Schlock-Mas: Day Eleven

NORTHPOLE: OPEN FOR CHRISTMAS

A successful business woman receives unexpected help from a team of elves while restoring her beloved aunt's inn and rediscovers the true meaning of Christmas.

Last year, I reviewed Hallmark Channel's big premiere movie Northpole. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to, as I recall. This morning, I watched this year's sequel, Northpole: Open For Christmas, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Spoiler alert, I guess.

The manic elf Clementine (Bailee Madison) has returned from her beloved home at Northpole at the behest of Santa Claus (who is disappointingly not played by Robert Wagner in this film, because I assume he realized he had better things to do at some point between movies) to help a lost soul in Vermont with some heavy Christmas-related stuff, because she did such a great job saving Christmas when she went rogue last year, and now she's the best there is at what she does, and what she does is very nice. Who is this lost soul sorely in need of Clementine's aid? None other than TV's Lori Loughlin.

TV's Lori Loughlin works for a world-renowned auction house, spending her days traveling from place to place, parting the rich and elderly from their valuable belongings in order to sell them at a dramatic markup down the line. But don't get the wrong idea, here: she's not a bad person at all, just an unsentimental one. She demonstrates time and time again the virtues of selflessness and charity, and she's a really nice gal, to boot. There's no great trauma in her past that has made her so unwilling to commit to anything; she's just got other priorities.

When her estranged Aunt Billy dies and leaves her charming (and seriously run down) Northern Lights Mountain Inn to her, TV's Lori Loughlin decides to just sell the place rather than restore it, because she doesn't have time for this sentimental bullshit. But local handyman Dylan McDermott Dermot Mulroney quickly convinces her that the Inn will be worth more to a potential buyer if the place has been renovated, so she relents, hoping to have the renovations finished by Christmas Eve, which is merely a few weeks away. You can tell this movie is a fantasy because there's no way in hell a business as large as the Northern Lights Mountain Inn could realistically be fully restored in two short weeks.

Enter Clementine, dispatched by the Big Beard to aid in the restoration, because the Northern Lights Mountain Inn as also one of many magical power stations distributed worldwide that help power Santa's sleigh as it journeys throughout the world on Christmas Eve, because as Santa's sleigh travels further and further from Northpole it drifts further from its power source and needs to recharge periodically in order to complete its annual circumnavigation. The Inn has "gone dark" magically speaking since Aunt Billy died, and Clementine has been tasked with helping TV's Lori Loughlin to remember the magic of Christmas, choose to abandon her lucrative career and stay at the Inn rather than sell it, and operate it year-round in order to re-charge the Inn's magic and help keep Santa's sleigh aloft during its journey.

TV's Lori Loughlin is abducted by Clementine and taken on a wondrous journey to Northpole, a place she visited once as a child while staying at the Inn, and after Santa Claus winks at her and calls her his one and only she decides to take up the mantle of innkeeper at the Northern Lights and falls in love with Dylan McDermott Dermot Mulroney and his delightfully straightforward daughter Jenny in the process, revealing to the little girl a magical candy cane-striped slide that is somehow hidden in the walls of the Inn, and a magical ornament that rests above the fireplace in the main hall is glowing and spinning because the magic levels have reached critical, and the entire town gathers at the Inn to celebrate Christmas and Santa's sleigh doesn't fall out of the sky and everything is lovely and it's all so wonderful and I hope they make a third movie next year because hooray!

These movies are weird, and that's part of their charm. The writers of the Northpole films have clearly thought out the inner workings of how Santa's magical world operates, and they weren't afraid to get oddly specific at times. Magical power substations spread out all over the world and hidden in plain sight to help keep Santa's sleigh in the air on Christmas Eve? That's goofy. That's just goofy. And I'm okay with it, because the movie is well made and the script is embraced by a cast that takes the goofy material seriously enough to sell it, but with enough levity to keep the proceedings from getting too serious. Everybody walks a fine line between endearment and parody, and they all acquit themselves very well indeed.

Bailee Madison is the only returning cast member from the Northpole, and that's really for the best, because we don't need to keep up with the rest of the cast from the first movie. The smarter idea was to move on to a new location with a new group of people in need of Clementine's particular skills, and TV's Lori Loughlin and Dylan McDermott Dermot Mulroney are much better actors than Tiffani Thiessen and that guy from Cougar Town in the first movie. Their characters feel more well-rounded than the leads from the first movie, and I actually cared when these two lovebirds got together at the end, because I was more invested in their story.

All around, Northpole: Open For Christmas is a marked improvement over its predecessor, a movie I already liked very much. There are a few false notes struck in the narrative, and a few cringe-worthy instances of product placement that I couldn't ignore, but I had a good time watching the movie, and after yesterday's reeking cesspool of a viewing experience, this was just what I needed. You did it again, Bailee Madison. You made a believer out of me. Here's hoping next year will bring with it a new chapter in the Northpole saga, because I'm officially a fan of this franchise.

VERDICT: VERY NICE