Schlock-Mas: Day Eleven

MAGICAL CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS

A publishing executive's Christmas spirit is reawakened by her family's Christmas ornaments.

Marie (Jessica Lowndes) hates Christmas. She's been a bit of a Scrooge ever since her boyfriend, some hotshot bro named Clark, dumped her on Christmas Eve four years ago. Is this sounding like a broken record to you? It isn't just me, right? Rekindling the love of Christmas in the heart of a man or woman who has fallen out of practice for reasons has been a driving plot point in no less than four of the other movies I've watched thus far this year.

Why didn't I make this one of my damned tropes? Because it's been more prevalent than any other I've encountered this year, and I'm only eleven days into this thing. I guess I figured Scrooged was good enough to cover this particular trope, but it's too particular. Fuck it, I'm changing the rules. Scrooged has been retroactively re-branded to include any primary or supporting character in these films who has abandoned the Christmas Spirit, regardless of their age. I'll go back and edit my other reviews to include the new version of the trope where applicable.

Anyway, Clark really fucked Marie up, because she was expecting him to propose over the holidays, and his sudden change of heart seemingly came out of nowhere, so she's been focusing on her career as an executive editor at Lionsrun Publishing as of late, working primarily in non-fiction, but her dream is to start a new children's book imprint at her firm that she can manage, or perhaps even to go into business for herself publishing books for children. I'm not sure if she knows exactly what it takes to create a successful boutique publishing firm, because from what little I've learned it's almost impossible for most new firms to survive long enough to release their first book, let alone firmly establish themselves in the publishing world.

Now eBook publishing is a much safer gamble, because there's essentially no overhead, but I'm not sure that's the avenue Marie wants to pursue, although she should give it a serious look. Perhaps Marie could work for several years as an eBook publisher, establish a loyal reader base, then use that good will to attract financial backers to provide her with the capital to begin publishing physical books, beginning with collectible print runs of one or two of her biggest selling eBook titles, since those established titles would have the best chance of selling well in a physical format. But what do I know?

Marie lives alone in a nice apartment with a dog named Sammy that she claims to love but the movie never actually shows her feeding the dog and she doesn't even bother to take him for walks after she gets home from her full-time job. Marie just pats little Sammy on the head and goes to bed, leaving this poor dog all alone once again. Usually when movies such as these establish one of our leads as a dog owner, the story at least pretends that the character actually tries to take care of their dog. But Magical Christmas Ornaments just treats little Sammy as a cute prop.

This is actually very disappointing, considering how Hallmark as a brand has recently become well known for work with various animal charities, even founding the Hallmark Pet Project, which is dedicated to the lofty goal of emptying animal shelters across the United States by pairing up dogs and cats with loving new families. The network announced earlier this year that moving forward their original movies would begin to showcase animals more often, even occasionally including plots involving rescue dogs or cats in order to encourage viewers to "adopt, don't shop". That's a wonderful sentiment, but Magical Christmas Ornaments is a brand-new movie, only premiering last week, and it doesn't exactly paint dog owner Marie in a positive light. So the network's animal-positive agenda isn't well-represented here.

Dogs can die of neglect, Marie.

Coming home from work one night, Marie bumps into her neighbor, a nice dude named Nate, who works as a nurse down at St. Ambrose Hospital. I don't know why WWE wrestler Dean Ambrose has been canonized in this topsy-turvy world, but it's very strange. I mean, he's the third most popular member of The Shield, and that's not great because there are only three members of The Shield. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right. Let me consult my handy, dandy hagiography for a moment...

So St. Ambrose was a 4th Century figure who rose to prominence as the Bishop of Milan, beloved of the people and an influential figure in his own time, successfully convincing an invading army of Gauls at the behest of child Emperor Valentinian II to halt their imminent invasion of Rome. When the Gauls changed their minds a few years later and invaded anyway, they sacked Milan and most people with means fled the city before the invading force could arrive. But Ambrose remained in Milan, doing everything he could to provide for the poor and sick who remained in the city during the invasion and occupation, all at great personal risk.

Ambrose also didn't much care for the Jewish people. He deemed them beneath his righteous Christian flock, claiming that even the best among the Jews in his community didn't truly matter because they were "like leaves and not fruit", meaning hollow and unproductive. Ambrose didn't respect the Jewish people because they didn't believe in Christ the Savior, telling his followers that even the good acts their Jewish neighbors performed were wasted efforts because they lacked faith in the one true God. He discouraged Christians from fraternizing with Jews, believing his people should remain "pure in virtue and in spirit". That all sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?

He also popularized antiphonal chanting, which I despise. Antiphonal chanting is that crap you encounter at a church service when the pastor or priest chant-reads a passage from scripture and the choir or congregation answers his reading by singing a response. That stuff's always gotten on my nerves, ever since I was a little kid. The pastor just sounded so awkward with his stilted cadence while he read the passages, and it drove me nuts because he sounded like he couldn't carry a tune to save his soul. I don't know how one can justify transforming a simple word like "amen" into a twenty-seven syllable phrase with rhythm bouncing all over the place like an active seismograph reading.

Screw antiphonal chanting, and screw that anti-Semite St. Ambrose.

Nate loves Christmas which is a big surprise to absolutely nobody, and he's dreaming of his first white Christmas in New York City after spending his entire life in Florida, where he decorated palm trees with his family instead of pine trees. He honestly claims he's never decorated an actual Christmas Tree before he moved to New York, but you can buy Christmas Trees in Florida. They ship them down there! I've seen them do it. His family's big into Christmas, too, so that's not a valid excuse. Were they allergic to pine trees? Is that even a thing? I guess it is, but Nate never mentions that his parents had any allergies, so did they just not bother to ever buy a Christmas Tree?

Marie doesn't have time for Nate's corny Christmas bullshit, so she just tells him to stop blasting his "Rat Pack Christmas" albums and mind his own business when he tries to make small talk with her in the elevator of their apartment building. Knowing his neighbor doesn't have a tree, Nate just buys one for Marie and shows up at her door the next day, which is really presumptuous of him. Luckily for him, Marie is apparently a very nice gal and lets him set the tree up in her apartment.

And it must be serendipity, because Marie's meddling parents have sent their daughter an assortment of her favorite ornaments from childhood in an attempt to revitalize her flagging Christmas Spirit. So she's got the tree, and she's got the ornaments, so Marie figures she might as well decorate the damned thing. The ornaments include a porcelain angel Marie named "Aurora" that she would always hang first on the tree each year when she was a child. They also include a pair of ice skates, a lighthouse, some pancakes, a snowflake, a treasure chest, and a set of characters from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, all of which have special significance to Marie and her parents for various reasons.

After Marie hangs the treasured ornaments on her tree, she begins to notice some odd coincidences occurring in her life.

Her one-time client and successful author J. P. (Tim Matheson) sends her a first draft of his latest manuscript, a children's book entitled "The Magical Christmas Treasure" the day after she hangs the treasure chest on her Christmas Tree, but Marie's boss declines to publish the author's new work because the company has pivoted away from children's literature, much to Marie's disappointment. Nate invites Marie out for an evening of ice skating after she hangs the ice skates on her tree, and the next day Nate takes her to a nearby diner where he orders pancakes for dinner, after Marie hangs the pancakes ornament on the tree. After she hangs the snowflake ornament, it begins to snow outside her apartment.

Is all of this merely a coincidence, or is it something else? Marie's having a wonderful time getting to know Nate, and while they're spending time together, Marie's distaste for Christmas has even begun to crumble as she sees the season anew through Nate's eyes. So are all of these events mere happenstance, or are other forces at work? Marie's not sure what to believe when she hangs the lighthouse ornament, which to her represents her break-up with Clark four years ago, which occurred at a lighthouse on Christmas Eve. And wouldn't you know it, but Clark shows up at Lionsrun Publishing the next day, pitching a great idea for a new novel that Marie's employer just loves. And he wants Marie to shepherd the project, despite all the bad blood between the two, so maybe there is something to those simple-looking ornaments hanging on Marie's Christmas Tree.

Meanwhile, Marie is organizing a Christmas charity drive for the pediatric wing at St. Ambrose Hospital, where she meets a little girl named Skylar, who is a voracious reader. So after she hangs her A Christmas Carol ornaments on the tree, Marie brings Skylar a gift of her own copy of A Christmas Carol, and Nate happens by while she's reading from the book. As it just so happens, Dickens' masterpiece is Nate's favorite work, and this turn of events brings Marie and Nate even closer together.

At dinner the next night, Nate tells Marie why he became a nurse. As a young man, Nate was originally intending to become a doctor, but then his grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, and he stuck by the old man from the day he heard the news to the day he learned he was in remission. And throughout the entire ordeal, Nate couldn't help but notice how the nurses that took care of his grandfather where almost preternaturally patient and kind with the man, always there to encourage him to keep fighting and to help him get settled when he was too weak from chemotherapy to even lift a cup of water to his lips.

Nate was so inspired by these nurses that he realized that's where his heart lay, as a caregiver, so he pursued his passion and became a nurse, and it was one of the best decisions he ever made. Marie is incredibly moved by Nate's story, but quickly retreats back to the safety and solitude of her lonely apartment, afraid of opening her heart once again. She was so wounded by Clark's actions years ago that she's finding it impossible to trust her heart with Nate, despite the fact that he's nothing like Clark.

Her behavior may be irrational, but that's us. We're irrational beings. We can understand intellectually that not everybody is out to break our hearts, but our emotional fragility can prevent us from trusting our intellect, turning our backs on common sense for the perceived safety of never letting love in again, because there's a chance we might get burned. These decisions may not make sense to an outsider, or even to ourselves sometimes, but we are not logical creatures. So Marie turns down Nate's romantic overtures and he sullenly makes plans to return to Florida to spend Christmas with his family.

This is when Marie learns that Nate's parents own and operate a restaurant down south called "The Lighthouse", and she begins to wonder if that's the true meaning of the ornament hanging on her tree. Perhaps it wasn't a reminder of her past with Clark, but of her potential future with Nate.

Back at work, Marie is horrified to learn that Clark has convinced her boss to publish J.P.'s new book after all, as the first in a series of children's books in a brand-new imprint that Clark would control, with Marie working directly under him, of course. I thought this dude was just trying to get his own book published, and now he's setting himself up as an executive at the publishing company. Christ, this guy works fast. Marie is aghast at this news, not only because Clark's stolen her idea and passed it off as his own, but because her employer has already signed off on it when she tried to pitch him on the same damned idea not two days earlier when she brought J.P.'s book into his office. It seems Marie's boss and Clark really hit it off and are just two misogynistic peas in a pod. and Marie is disheartened to learn that her opinions matter so little to her employer despite her high status in the company's hierarchy.

Clark assumed Marie would be thrilled with this news, because it's basically what she always wanted, or at least close enough as to make no difference in his eyes, but Marie tells him he just doesn't get it, because even though Clark swears up and down that he's learned from the mistakes of his past regarding Marie, he's still trying to control every aspect of their relationship, thinking he knows what's best for Marie even if she doesn't. So Marie quits and takes J.P.'s book with her, taking the biggest chance of her life by striking out on her own as an independent publisher and convincing the author to back her gambit.

Back home, Marie tries to find the right words to tell Nate she's sorry for breaking his heart and that she's finally ready to give love another chance when the lighthouse ornament on her tree begins to glow. Marie stares into the light and is immediately inspired to write a letter that she places in front of Nate's door that night, hoping that he'll read it before his flight tomorrow morning and decide to change his mind and spend a white Christmas with Marie in New York City.

At no point does Marie tell anybody about the miraculous occurrence she just witnessed with the lighthouse ornament on her tree. She just keeps this all to herself. Honestly, she doesn't even seem that surprised to see the unearthly light emanating from the ornament, which seems rather unusual. I don't think I'd be able to keep something like this a secret if it had happened to me.

Of course Nate reads the letter in time and surprises Marie on Christmas Eve at the St. Ambrose pediatric ward while she's there delivering presents to all of the children. Marie reads J.P.'s unpublished book to the gathered children, Then she makes out with Nate while her treasured angel ornament watches over them both (because it's at the hospital now, because it's magic, so shut up) and the movie ends.

That's Magical Christmas Ornaments, and it's not bad.

There's some rough expository dialogue shoehorned into the movie at several key points that doesn't sound at all believable, making for some occasional choppy narrative waters. It's that kind of dialogue where one character just starts mechanically reciting facts to another character that they both already know, because it's all for the benefit of the audience who are still playing catch-up with these people that they've just met. There's no art to this dialogue; it's real tin-ear stuff that just makes you cringe.

And the title is very clunky. Magical Christmas Ornaments. That sounds more like a buzzworthy phrase the writers came up with for the pitch meeting that just stuck at the final title because nobody could think of anything better to call this tripe.

Everything else is fine. Brendan Penny and Jessica Lowndes are decent in their respective roles. There's nothing revelatory in their performances, but they get the job done. The story is serviceable, if perhaps a little too familiar. I liked the dog. He was cute. The kids in the pediatric ward were endearing rather than cloying, which was appreciated. It never made me angry and it held my interest throughout, so I guess that's a win.

Scrooged - Marie hates Christmas! She hates it! Then Nate thaws her icy demeanor and she decides it's okay to love Christmas again.

Christmas Magic - And this trope is on the board for the first time this year. I have a feeling this one might not pop up again, because it's honestly not that common. Whenever there's magic in one of these movies, nine times out of ten it can be directly attributed to either Santa Claus or one angel or another, so there's not a lot of room for vague magical objects.

That's all she wrote this time. Nate and Marie are never really at odds, and despite Clark being a semi-villainous character, he's too humanized and recognizably flawed to be considered a caricature. So just two tropes for today. Better luck next time.

VERDICT: NICE