five episodes in one day, then how do you manage to do that without getting sick or just not being able to taste things?

So I think what they show here is a good trick, which is it's not about showing an actor putting the food in their mouth and chewing. It's about showing the fork in the food. So there's a very specific cut where Hazel like takes her fork like slices into a piece of cake and you could see her like getting the cake on the fork, and it makes it's beautiful because it highlights the cake. It shows the texture of the cake that it's very soft, it shows all the colors, and then we cut to her like you know, pretending to wipe her mouth and talk about how good it was, And so there's there's an art form to that that I feel like Again, the director is a somebody who did Christmas movies, not Food Network stuff.

But I guarantee like somebody on set who was like an editor of the Food Network was like no, no, no, I trust me, trust me. So number eleven canadianisms. Oh oh, yes, this was filmed in Montreal. Apparently I didn't watch close enough to see if like you could have seen like French everywhere, but we know that based on a lot of the actors accents. Dad especially is definitely a big, big guy of saying story eleven warm weather watch.

Yeah. Again, I didn't quite catch where they filmed it, and that's on me, but I believe it was supposed to be somewhere outside of Chicago. Tell me people, as I've said, I've been to Chicago once and it was in the summertime. But do you barbecue outside in December? Like?

Is that a thing people do while wearing just like a light pullover? Because the dad of this movie doesn't, I will say, um, Tasa Carr commits to always wearing gloves when she's outside and they're really cute too. Their like red leather, and she looks great holding a coffee cup in them. In general attashion in this movie, I liked. She had very good looks, really nice red peacoat, that she would keep wearing cute sweaters.

Just looked great in this movie. But every time she was outside she did have gloves, so I appreciate that effort. This and that's that's a wrap on that. I do want to point out one of the review there's only two reviews on IMDb. One of them is a two out of ten.

And let me let me read this now. It does say has a spoiler warning, so you know, make of that what you will. M This is a This is simply a remake of the twenty eighteen film A Gingerbread Romance. The female leads in both film are architects, I mean, a single dad that happens to be a baker and entering a baking competition by making a gingerbread house and fall in love. YadA, YadA, YadA.

I love the original, so settled down to so I settled down to watch this quote unquote remake and thought I would enjoy it. But I knew exactly what each scene was going to be, so the plot is still the same that totally spoiled it for me. Why do a remake of a four year old film? If you have already seen a Gingerbread romance, don't bother watching this water down version. Yeah, I now, granted I have not seen a Ginger Read romance, but guess what this is not a remake of a Gingerread romance.

Has this person never seen more than one of these Christmas movies to understand that they're all remakes of each other because there's only three stories you tell in them. So again, I guess if you liked Ginger Read Romance, maybe this fits that. I can't tell you, but I found that very amusing. I don't particularly recommend this as a seek out and watch it. I think this is one of the movies that I would say, and it goes in kind of this.

We've talked about the different ways of recommending these. This is the one that if you were at, you know, the in law's house for the holidays and they're debating what to put on, this is probably a good one to put on in the background because it is attractive to look at. There's a lot of good food shots, a lot of really attractive cookies, a lead who is very likable and is like an actress that that is pleasant to watch. So for all of those, it makes one that's a little bit more watchable in the kind of like ads. It's not gonna look cheap, and it's not going to offend me in any way, like it does make attempts at inclusion.

It is very diverse, it's it's doing a lot of things right. It's just overall not that special and nothing pops out of it. I'll remember it because of probably tsa car, maybe that it was Food Network, but in like five years, I won't remember it at all. So when they inevitably quote unquote remake it, perhaps we will see how that goes. But that was a gingerbread Christmas, which means we've reached the point where we got to look back because we're done, right, we went through all of it.

Let's go through the rankings of where everything fell. And so let me tell you when I started thinking about the ranking, I was like, oh, this is gonna be a fun one because like there were a lot of great movies this year, there were a lot of ones that were like actual good movies. It's gonna be hard drank, and then I sat down and made the list and realized, oh, oh, Emily, no, there were two good movies that genuinely were good that I would rewatch, and there are nine movies that were just these movies ranging from being mediocre to being like, genuinely terrible. Why did I think these were good? Well, I'll tell you why.

It's because I had good people to watch them with. It was a delightful year of having guest stars, and I wish I could have more. There's a lot of wonderful people I wanted to ask that. I looked at my schedule and thought, realistically, I just don't know. I know, I'm gonna run out of time.

Let me try to get some people that I haven't talked to. Why. I'll so. There are many people out there, and I will separately reach out, But of next year, I want you on the docket. I want you on the list because I will do even more of them.

But I'm so happy with the people that I did get to come and join me. It was a delight because you all made these movies seem better to me, even if you didn't like them as much as I did most of the time. Being able to talk about the ridiculousness of some of these things with interesting, clever, smart, funny people who I'm just in awe of being friends with was just exciting and entertaining, and it gave me a really good month and for just to you know, to get sappy for a moment here. Last year, some of you might remember, we started doing stocking stuffers and ended them pretty quickly. I think I did four episodes and then that was it.

Why was that it? Some of you know, some of you don't know if you know me in person or if you maybe follow me in different places, you know, Well, last year I got to join the Hallmark Dead Parent Club when other passed away. Uh, it was a really rough December. Ah, the entire month was was bad. It was it was cancer.

It was home hospice, so it was being home with various members of my family at different time. So in general, as you might imagine, it was a pretty rough year. My mother passed away. Actually at the point of recording today was a year ago today. Um, and you know anybody who has been through that, Like many characters in Kauzy Gardener and Christmas movies know that it makes for a very strange, rough, weird period of morning after where you're constantly learning what this person meant to you and where you missed them and all of those things.

Something I think, um that I kind of knew was coming was the different kind of landmarks of oh, this is you know, Mother's Day or you're you know, my mom's birthday, like all those big things that come that you know like, oh, these might be rough and then they are maybe rougher than you thought they would. And I knew for December that that would be that might be rough time because you know, like many of us, we constantly look at you know, our one year ago today kind of where we were at and all of that, and that was not the great time. And you know, December twenty one. So one of the things I wanted to do was basically keep myself busy and I kind of find the fun and find the joy and find the things that can both keep my mind working but also just keep me in a more positive place.

And weirdly, it's not the I say these things not to say that watching these movies accomplishes what they're supposed to, because I think they are in many ways designed for that person who is not happy of the holidays, maybe the person who doesn't want to think about all the stress of the day or about all the memories that come with the holiday, or the person who's just really busy and just wants to not think for forty five minutes or forty five minutes and just you know, watch pretty people make things out of sour cream and kiss at the end of a movie. That's not really why I watch these. I watched them because for me, it's just so fun to pull out the weirdness of them, and it's way more fun to do it with other people.

So thank you everybody for joining me for it, both my guests and all of you who listen, who comment, or just listen. And when I randomly find out that it made somebody happy or made their day or made them laugh, that brings me great joy. So thank you. Now with that, let's do our rankings, and we'll start with the movies that brought me the least joy. Although, again, in fairness, the act of watching them, knowing I would talk about them with people that would have their own view on things, it kept me pleasant.

So I'd say, if I'm going through a number thirteen. Look, the worst movie was probably A Royal Christmas on Ice. That was the ice skating one with the really moody lead actress who did not want to be there. It just lacked joy, lack spark for an ice skating movie. Was was a bit dour up the list.

One two thousand and eight A Christmas Proposal. I gotta give it, you know, it's it's notable for being so early in the cycle, but it was also really ugly and didn't have the charm that I really wanted from a movie made back then that still understood what it was doing. It had enough weirdness that I was very entertained, but I couldn't tell anybody it's a good movie. Number eleven is probably one of the better made movies, but in truth was one of the least entertaining, and I'd say that was stepping into the Holiday Lifetimes movie this year with Mario Lopez. Again.

It did have a lot of good dancing, so I enjoyed that part of it, but everything outside of that was very just the ten I guess a gingerbread Christmas. It just didn't It's fine, but I want something a little more punchy. In these movies like number nine, A Christmas Gist Too. A Christmas Gets Two is a terrible movie. It is probably might be the worst movie.

No, it's than the last two. It's definitely better than A Rural Christmas and nice, but it is so cheap and so messy and so problematic, and yet, and yet I say that cast is working very hard, some genuinely good performances in a movie that is terrible, and I enjoyed watching it way more than I should. Number eight go with Once Upon a Christmas, the two thousand magical movie with Kathy Ireland. Kind of fun to watch a movie that old that still hits the marks, but it hits them differently. Number seven Falling for Christmas.

This was the Lindsay Lohan kind of the highest probably the highest budgeted one on here, but it's the Netflix one. Again. If I take Jason's rule and imagine the better movie it could have been, then sure, but it just it felt so committed to not pushing anything, and I think it really missed an opportunity to have been interesting. Number six. I guess Holiday Harmony.

That's the quote unquote real movie that look like a real movie that might have also just been an iHeartRadio commercial for an hour and fifty minutes. Did I mention it was that long? But again, a good better cast than these movies tend to deserve, and it looked better than anything else on the list. Number five. Okay, now, all right, in fairness, this shouldn't be number five.

This again probably is realistically the eleventh worst made movie on the list. But I found My Christmas Fiance charming and how weird and cheap it was. This is the one that had the poison subplot and the farting food poisoning subplot, and it wasn't good, but I kind of enjoyed how how messy and wrong it felt. Now Number four maybe the line where things change a bit. Santa boot Camp was all in all a pretty entertaining watch for what we're doing here, Rita Moreno being glorious, Messa Jart Whittaker kind of bringing a lot of pep to things, some interesting ideas thrown in, and ultimately Santa Claus was real and it was Rina Raino.

So all those things make it number four on the list. Number three. I can't say it's a better movie than Santa Bootcamp, but I just really enjoyed Justin and Dyke's a Christmas Village. It was. It's one of those movies again that I think if you watched it out of if you watched it out of context from these movies, you would just think it was another one of these movies.

But if you watch it after watching so many others, you spot immediately that it is smarter than a lot of them, That it has a sense of humor, that it has a little bit of meta commentary without being mean about it. It had one of the more rounded leads in many ways where it wasn't. And again, this is something I've seen Justin Dyke do with other movies of his, where he doesn't want to just have a mean career woman or a you know, flighty sweet elf girl. He wants like an actual person in that part, and I think it really comes through. And as much as it's not a good movie and a lot of things don't add up in it, if you watch it carefully, I think you actually see that there are things being done that are more interesting than most of these.

Now number two, and this is again where like the lot, the solid line is drawn between the two good movies that I will rewatch in the future and everything else. Number two is hallmarks shockingly delightful. Three Wise Men in a Baby Again, Like, I want to be very clear as as I'm saying at Christmas Village is entertaining in weird ways. Three Wisemen and a Baby is just a good movie. It is exactly what these movies are supposed to do for their audience, and normally I'm just not that audience.

But this one works. It is really sweet, but it isn't Sacharin. It has things to say and things to explore. It still will you know, ends in a pretty tie up. Everything in a big knot, but there's substance there, there's good performances.

It. I am still thinking about how like when people will always trash like, oh these are all junk, No, no, no, watch this movie and you will. You will probably at first you might think, oh no, it's just doing the same thing, and then it's going to turn and you're gonna say, no, this was a sweet, cute, funny, little family movie. So again, have at it. And then number one, I mean, come on, I have I think since the episode where we did letters to Satan clause thank you Abby for recommending it, I have I think gotten like at least seven people I know personally to watch it, and I hope more people do again.

It's hard to find, but not that hard to find. You just have to put a little bit of effort into it, and it is just delight. It's made exactly for somebody like me who has watched so many of these and knows the beats. So have the filmmakers here, and it is a horror parody in the best of ways, where it is not talking down to the material, it's having fun with it. Super great cast, super great dialogue, just a joy all around, and please people check it out.

So then, last, of course, are the kind of other superlatives where we just kind of run through who is our favorite, this favorite, that, okay, favorite lead need of a lesson obviously. Karen Knox in Letters to Satan Clause is joyful and funny and hysterical, and I'm also going to throw out a little bit of a you know, I don't know what a holly leaf to Madeline Leon in a Christmas Village because I think she manages to make this character interesting and I wanted to watch her due stuff. I don't have a worse for everything because I don't necessarily want to be mean this year, but I can't not acknowledge how miserable the lead character in a Royal Christmas on Ice was not the actress. I think she was doing what was given to her, but boy, was that character or not somebody who wanted to root for a favorite setting?

I mean ornaments in letters to Satan clause? How can it not be the worst setting? I am going to call out a Christmas Proposal because it was this small town that we were supposed to be really charmed by. But like somebody said in this movie, well, there are problems with living in a small town because remember when we couldn't get medicine. That's a problem.

That is the dark side of small towns that these movies usually don't mention. But it was there favorite love interest. It's hard because I don't think many of these movies had that chemistry that usually even the non interesting ones will will have. So I guess like Holiday Harmony was probably the one where I'm like, yeah, these few characters I believe would bang and it would be pleasant. So I guess that, and then the worst love interest I am going to call out just the stokeriness we got this year both A Royal Christmas on Ice, which was twenty twenty two, and A Christmas Kiss two which was twenty fourteen.

Again twenty fourteen. We knew better than to have a movie like this, but I'll give it a little bit of a pass because it's before everybody knew better. Maybe, but it's twenty twenty two and that Prince was just was a little bit much. Ended upset me. Number five favorite montage.

Nothing that stood out, but I do enjoy that more movies are filling time with the here's what happened in our movie montage. So Following for Christmas did that? We'll take it. The favorite Dead parents or Dead Wife. I feel like Falling for Christmas again had the most potential weirdness of my wife died.

My mother in law lives with me, and she really wants me to have sex with you, Lindsay Lohan. That in itself was just fun, So I'll take that favorite Tessy sidekick. A Christmas village had tons of them, and they were all fantastic, and every one of them wins right behind them. Mercy Yard Whittaker is working very hard in Santa boot Camp, and I do want to give her credit for that favorite villain. Oh my god, guys, A Christmas Fiancee had a woman who tried to arrange for the murderer of her ex boyfriend who she still wanted to get with by telling his new girlfriend to bake him a cake that he was allergic to.

And she gets away with it. Now, she gets away with it kind of because she is also food poison and spends the last ten minutes of the movie farting, and then a post credit sequence reveals she has been living in the bathroom for a week. It doesn't get better than that, I tell you. Favorite slapstick another toss up. I feel like Three Wise Men and a Baby had some good physical humor.

It wasn't necessarily I think we talked about it a lot. How it wasn't just oh I dropped something, It was I got this cut too, I've dropped everything. And there's a little bit of art to that. Also, everything that happened with Kako Shawn following for Christmas was kind of amusing ten sage old person. I guess we'll go with Elizabeth rom in A Christmas Gets two because I like the idea of returning guest star from first movie coming back in a different role.

Our evil woman became the sage old person. That's a transition we don't see often. I will call out the absolute waste of my girl wrote a Penmark Patty McCormack in Christmas Proposal, who doesn't get to do anything, very disappointing. Favorite Santa look. Rina Marino plays missus Claus, who's actually a Santa Claus and Santa boot Camp, and that's great.

She wears a completely head to toe red sequin jumpsuit. It is fabulous, and she wins my heart who loses my heart as Santa is the just kind of unsettlingly ill kept Santa of Once upon a Christmas who just made me uncomfortable. Just to round out our favorite extras, our favorite music again, we didn't have anything like wild in public domain, but Holiday harmonies original songs, including Yes, the Mary Steam ridge in one, but more importantly the song about Oklahoma that was just about how Oklahoma fries everything. I made me want to usit Oklahoma. No Lie favorite family recipe, a royal Christmas on ice taught me that you can put peppermint candies in pasta.

So that's what I'm making tonight favorite small business in danger the Christmas Village and how poorly run it was, and just the idea that you can have a business and just hope things get better and it had goat. So for all of those reasons. A Christmas Village. Favorite product placement. We had some good ones.

A lot of times we don't get it like it used to be in the main list, that I moved it to the bonuses. Then at one year I think I just took it off because I had no product placement. We had a lot this year. We had, of course the return of Daisy Sour Cream, but we also had Kay Jewelers with Christmas Kiss two, which was glorious. But then probably my favorite was the Lifetimes Forward branding of the Lifetime Network by using their icon, their red Christmas ornament icon as the icon of the boot the titular Santa's boot Camp in Santa's Boot Camp, so that characters were dressed as the same icon that was in the bottom corner of the screen.

It just was kind of magical in its own way. Seventeen Favorite cooling Child. Oh my gosh, guys, we had quite a year for Terrible Children. But more importantly, one character, one actress, I should say, was mother too, not one, not two, but three of the most cloying children the feminine gritique has ever seen on camera. So, Carla Hemnez, I don't know what kind of metal I give you, but in Stepping into the Holiday, you played mother to Junior, the child dancer influencer, who was the most glorious, insufferable little shit I have seen in these movies in a long time.

And I thought, well, that's it. We're not getting better than Matt, Like, there might be more children, but none of them are going to hit those heights. And then and then, folks, I get to Holiday Harmony where our character is teaching school of rock, and you're like, all right, there's going to be more room for cloying children. What do we got? Oh my god.

Carla Hemnez, also in this movie as a sassy sidekick, has two kids. She has twins. They don't dance, you know what they do? They motherfucking rap kind of. And it's a tough I don't like two rappers to one dancer.

I can't pick between them. They all win, which also means they lose. But I love it and I want more of it, and I hope we get more movies like that next year. Holiday Name Letters to Satan Clause has a lot of fun with just carrying apart the silly holiness and pringleness and so on enjoyness of characters names in these movies. I loved it.

Favorite Finding the Perfect Tree, a Christmas Proposal, has just a weird storyline involving a Christmas tree and possible murder and possible environmental crimes against Christmas trees, and in a movie that's also forward thinking about global warming, but it's also encouraging characters who just willingly cut down trees. All of that it wins that one Nah favorite holiday cocktail I didn't appreciate how Stepping into the Holiday constantly tried to push on us this idea that beautifully fit dancer drank probably three thousand worth of calories via a whip cream Moca Frappa pepper mint dream thing. I appreciate that Empty coffee cup acting was another one that just really really took off this year.

Along with not eating, we've seen a lot of good not eatings. I think Gingerbread Christmas in some ways wins that just because it was produced by the Food Network. But Empty coffee cup acting. I thought we hit the heights. I thought Santa boot Camps scene where Emily Kinney and boyfriend's scruffy character get say do you want hot chocolate?

Yes, and they just are holding empty cups that we can see into. They tilt them towards the cameras that we can see probably like seven eights of that cup completely empty. But they sit there and they move them as if they are full except not. And I thought, it's not gonna get much better than this. This is the height of bad coffee cup acting.

But then folks, then never never count out, Never count out mar Vista for a Christmas Kiss too, which opening scene and I will put I'll find the trailer. I'm gonna put it on Facebook on the episode. By this one, you've already seen the trailer where our character is walking in with two coffee cups just stacked on top of each other like you do, and they're just moving around like lottery balls in the landa Vega's machine that just bouncing around like crazy. I loved it. It made me so happy, And that's really everything I'd say.

I'm sure I missed a few. Sound off on your own favorites. Please in the various social media spots we're in if you've missed the news. We have an Instagram now, guys, I hate Instagram so much. I'm I'm not a visual person.

I'm a word person. I like to type stuff and write stuff and that's easier for me. So we are on Twitter at Feminine Podcast. We are Facebook. We have a Facebook group Femine Critique, and now we're on Instagram Feminine Underscore Critique, Underscore Pod got all that.

Sure, it's great. Sure we'll put some cool dashtags up there. I'm old jeez. Anyway, before we head off, I do want to throw one more thing of things that I noticed this year that either felt different or just common themes. I would say one thing that kind of came up, and I think it was Doug who mentioned was the maybe next year calling out the special guest star aspect of movies where a lot of these did seem to have that one name or that one surprise veteran that was there.

And in both there's at least two movies, My Christmas Fiance and A Royal Christmas and Ice where it was like the biggest actor of the movie, who served, whose characters served, no purpose in the narrative. Who didn't need to be there, but it felt very much like a favor to somebody. So something to look out for more and more as you watch these movies is which actor agreed to film for a half an afternoon, offset somewhere else and be credited in the movie and have their face prominent on the poster. And then the other thing, and this is weird the other like kind of unifying theme of a lot of these movies. Why did so many of them involve older characters, often the sage old people doing everything they can to get young people to bang.

There was a lot of matchmaking, but like really aggressive matchmaking. I would say you had it in definitely Santa boot Camp or Rita Moreno was ready to jump in herself. My Christmas fiance had some holiday harmony. Brook Shields was like, hey, you want some condoms, let me leave about some condoms for you. Falling for Christmas, we had the mother of her dead daughter's husband and this woman's doing everything she can to make her husband her son in law want to fuck Lindsay Lohan.

It was strange. You had it in Gingerbread Christmas A little bit stepped into the holiday definitely, and World Christmas and ice where the parents were going hard like in every which way for these characters. So I don't know, is that a new thing? Did I miss something some kind of trend where and this is a good thing that you know everybody evolves that you know the I guess in this case, primarily it's like quote unquote the boomer generation now suddenly being really into sex positivity. Perhaps I don't know, you tell me.

Maybe I'm going far. It's been a long day, it's been a long month, it's been a long year. But that is the end of stocking staffers for this year, for twenty twenty two. Again, thank you for the ride. If you have just skipped out, that's fine.

We'll see you soon and come very soon, Christine and I will be back. We are looking forward to a new year of podcasts. We talked a lot. We have big, exciting ideas, different kinds of episodes. We're gonna do movies obviously as we always do, but also more guests and more special episodes, more of our favorites, more kind of about who we are as as creators and stuff.

So not to be one of like I did buy, I'm not gonna lie. I bought a planner recently, so I'm like, no, twenty twenty three, that's going to be the year I plan things and write them down and then lose a pen and then can't write anymore and then just give up. But this year maybe not. Who knows? Who can say?

But yeah, thanks for joining, and please continue to join and follow us. And as we always say, holidays are weird for everybody. Everybody handles them differently. For some people it's a very joyous time. For some people it's a sad time.

Some people it's an aggravating time. Whatever it might be, I hope you find a way to make it the best possible time. I hope in any which way, you know, some of what we've done here may have enhanced it for you somehow, or made you want to, you know, stab your eyes out with Christmas hooks. I don't know, but either way, I appreciate all the support we have had this year and look forward to a new one, and deeply, deeply wish everybody a wonderful end of year, holiday season and all that chat. Life is full of sweet surprises.

Every day's a gift. The sun comes up and I can feel It lift my spirit. It fills me up with laughter, fills me up with song. I look into the eyes of love and know that I belong. Bless us all gather here lovely, fairly.

I hold no place on earth compares with home, and every path will bring me back from where I roll. Bless us Father, that as we live, we always come ford and before. Yet we have so much that we can share with those. Indeed we see around us everywhere. Let us always walk each other.

Lead us to the light, Let us hear the voices all beason singing in the night. Let us run from anger. It catch us with before, teach us in our dreams. And please, yes, please, less us sweet, bless us all