Today's Feature: Looks Like Christmas
A single mother butts heads with the new guy in town over the school's annual Christmas Spectacular.
Carol Montgomery (Anne Heche) is a single mother and real estate agent who adores Christmas. She's the kind of person who starts putting away all the Thanksgiving decorations as soon as dinner's over and all the guests take their leave. Every year, her teenager son Bryan wakes up Black Friday morning to discover his home has become a winter wonderland overnight, his exhausted mother passed out on the sofa. Carol throws herself into the Christmas season so wholeheartedly that her friends and neighbors have taken to calling her "Christmas Carol", and it's a nickname she enjoys a bit more than she ever lets on.
Carol is also the kind of person who prefers tradition and organization in her life, always rather hesitant to accept those things that differentiate from the patterns to which she has grown accustomed. Realistically neurotic, let's say. But Carol wasn't always this way. Four years prior, her husband blindsided her with divorce papers, and Carol's pleasant, familiar life was thrown into complete disarray when he left their cozy Midwestern town of Woodside for sunnier climes, and Carol was left to raise their son all alone since the deadbeat patriarch only has time to see his only child during summer vacation. Ever since this tremendous upheaval, Carol has clung tightly to all those familiar things in her life like a security blanket, afraid to allow anything strange and new into her bubble, lest it open her up to new heartache.
Terry Evans is a successful construction company foreman who is raising his teenaged daughter Amelia on the road since his career keeps him hopping from project to project and from town to town. He's the kind of guy who is always late to a social function, but he always has a good reason for his tardiness. Terry hates consistently shuffling his daughter around the country whenever his employers find a new location for a hotel or apartment complex for him to construct, but he's due for a promotion that will allow him to finally settle in a comfortable office at his company's headquarters in California, and when his ship does come in after he completes development of his latest project, a state-of-the-art hotel in a cozy Midwestern town called Woodside, he'll be able to make up for all that precious time he's missed with his child.
It's not that Terry's a neglectful father; he's just had a difficult time keeping his priorities straight since his wife, Amelia's mother, died unexpectedly two year ago, and he's been telling himself every single time he has to step out on quality time with his daughter to take an important phone call from his employers that if he just keeps plugging forward a little while longer that everything will work itself out when he gets that promotion. But Amelia isn't getting any younger, and every moment he misses with her is gone forever, and unless something big changes soon, Terry's relationship with the most important person in his life may be damaged beyond repair.
But Terry's job in Woodside will keep them in town for at least a year, so he figures he can use that time to start the process and become more involved in his daughter's life, beginning with joining the local middle school's PTA and volunteering himself to help plan the school's big Christmas program, which is problematic because "Christmas Carol" has been the de facto director of the annual holiday spectacular for the past several years, and Terry's modernistic and improvisational ideas for the big show don't really blend with her more traditional, ordered approach to things, which creates more than a little friction between these two dogged individuals.
And that's not the only obstacle in the way, because Terry's hotel project is set to break ground in the new year at the location currently occupied by Woodside's oldest standing structure, the town library, which the town preservation committee, headed by Carol, has pledged to protect from demolition. All Terry wants is to give his daughter a Christmas to remember and earn the promotion that will give his struggling family some desperately needed stability, and Carol wants to preserve her hometown's past and maintain some semblance of control and structure in her life. But working closely together while planning the school's holiday festival, Terry and Carol find a compromise that will give them both what they want, introducing a modern sensibility to the traditional pageant, and this spirit of mutual understanding begins to affect each of them on a personal level, as well, opening their eyes to the truly important aspects of their life that they each had been ignoring to their own detriment for far too long.
That's the basic plot for Looks Like Christmas, my latest selection for this holiday feature, which sure sounds a lot like the basic plot of nearly every other Schlock-Mas movie I've watched this month, and last year, and the year before that, but this is one of those special cases when the elements gathered to create the movie all work so well together that the cookie cutter plot didn't bother me a bit. The dead mother conceit didn't even give me pause this time, which is a Christmas miracle. I was too busy being enchanted by the performances and occasionally innovative cinematography to dwell on such things. I say "innovative", when I mean "innovative for a low budget made-for-television movie", which is still very nice and something I've always encouraged. Let me show you a quick example.
There's a scene around the mid-point of the film where the entire town is gathered to take in the community's big Christmas tree lighting ceremony, a tradition that began at the end of World War II but had to be trimmed from Woodside's budget around the turn of the century due to cost concerns. Carol has worked diligently for the past two years to raise enough money to resurrect this time-honored tradition, and her labors are about to bear fruit when her son Bryan presses the button to illuminate Woodside's official Christmas tree for the first time in over a decade.
Something goes wrong with the wiring, and the tree remains dark. The gathered masses begin to murmur, and it looks like the lighting ceremony will have to be postponed until the electrical issue can be resolved, an embarrassing public spectacle for Carol that appears unavoidable, until Terry steps forward and offers to lend a hand, quickly discovering a loose wire in the works and fixing the problem with relative ease. The tree's lights blink on, illuminating the cheerful faces of the onlookers, and Carol can't help but express her gratitude to Terry, who was just happy to help. At this point, the camera glides up over the Christmas tree, from the bottom to the top and beyond, in a surprisingly impressive shot that movies like these usually don't have the time or budget to plan out.
That's just lovely, isn't it? Maybe I'm an easy mark, but you rarely see the crew of a Hallmark Channel original movie attempt such a feat, and they pulled it off masterfully in this case. The way it's presented, the shot looks like something from a much more expensive and slightly more ambitious production, which is a high compliment for a movie that was filmed over three weeks and couldn't have cost more than two million dollars to produce. I always greatly appreciate it when one of these movies tries a little harder in the technical arena, and cinematographer Randal Platt (yes, I bothered to remember the name of the director of photography) deserves a special commendation for doing a little more than just pointing his camera at the actors, which is usually the best one can hope for with one of these productions.
But Anne Heche and Dylan Neal, the film's romantic leads, are the real MVP's with Looks Like Christmas, because without their realistic, subdued performances, the movie simply wouldn't have worked. Heche portrays Carol as a woman who is busying herself with work, with her son, with Christmas, always finding someone or something else to focus her attention on in order to avoid having to deal with any personal matters of the heart. She claims she's never dated since her divorce because she never has the time, but she doesn't want to take another chance on somebody who might just break her heart all over again. Heche's Carol is a nervous talker who always quickly changes the subject in conversations with her friends whenever they mention potential matchmaking possibilities.
For Carol, Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of the year, and she does everything she can to make it last as long as possible, working herself to the point of exhaustion to share her love of the season with her son and his schoolmates, as well as the rest of her beloved community, but she finds herself so busy planning the perfect holiday for everyone else that she rarely finds the time to just take a moment to enjoy it all herself. When she begins to grow closer to Terry, Carol fights her attraction because she knows he plans to settle in California and doesn't want to allow herself to grow attached to another man who will eventually leave. Carol's afraid to take that leap of faith and just let love in, too worried about tomorrow to live for today. So she uses the impending demolition of the town library as an excuse to keep Terry at arm's length, despite having no great attachment to the building outside of its historical significance.
And Dylan Neal's Terry is a man who is struggling with his family and flourishing with his career, on the fast track for a promotion that will spell true financial security for his daughter's future while neglecting the present. Since his wife's death, he's pushed himself harder to be the provider, and as a result his personal relationship with Amelia has suffered greatly. The tragedy of the situation is that Terry recognizes this, but is unable or unwilling to change things because he has his sights firmly set on that ephemeral future when he's got his cushy desk job and he doesn't have to keep moving his daughter from town to town to chase the next job. Terry knows his behavior is hurting his daughter, but he's working desperately toward his promotion because he loves her and wants to give her the stable home she so desires, believing that his current course is the only way to accomplish that.
But life in Woodside begins to change Terry's outlook. Attending PTA meetings and planning Amelia's school holiday program with Carol allow him to get to know the real person behind the town's infamous "Christmas Carol" persona, and something so simple as sharing a home-cooked meal with Carol, Amelia and Bryan around the dinner table set his mind to wandering. Maybe he doesn't have to keep chasing that dream of a settled home life, after all. Perhaps his happy ending is already within his grasp, if he has the guts to fight for it.
When Terry delivers a compromise that will preserve the town library while still allowing construction of the planned hotel to commence on time, he's offered that promotion he's sought for so long, walking out on Amelia less than an hour before the big Christmas pageant begins to take in a quick meeting with his boss, promising to return before the curtain rises. Amelia recognizes her father's empty promises and fears all of the progress they've made as a family has just been undone. She doesn't want to move again. She doesn't care about California. Amelia already sees Woodside as her home, and doesn't understand why her father can't just look around and see what she sees.
But as Terry waits at a local restaurant for his employer to arrive and formally offer him the big promotion, he notices something in his coat pocket: the Christmas present Carol slipped inside earlier, when he wasn't paying attention. Opening the small box, he finds an antique pocket watch, and this simple gift finally opens his eyes. He returns just in time for the curtain to rise on the pageant, and he's there to see his daughter perform her reading of "The Night Before Christmas", confessing to Carol that he's finally ready to take a leap of faith, and so is she.
A year later, and Carol and Terry are happily married, Terry having started a successful home renovation company that might not be as lucrative as his long-expected promotion in California, but it's certainly more personally fulfilling being his own boss, and his hours are flexible so he can spend as much time with his blended family as he desires. It's a rather maudlin denouement, but it feels earned. Terry and Carol deserved this happy ending.
Their burgeoning romance felt so down-to-earth and sweet that I couldn't help but be swept along with its highs and lows. Dylan Neal and Anne Heche have such great chemistry in this movie and I was genuinely invested in their characters, which isn't really that common. Maybe one in ten of these movies that I watch truly affects me emotionally beyond a superficial level, and fewer than that, maybe one in thirty, really make me feel the way I felt watching Looks Like Christmas. I kinda loved this movie, if you can't already tell. It's just such a charming romance that I couldn't help but enjoy myself,
I'll be honest with you, I had pretty high hopes for this movie when I sat down to watch it this morning. Why? Because I'm a fan of Dylan Neal. I think he's a great actor who is perfectly suited for this kind of material. He was wonderful as the romantic lead in the canceled Hallmark Channel original series Cedar Cove, even when the material in the latter two seasons floundered, doing his character no favors. But the second season did provide him with one of his strongest acting showcases, when his character Jack Griffith, a recovering alcoholic, invites his love interest, Olivia Lockhart (Andie MacDowell) to an AA meeting so that she can learn the truth about his unpleasant past when he shares his story with the group.
It's a brave performance, one that lays the character bare, and Dylan Neal plays it beautifully, simultaneously vulnerable and brave as he opens himself up before the woman he loves and reveals all of the painful secrets of his closely guarded past. That scene alone earned my loyalty to the actor, but he's more than that; a multi-faceted performer who has recently expanded his horizons by producing and co-writing the series of clever Gourmet Detective telefilms for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, which boast some of the strongest performances and slickest production values of any of the films in the network's stable.
He's also an accomplished carpenter. Starting out as a hobby, Neal found he had a passion for the trade and even apprenticed under a master cabinetmaker for several months during a Writer's Guild strike several years ago, honing his skills while earning a solid living for his family when most folks in his profession were just sitting around waiting for the strike to end so they could go back to work. He's very, very good at what he does, refurbishing old furniture and building new furniture from scratch in his off time, usually either keeping the pieces himself or giving them as gifts to friends and family. Though he considers this a hobby, he's certainly skilled enough to slip right into cabinetmaking as a career if he ever decides to walk away from acting, which he's said he'd never do because he enjoys the craft too much, but it's always an option.
Why am I mentioning this? It really has nothing to do with anything, but I find it fascinating, and I don't know when I would have another opportunity to share this with you, Dear Imaginary Reader, so I took my shot. Dylan Neal's a complex individual, and I want you to appreciate him as much as I do.
I've been done talking about Looks Like Christmas for a while, now, so I guess I should just wrap this up. That was a Christmas pun. I'll stop now.
VERDICT: LOOKS LIKE NICE-MAS
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