Stocking Stuffers 9.1 Mistletoe In Montana

You know your mama loved this place, but never as much as your Christmas time. Christmas is just so magical here. The Agular family will be here shortly. What do we know about them? Mark Aguilar is a single dad with two kids.

I know some of our wealthier guests can be very demanding, but let's try to give the Agular family the benefit of the doubt. Ah. Hey, welcome to Paradise Ranch. Thanks for having us nice? Are you a real life cowgirl?

I most certainly am, seeing as how it's Christmas Week. There's plenty of fun things for you all to do. There is a big festival in town. Did you all bring your cowboy hats? Dad?

Look at this nice, easy, relaxed time at the wrong found like a good idea. So you think ranch life is easy, It's just a bunch of yeahas and gideops. Right, whoa, whoa, whoa Hallsey, whoa, whoa whoa. Here a Paradise Ranch. Most of our guests come here to disengage from all the noise.

I'm so busy lacking. I figure I'm a dad with two kids. You need me for just more than stuff. From what I've seen, you're doing an amazing job. I really really like this.

It's like times just stood still here and as exactly as I remember. So you came to Paradise when you were a kid, and I'm just now learning about this. You know, I see you take care of everything and everyone around you. Well, he takes care of Mary. I guess Mary takes care of Mary.

I want to take care of Mary too. I've never met anybody like you before. You have your life in la I have my life here, and it's better that we don't start something that has nowhere to go, but we can enjoy it here. And now WHOA, You've awakened something inside of me and Mark and I live in two very different worlds. If you choose to follow your heart, so be it.

Hello and welcome to the season premiere of Stocking Stuffers twenty twenty three edition, the ninth year we're doing this. I'm Emily, and with me is Christine, not this time, but she will be back, don't you worry. I can't do all of these alone. And for those of you who are new to the show or who did not listen to the last episode and who are wondering what the hell is going on here? This is something I've been doing now for nine years.

Started with blogging, turned into podcasting. I can't really explain why, but these a cozy cardigan Christmas movies of which you cannot escape around this time of year fascinate me. And at this point, again, everybody kind of knows the bingo card, knows the rules, knows what these things are, but I still have a good time going through them and kind of tearing through what nikes them what they are. We will be doing it with guests. I will have a whole bunch of fun people to be on the show and go over these movies.

I can't promise you anything. I can promise you there will be a lot of I don't know, dangly earrings and empty coffee cups. But I will say last year, if people remember, we actually had some good movies like and I'm saying that not on a curve, right, we had a few of these types of movies that were genuinely enjoyable. Will that happen again? I have no idea.

Did that happen today? Well not really, but uh, you know, the first episode I usually like to do is a solo episode just to kind of get my bearings kind of walk through how we do this thing and all the different parts of what makes a cozy cardigan Christmas movie, and I pick something, you know, I try to find a movie that I think will be a good representative of the genre and also one that maybe has something interesting about it. So today's episode, as you heard from the really low energy trailer that was just scenes from the movie tied together. Today's movie is Lifetime's Mistletoe in Montana. This is from twenty twenty one, which again is only two years old, which would you would think would make it a recent movie, But in the timeline and definition of Kozy Cardi and Christmas, this movie is now ancient and out of date.

The reason I chose this so if you remember last year, there was an article in Vulture or New York Magazine that sort of did a deep dive into these movies. It was the writer of the article like kind of spent like a full week on set of what was it? It was Santa boot Camp and that one Melissa jo and Hart directed, Rita Moreno was in it. It was fine, it was like all of these movies, it is what it is. But within that article was a lot of talk about the filming of this of these movies, and it kept mentioning like, oh, the movie that shall not be named, that was a horrible shoot that destroyed everybody.

That was one of those like we're not going to have this happen again. And the article names that movie as this one Mistletoe and Montana. So naturally I had put it on my radar and said, I kind of need to see if I can see all the things that went wrong on the shoot. So twenty twenty one was still pretty heavy in pandemic. So they had started they were filming these movies, but they were still probably I think this was after probably they were doing like serious COVID care, which meant one of the things that apparently happened on set was that they had COVID test cases in the beginning.

So these kinds of things happen. Also what happened and I found there's an article I found that where most Joan Hart kind of listed off some of the things was they were, let's see COVID cases on set. One horse wrangler for nine horses, a heat wave because they filmed this on location in Montana, but like in July when it was apparently extremely hot there was no Wi Fi. Much like the plot of the movie. There were no rental cars because this was just during that period where there was nothing of anything, and so why would you film a movie like this?

I don't know, but that's a different story. And finally, there were grizzly bears. Put a pin in that because we will talk about whether there are grizzly bears in this movie. Spoiler alert, there are no grizzly bears in this movie. And it just seems like a natural thing.

You could have easily had that happen in your movie and not even had to factor it into your budget, which we know is minute. So mistletow in Montana, and to give a reminder of how these episodes go, I will talk a little bit about whatever we need to know about the movie, give a very quick synopsis, because we know the synopsis of every one of these movies, and then dive into the tropes and the typical things we expect to find in them. So this movie, a little bit about the filming of it. We talked about how nightmarish the shoot was. It also had so it's Lifetime, and I tend to like the Lifetime movies a little more than Hallmark.

With Lifetime, you can push the envelope a geeny bit teeny bit further, really not much, but you're not quite as constrained by some of the sort of everything has to be positive rules of Holler. They tend to feel cheaper and messier. Sometimes they have more interesting casts, but aid's very general that can be completely true or completely fault. One of the reasons I thought this was also of interest is that it is directed by Kelly Martin, and Kelly Martin is a name that will either ring a bell to certain people of certain generations or they will have no idea who she is. Kelly Martin wasn't I think she is still acting, but in this case she is directing.

She was a child actor. For me, she was Life Goes On and The Face on the Milk Curtain. Those were very important movies or Life Gozamas Give you a Show. Face in the Milk Carton was a TV movie based on a very popular young adult mystery novel series at the time, and she know she was on r She's had a very long career. This I think is the only like full length thing she directed.

She has a short on there and then some TV so Okay, sure, why not. Let's see Kelly Martin what you can do. I don't know you can do as well with this as I need your other director can do with this material. And the inspiration for this one, so Melissa joan Hart, who we're gonna talk about her in a second, This was kind of her. She's executive producer on this.

She tends to produce most of what she does for these for these networks. Now, this apparently is a story that was conceived by her and her mother. They went to a wedding of Wyoming and when they were there, they like heard a story about one of the guests who went to a dude ranch on vacation and then fell in love with the wrangler and they got married, and wow, that would make a Hallmark movie or a Lifetime movie, and so it did. So Melissa Joanhart did not write the script, but I guess kind of assembled the team to put this together. Let us talk a little bit about Melissa Joanhart, who is somebody that I have tended to avoid for these episodes because she not to say, you have to politically agree with me for me to want to watch your movie.

But she's, you know, kind of said some very stupid things. She I know, is very conservative, but that being said, she is conservative in a way that at least she does seem to allow for exception, so she is pro gun control. I know it was I remember that this was someone in the news was that she was not supporting Trump. I think she ended up voting libertarian, so I mean not, you know, six of one. But anyway, so she is not my favorite person generally, but I can at least respect that she has had an interesting career.

Also, I will throw this out there. She grew up about two towns away from me, so she is from Sayville, New York, in Long Island. The other fun thing about that is it means I get to listen really closely to see if I can identify her regional accent, and it is there. It's not that she pronounced his words like a Long Islander. It's that my husband putting into this out she has a kind of New York Long Island cadence and how she speaks, which wouldn't really matter except she is playing a cowgirl in Montana, so you do notice it a little bit.

But fun fact about most of Joan Hart, this was one thing I had never knew is that she had auditioned for Halloween four. So imagine an alternate universe where Daniel Harris does not play Little Jamie Lloyd and instead it's Melissa Joan Hart. And perhaps then Daniel Harris becomes Clarissa and then Sabrina and just what a world that would be. But that's not why we're here. We are here to talk about Mistletone and Montana.

I kind of don't even have to tell you what it's about. You can probably figure it out. Melissa Joanhart plays Mary, who is a the I guess what, the head dude rancher, the dude ranches what do you call them? Rangless? And it's her family farm, her widow dad has raised her there to be a cowgirl.

And one of the things they do, after I don't know, raising the cows and doing all the things that you do in a dude ranch, is they also do vacations there, so wealthy people can come and stay for a week and enjoy country life. And wouldn't you know on this holiday the family coming to stay is Mark Aguilar believe is the character's name, and his two kids and his nanny, and they come and stay and what do you know? They fall in love? Question mark because their chemistry isn't great, but I guess they're supposed to have fallen in love. And of course there's conflict because he's a software developer from Los Angeles and she's a cowgirl living in Wyoming.

How can they make it work? Well? Because it's twenty twenty one. One of the things we learned during these past few years is that a lot of work can be done remotely. So this might be the first movie that I have caught in this series where remote work ends up saving the day and saving love because he decides that yes, we will stay on this ranch forever, and you can be a cowgirl and I can still make millions from this dude ranch.

And that is Mistletoe in Montana. Very little surprises, but that's usually not when we come here. We come here to go into the expected trope of ten the ten things that we look for in these movies that we almost always get, and then the bonus round of the funner stuff that we have to be a little more egoied for. So the first part, of course, this always will come up our female protagonist, who is in need of a lesson and I've readjusted a bit of where things fall. So one of the addendums to our female leading a lesson in need of a lesson is the question of does she have a Christmas theme name?

Of course she does. Her name is Mary. Why wouldn't it be it's mistletoe in Montana? And I guess in this case, Mary is what is the lesson she needs to learn? I don't know, not to be so kind of what's the word?

How do I say this? They do a thing where it's not that she's like a workaholic, because she's like a dude rancher. So I guess a workaholism and a dude ranch is a little different from, you know, if she was a lawyer. But the movie treats it as if she's like very unlucky in love, and it's because she's so tough. I don't know.

Maybe it's because she lives in Montana and there's like seven people in Montana, and it's probably pretty hard to meet somebody in Montana. So I don't really know what she needs to learn. She's kind of annoyingly competitive. And I say this as somebody who I know is, without question annoyingly competitive, So maybe you know, here's a Long Island woman. There's annoyingly competitive, and it's perhaps a little window into my soul.

So perhaps this movie was made for me and I learned a few lessons myself. But I don't know. She's kind of self aware about there's a you know, she kind of says at one point, I have a strong personality that tends to scare people away. Yeah, sure, I guess like it's I don't know, she's not very charming. I I don't just want to be mean.

I don't generally find Melissa Joan Hart charming in these movies. And it's a tricky thing. And I don't know how much of that is just my interpretation of kind of knowing that she doesn't like the gaze, for example, makes it hard for me to really enjoy watching her. But also I just don't she doesn't have that like sparkling comic timing of a Hillary Burton, let's say. But she is also and part of this is her age.

She's probably I don't know, late forties, maybe even early fifties by now, she's a couple of years older than me. She doesn't have that kind of soft perkiness which is fine because you can you don't need that to be your lead. But there's just and I don't want to just say likable because that is obviously a very loaded term that I don't like kind of jockeying about. But I don't know. Do people love her?

Is there anybody out there that's like, oh, I have to watch the new Melissa Joan Hart movie. No. Granted, I feel the same way about a Candace Cameron or Jill Wagner or some of these other actors who just I don't get, but it's I don't know. In her case, it's a particular thing. But I don't want to be mean about it, so I'm gonna keep moving on to her number two.

I've moved up bland love interest to number two because it kind of goes so hand at hand with our lead. So in this case, our bland love interest is Mark. As we know, we divide our love interests into two categories. They are either a poor little rich boy or be a good natured simple man who works with his hands. Now, typically I say a widow dad who works with his hands, but in this case we kind of have to divide them because Mark is our poor little rich boy who is also a widow dad.

So twist if you will. Mark is played by Dwayne Henry, who somebody I'm not familiar with. I think he was on one of those shows on CBS that's been on forever and your parents probably watch and cis maybe or the other one with the other one the CSI no and cee yes. Okay, yeah, see I knew that Dwayne Henry. He's a very handsome man.

He is British, he's black, which is not a common thing that we see, and it's always refreshing for lifetime. And you know, he's fine. I mean again, he's very good looking. The problem is just that they don't really click. Like again, she's just kind of a jerk and he's fine, but not really that great.

So I kind of it's hard to care that these two people get together in anyway. That's kind of a shame, Like their conflict or they're like what attracts them to each other is sort of the whole ranch work isn't hard? Oh yeah, I'll show you. And that's basically like forty minutes of the run time in the movie. He is very self aware of being a working dad, including one of his actual lines quote unquote sometimes I'm so busy working, I forget I'm a dad.

Oh boy, how dare you don't worry that we'll all be resolved? Also, I clocked it three minutes twenty two seconds into the movie when he is introduced as a single dad. So important establish it right away. Now, moving on to number three is our setting, which is typically a big bad city, a charming small town, or a magical winter wonderland. In this case, it's a charming small town.

I don't actually know the town they might have said it, I don't know, but it is Paradise, French. That's that's where the action takes place. And this was filmed on location in Montana in July. And you can tell because everybody looks very hot in their long sleeved shirts and no gloves. And in terms of the whole small town versus big city thing, like, yeah, it's a it's a thing.

Throughout the movie, you know, Mark constantly just can't believe how different life is in Montana. And at one point he tells Mary, you know, in the city, we take classes to learn how to breathe. And boy, if that isn't I mean, that's like a true thing that people do, and you know, yoga's kind of that. But of course to Mary that's just well, that's just silly. Number four is our dead parents or dead wife.

In this case, we get both. Yes, it's a two fur so again, less than three minutes in, we get Mary's dad. We're gonna get to you in a moment reminds us that Mary's mother, God rest her soul, has been dead for a long time. And of course we don't really find out how Mark's wife died. I don't think they ever say it outright.

Of course, then my mind goes to always like he actually killed her, but they there's no really nothing in the text to really support that. It's just my theory. So dead mom, two dead moms. Wow, Okay, we're starting off with a bang, folks. Now.

Number five is our sassy sidekick, which is typically a friend, a sister, a coworker. And two important kind of abs to this one is does the sidekick get their own b love story right, their own kind of secondary love story. And the other thing we look out for is does the sidekick wear dangle oversized earrings? And it is a big fat yes to both of them. We actually have a fuse.

I mean, let me cough when I say sassy, because I don't know how sassy they are. But we have a few sidekicks, so Mary has I guess it's like her assistant. Her main employee is a man named Jasper. And Jasper right from the beginning is like ew rich people and nanny's that's awful. I bet the dad's screwing the nanny.

He doesn't say that outright, but he kind of implies it, which again is something you'll are gonna find in a Lifetime movie as opposed to a Hallmark movie. But guess what. We meet the nanny and guess what she wears? Funky christmaswaters and more importantly, a whole lot of big danglely earrings. And yes, Jasper and the assistant nanny, I didn't catch your name, I'm not going to.

They hit it off, so there's that. I did wonder if most of the budget went to her sweaters, because kind of every scene it's a different sweater, and every scene it's like she looks like a walking Christmas tree. There is also another set of assistants, just two other employees of the ranch who also are in love, and it's and again, this is where like you just have to read between the lines, and these movies, this is when it gets interesting because these other two assistants and they're just also I don't know what they do there, but they also work on the ranch. They are a couple, but they're very like scared to tell Mary about it. And their excuse is that, oh, you know, Mary is really big into work, and you know, we think she frowns on office romance.

But it's strange because it doesn't really seem like she'd be pissed. Like, again, there are seven people that live in month. Surely if there are two attractive ones, they are going to be in a relationship. And then eventually Mary finds out and she's like, okay, great, good for you. So was one of them actually fucking marry at one point?

I don't know. Something was going on, something we will not know because this movie doesn't go into the depths of it, but it's there and it's kind of strange. So moving on, Number six is the number six is like my favorite and we rarely get it because the movies have gotten nicer, so they don't even have fun with the villains. Number six is are an evil woman sometimes it's an evil male boss, but in this case, there's nothing. There is no actual conflict in this movie.

There is nobody standing in anybody's way. So we move on to number seven, which is the montage. Often montages, if we're lucky, we get more than one. In this case we get a few. The opening scene is essentially just a commercial for Montana, a lot of scenic courses, roaming and that kind of thing.

Later we get a lasso learning how to lasso montage, which is as awkward as it sounds, and I do believe that, you know, like Melissa joan Hart talked about like learning how to do things on a ranch that I guess she took her own lessons, and lassoing and horseback riding, I don't know that any of it's there. There's just people swinging lassos and we just it's the montage style of this movie is just to keep cutting from one thing to the other, to the other to the other, back and forth, with no action, nothing actually happening. So in this case, the main thing that's of importance in the lasso montage is that everybody's laughing. We Melissa Joan Hart throws a lasso cut to the child laughing, cut back to Wilson Joan Hart throwing the lasso, cut back to one of the assistants laughing, and it just goes on for about ninety seconds.

And then the last big montage. There might have been more, but the last one that stood out to me was the Christmas market shopping montage. Now, anybody who knows me knows I love a shopping montage, in this case a Christmas festival in town. I don't know if you do this, but apparently the best way to shop at a Christmas market is just to pick every item up and sniff it. That is this entire montage.

It's just people walking from table to table picking up an item. And sometimes it's like a candle. It makes sense, but other times I think it was like a snow globe. I've never smelled the snow globe. Never thought to smell a snow globe.

Apparently in Montana you do that kind of thing. Moving on to number eight is our slapstick, and boy, oh boy, do we get our money's worth here? Lots of horse hijinks, and by horse hijinks, I mean there will be a character saying, WHOA a lot rodeo music will play and we won't actually see anything. This is another kind of montage of when Mark is riding a horse for the first time and he gets on a horse and again says whoe, and the horse just walks out of frame, and then the music keeps playing and it keeps again kind of cutting to people laughing. We don't actually see a single thing happen on the horse.

But I will give it to the editor because they they almost made me leave something was happening on camera when there was literally nothing happening on camera. There's some you know, okay, everybody's on a horse. One detail I noted was that nobody's wearing a helmet, which again I don't know. If I guess you don't do that on a ranch, I don't know. But if a little boy is wearing a helmet, only it's clearly a little girl's bike helmet.

So just putting them out there on the budget. Let's see, the dad has to cut down a tree, and what do you know, it's hard to cut down a tree if you're a city guy. And then the last bit of slapstick that I did want to mention I mentioned upfront. Apparently while filming, all the actors had to have bear spray on them at all times. So you would think this scene where Mark and Mary are like going to look around to make sure everything is like clear at one of the houses that's off the property, like why not have a bear that'd be exciting.

Instead, Mary freaks out because there's a raccoon in the house, and as tough as she is, is afraid of raccoons. So that was that. Number nine is our sage old person a very important part. This is kind of a secret weapon of these movies. If you don't have a good sage old person, you kind of don't have a movie.

In this case, our sage old person is Randall Flagg himself, Jamie Sheridan. Jamie Sheridan has also had a very long career. I know he's been in things other than the nineteen ninety four miniseries of The Stand. But when you when you to Emily and Travia was introduced as Randall Flag it just becomes really rewarding to see you play a kind old man in a cozy cardigan Christmas movie. So in this case, he's Pops.

I'm sure he has a name, but you know, Mary calls him Pops, so I will too, and you know he's sweet. He's fine. Jamie Shardon's a good actor. He can he can sell this well. But he also there's some again oddness going on.

I think my favorite line that he has when he says to me, Mary's kind of trying to tell her, like, hey, if you want to leave and go to la and live with this millionaire, you know you should feel okay to do it. He says to her. You know, if your mother and I were able to have more kids, you wouldn't have to do this. It's just a strange thing to put on yourself, to put on your dead wife of like, hey, kid, I'm sorry your life is stuck in Montana. If only I was more fertile.

Strange, But it's it's there again. Three between the lines on these movies and you'll get something. And then number ten is Santa Claus. We don't get a Santa Claus. We do get Jamie Sheridan and dressed as Santa Claus.

So if that was something you dreamed of having, it's there. And bonus. Apparently Jamie Sheridan did pass out for heat exhaustion, possibly when he was dressed in a Santa suit in July in Montana. So those are our ten. We move on to the bonus rounds, which are the little extras, the things that we really like, the fun parts of these movies.

And let's see. So number one is the absurdly unlimited use of public domain holiday songs. We know that these movies are made on a limited budget and they are not going to spend money on music. So a few things specifically that we look for. Is there a let's see jingle bells which is always going to show up?

And is it set to action? And yes, we have that in the kids actually are singing Hi out in the car as they drive to the ranch. A few that don't come up in this one, so we'll just skip over them, because I guarantee you we will have a sad montage to Silent Night, we will have a sexy version of a song that you never thought sexy. These things will come. We have a long season ahead of us.

So the other song, we get a kind of odd moment where they're doing like a campfire sing along or no they're not, they're just doing a campfire dinner. And then one of the characters says like, actually, this great moment of hey, Jasper, did you bring your guitar? And he just whips it out from behind him as if I don't know where he was hiding that thing. But Jasper breaks out the guitar, and then the other assistant starts singing it came upon a Midnight clear, and everybody is like, yes, my favorite, Like they're taking out lighters and waving them in the air because she's playing the biggest hits. And that's not one that I ever think of as anybody's favorite Christmas song, but anyway, to each his own.

The other thing I love is when we have non holiday songs that are just clearly in some kind of box of music that Lifetime has access to that they didn't have to pay for. So there's a few of these sort of like kind of country songs that you have definitely never heard in your life. And then the other thing that we're gonna look for a little harder this year is the what I'll call the Christmas words salad pop songs, which is when there are songs that, again you have never heard in your life except for in these movies, and it's songs about Christmas that kind of sound like Carol's but not quite like with a slightly different beat to them. And typically they are just songs where the singer is saying a lot of words associated with the holidays that kind of rhyme.

So in this case it's the closing credit song is I guess it's called all Dreamed About Christmas, And there's just other things in there where they rhyme. I don't even write what they did, not record what they rhymed, but lots of wish list, Christmas tree, mistletoe for you and me, those things just sung over and over again. Now. Number two is the secret family recipe or obnoxiously complicated holiday cocktail. In this case, we get Mark makes his signature gingerbread toast and it's better than Mary's.

Some more French toast, I think is what she's trying to make. We also Jasper apparently is the cook there, so he makes a mean mint hot cocoa and yes, characters quote unquote drink it. Number three is our small business in danger, which doesn't come up. As far as we know, the ranch is doing just fine. That being said, when we see the town, it feels like this is a very sad little town that needs I don't know, like a Walmart to come in or something, because I don't know how they're hanging on with a business.

I guess the scented snow globe industry might be a bigger online business, perhaps for his product placement. The only thing I would say is that they make Montana look like a great place to go in December, because it's very sunny there and apparently you just need a light jacket if even that, and you do not need to wear gloves in December in Montana. According to some of the reviews of this movie, that is not true if you can believe it. Number five is our cloying child. In this case, we have two, so Marcus two kids, and the younger kid is fine.

He's cute. I don't know how old he is. I didn't catch the actor's name. He's a nice little kid. He's very enthusiastic.

He's fine. The older daughter is I'm not gonna blame the actress. She's fine. Although the trivia has a little side eye going at it where apparently the one bit of trivia for this movie on IMDb, the mother of the actress playing Becca, the daughter is indeed a producer. She has cast her girl in me any canceled parentheses, canceled TV series, and that is how she ended up with an acting career dot dot dot and this show.

So whoever wrote that bit of trivia was not impressed by this girl's performance. She's fine. The annoying thing is that she has to play the typical texting teenager who doesn't know how to use a phone and says things like I don't miss selfie's nearly as much as I thought I would, because her whole arc is that she forgot her phone charger so she can't take pictures, and of course she has no service anyway. But then Pops gives her a like an old school film camera and shows her how like c there was a photographer named Ansel Adams who used to always take pictures, but he never put himself in the pictures, and she learns how to do that, and then oddly enough takes a picture and has it framed and gives it to Pops as a present.

So I guess there's no Wi Fi, but there is like a CVS andalking distance where she could develop film in twenty twenty one. I don't know. These are details that we should not get bogged down. Let's see number six is finding the perfect tree, and there's again aforementioned dad doesn't know how to chop down a tree. So sure seven empty coffee cup acting.

There is a lot of empty coffee cup acting, a lot of empty hot cocoa cup acting. Melissa Joan Hart has been doing these movies a really long time. I don't know why she's still really bad at empty coffee cup acting. Somebody should talk to her about that. At this point, I give a pass to the kids, like, how do they know nobody's teaching them.

They're following the lead of somebody who's been in seventy five of these movies, So it's important get your priorities in order. Eight actors trying very hard not to take a bite of food on camera. You know, there is a lot in the scene I mentioned earlier where they were all sitting around campfire. There's a lot of moving things around their plates. But then at a certain point they are eating to where I think like that was part of the budget.

And then, oddly enough, so later on in this movie, the nanny is drinking a bottle and it looks like a bottle of beer, and which kind of was surprising because you don't see that in these movies often they're usually TVG and I think it's like that's one of those things that can like tip a movie over into PG territory. But I'd also notice that the camera would do that thing where like I know there's a term for it, I'm too lazy to look it up, where like when there's two actors in a shot, the one in front is in focus and then the one in back is out of focus, and then it switches. And it seemed like every time she went to bring the bottle to her mouth, it went out of focus. So maybe I was watching this a little too closely, or maybe that was one way to get around the rating.

Let's see number nine canadianisms or obvious tells the movie was shot somewhere that was not the location. That is not the case in here. They did film in Montana in July, and that brings us to number ten, which is the warm weather watch when we are looking for proof that this was not filmed during the holiday season. Oh boy, this one you could you could make quite a video essay on. We get a lot of talk about how like wow, look at the view, and then you'll see like a little bit of snow on the ground, and then you never see snow again.

In this entire movie. Nobody wears a coat, nobody wears gloves, nobody wears a hat. And again, might I mentioned they are in Montana. I will give them a pass because they do actually say and I'm sure this was added because they had to have realized, oh boy, this is we can't hide this. They say it's they don't say it's unseasonably warm, but they mention it's great weather.

So they do keep saying that, so you know, they tried to adjust. I will give them that. Number eleven, one of the newer ones, is something that came up a lot last year, so I added it to the bonuses. Old people aggressively, sometimes inappropriately matchmaking. A lot of these movies, you get the sage old person that's sort of like uncomfortably pushing two characters together.

In this case, it's more the kids. Like the kids like clearly need a mom and are really trying to get their dad to go for it. If anything, as much as Jamie Sheridan does encourage Mary to you know, leave the ranch, maybe he's just tired of ratitude. I don't know, he also keeps interrupting them and they're about to kiss, so you know, kind of the reverse where we have a cock blocking moment. And number twelve, I've added a new one that's very exciting.

And this is where that first movie sometimes matters, because I don't know that I would have had it without this one. I have added as the final bonus we look for in these movies, our favorite fashion moment, because you know, these movies don't have big budgets. The costume department is probably just pulling stuff used from other movies and repurposing it and so on. And in this case, there is a scene, so you're on a ranch. What do you do?

You have campfires, you go worsbeck riding, you chop down trees. You also apparently square dance. We have a you know, square dancing, which again has talked about a little bit in some of the interviews that I posted, where like nobody actually knew how to square dance. So they brought in like a friend of Kelly Martin and Melissa Joan Hart's who like came and quickly like choreographed their their dosey doing, or as Jamie Sheridan pronounces it, do si doing. Now when this happens, you know they're in the same set they've been in the whole movie, but it's like, okay, it's fancy time square dancing and Mary walks in and there's like the whole like a moment of just jaw dropping.

Everybody realizes how beautiful she is. She is wearing the ugliest ensemble. It's like a strapless green top with big earrings and like a very flouncy skirt. I'll try to get a screenshot. I'm not describing it well, it's it's not so much the outfit being what it is.

I get it you're in Montana, but also that like, this is the thing that turns this incredibly good looking Los Angeles man to look at her and say, wow, that's a woman right there, That's a woman. So yeah, keep an eye out for your favorite fashion moment. That was everything in mistletone and Montana. Now, sometimes I like to pull, especially when I'm doing it alone. Some IMDb reviews for these things, and I have one three out of ten where let's see the name is Cnty Galtwo who watched this movie last year and had some insider info on it.

So I'm going to quote her him, I'm from Montana. I get that filming took place in summer and outdoor scenes were shot in early fall to get snow on the mountains, but we do not have sunlight at six am December. We don't have green grass in December. You cannot sit outside at a campfire or wear such light clothing in December. There's no snow on trees, and the area would be super cold and covered in snow at Christmas.

I'm really disappointed that this is not a more accurate depiction of what Montana really looks like. I lived thirty miles from East Helena, where the town scenes were shot, and I know what it should look like. I love Kelly Martin and Melissa Joan Hart. I thought it would have been better. I've watched Melissa posting on Facebook while she was here at her local news post of the filming, so I'm not guessing at this stuff.

Content was good though, So three out of ten there, and then there is an eight out of ten. Who you know, we say I nitpick these movies, but take a listen to what doodled has to say about this one. Ahem uh oh, and the title of her review was cute story, but accent and pronunciations bothered me. Here's her review. We did square dancing in school in the nineteen seventies.

Loved that scene in costumes. The man said, do side dough. Every movie and school said do c dough. The Ansel Adams scene he said, and sell. After researching, I found true correct pronunciation Ansel one syllable.

I've been to Montana, and the accent for pops seemed too exaggerated and exaggerated for someone from Montana. Based on the line that being said, she did give it or they did give it eight out of ten. So the question is what do I think should you watch this movie? Will you get anything out of it? This is not one of the special ones.

I think is the way I'll say that. It's not offensive, it is not incompetent. It's just there's a little like you can kind of group these into I would say, like two categories of recommends, at least coming from me. Sometimes I watch a movie and I say that was actually good, Like it was actually cute, It had energy, it had chemistry, it worked as a movie. This one doesn't really Or that was enjoyable, it was zany, it was stupid, it was weird, it had things going on that made me really intrigued.

That's also not this one. This one's fine. It's it's not one for If you're one of those people that doesn't actually like these movies, don't watch this one. If you're somebody who's I don't know kind of like can tolerate any of these, think this one's tolerable. Uh fine.

So that is Mistletoe and Montana. We will be back the next time I'm here. I will have a guest star. So don't worry you if you cannot take my Melissa Jone heart ish long Island accent, you will not have to hear it too much longer. So with that being said, grab your partner and do sideough and we will see you on the other side.

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