Schlock-Mas: Day Three

CHARMING CHRISTMAS

A businesswoman plays Mrs. Claus at her family's department store and her life begins to change.

Department stores, man. For a long time, they were the end-all, be-all of commerce for most Americans. Convenient one-stop shopping for any occasion. The department stores was the undisputed king of consumerism, once upon a time, but those days are done. Sure, some big chain department stores are still clinging to life, but the writing's on the wall. Their days are numbered, and when that final, proud department store shuts its doors for the last time, we will have truly witnessed the passing of an age. A lot of people blame the advent of internet shopping for their imminent demise. I personally blame it on prohibiting smoking in shopping malls, but that's just my head trip.

The point I'm trying to make, if I am, indeed attempting to make a point, which I'm not sure I am, is that since department stores are most assuredly on the decline in our society, whenever I see a movie that prominently features not only a department store as its primary location, but a successful  department store, at that, it just deflates my suspension of disbelief. Because, let's face it, any movie that depicts a department store as a thriving business venture in the 21st Century is clearly a fantasy. Your movie might as well feature goblins and centaurs shopping for sporting goods in your bustling department store, because that's just as realistic.

Today's movie, a somewhat confounding little confection entitled Charming Christmas, focuses on a family owned and operated department store in Portland, Oregon called Rossman's, and wouldn't you know it, but the place is just always busy. No recession here, folks! Amazon dot who? I never saw any pixies cruising for new bath towels in housewares at any point in this movie, but there was a fat couple testing a mattress in the background of one scene that kinda looked like a pair of cave trolls, so there's that.

Our heroine, Meredith Rossman (Julie Benz!) is managing the store under the laissez-faire   stewardship of her kindly mother and father (two old people), who are looking forward to their imminent retirement in the new year. Meredith is, well, let's say business-oriented. She doesn't really have time for any of that "stop and smell the flowers" bullshit, preferring to bury herself in work to avoid any kind of personal entanglements. She has this perfect, seemingly benign "go fuck yourself" business smile that she wields like a deadly weapon when she's engaged in any kind of professional situation that she must have practiced for endless hours in front of her bathroom mirror before getting it just right.

She's also in talks with a sleazy representative from an international corporation to sell the Rossman's department store, rebuilding it as a nationwide brand of stores that will surely be a massive success because this movie clearly doesn't take place in anything resembling the real world. She thinks it's the best thing for the family business, because it means both she and her parents will make out like bandits in the deal, and she'll be installed as the head cheese of the whole operation. But she didn't count on one thing: Santa Claus.

Maybe. Maybe it's Santa Claus. Or maybe it's his son. Santa, Jr. Not that Santa, Jr. Just the son of Santa Claus. Or Santa Claus, himself. Or maybe he's just delusional? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just push through this before I completely forget my train of thought. So there's this guy named Nick (David Sutcliffe) who's been hired to portray Santa Claus at the store during the Christmas season. Nick seems like a nice guy on the surface, sure, but he acts a little weird at times, and frankly it's a bit off-putting.

Nick has a tendency to stick his nose where it doesn't belong, involving himself in the private affairs of others, and even though most of the characters in the movie find his behavior endearing, and because he's the male lead, his advice is invariably correct and he changes several people's lives for the better despite his awkward approach, in the real world this Nick fella would have gotten punched in the teeth more than once for pulling some of the shit he gets away with here. He likes to cross boundaries with people, just inserting himself into their private conversations and projecting with an air of arrogant authority, because he knows best and everybody should gather round and listen to the maestro speak.

I just don't like this guy. I don't care if he is supposed to be Santa Claus. If that's indeed who he's supposed to be. He's obsessed with Christmas, to the point where other people in the movie tell the guy to dial it back a step or twelve, and he's always making these cutesy little jokes about how his family "lives and breathes Christmas" and they live "up north, but like, way up north, nudge, nudge", and it just makes me sick. Nick makes me sick. Am I being too hard on this guy? Absolutely. Maybe it's just the actor. This David Sutcliffe guy looks like bad news to me. He probably abuses elderly people in his free time, just for shits and giggles. Do I have any proof of this? Maybe.

The other employees in the department store include a single mother named Jessie, who always has her troublemaker son Tyler with her because she can't afford a babysitter on her meager salary, her pal Vincent, who does whatever Jessie wants whenever she wants because he's clearly in love with the woman and she either doesn't notice or doesn't care, Meredith's personal assistant Olivia, who's just marking time at Rossman's until her injured ankle heals up and she can fuck off back to New York City to become a dancer on some Broadway show once again, and that's it.

I mean, there are other people working in the department store, sure, but we're never introduced to them. They just drift through scenes with no dialogue, and none of the principal actors ever acknowledge their existence. It's actually somewhat chilling. But they clearly don't matter, so let's just move forward working under the assumption that this beloved department store, the jewel of Portland, is operating day-to-day with a permanent staff of four.

Nick's hired for the Santa gig by Meredith's parents, who insist on hiring the middle-aged drifter despite her vehement objections because I guess they like the way he creepily leers at their daughter whenever they're in the same room. Or maybe they just read the script and knew these two crazy kids were doomed to fall in love. Whatever the case, Nick's the new Santa Claus at Rossman's, and that means somebody has to play his Mrs. Claus, and I bet you'll never guess who that could be!

Look, I know you've read the film's logline at the top of the page, so obviously you already know that Meredith has been guilt tripped by her parents into taking up the mantle of the ever-important wife of Santa Claus, despite her not having much in common with the character. She doesn't like kids, she doesn't believe in being nice to people, and she looks too damned good in that sparkly red dress to be taken seriously as the wife of a fat old man with a giant white beard. But that's cool, because Nick believes in Meredith, and just knows that, given enough time, he'll be able to break down her stoic, businesswoman walls and reveal the kindly, patient and joyous woman underneath.

Of course, that's exactly what he does. Spoiler alert, I guess, but we all know where this is going. Taking on the role of Mrs. Claus, spending time with the dreamy new Santa while he spends hour after hour rapping with children while sweating under hot lights, Meredith begins to see Nick a bit differently. Maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome, but Meredith's whole outlook changes, and she begins to do things she would have never considered doing before she met Nick, like actually being nice to her employees and not wanting to have children arrested for being so bold as to exist in her general vicinity. She also changes her mind about selling the department store, choosing instead to keep the family in her family business.

Nick also meddles in the affairs of the other employees, sending an unsolicited letter to Jessie's estranged mother when he notices she's feeling particularly down in the dumps over the holiday season having to take care of Tyler all alone while his deadbeat dad, a cruise ship captain, conveniently takes job after job to keep him at sea for extended tours of duty so he won't have to bother with actually being a father to his impressionable young son. Jessie's mother just shows up at the department store on Christmas Eve to reconcile with her daughter, and they just do.

No real drama, here. We never even learn why Jessie and her mother haven't been on speaking terms for over a year, either. The old lady just shows up, tells her daughter that she's sorry, then Jessie tells her mother that she's sorry, then they hug and everything's cool. No harm, no foul. Tyler's suddenly no longer depressed that his father doesn't love him because his mother and grandmother are reunited and happy, so that's good. No emotional scars there.

And after receiving another letter from Nick, Olivia abandons her dreams of reclaiming Broadway glory to teach dance to children in Portland so she can stay with her doting architect husband, because she suddenly remembered how miserable she was during her time toiling her way up the show business ladder on the Great White Way. Instead of following her old dream, she decides to follow a new one, which is admirable enough, but I feel like she would have come to this conclusion eventually without Nick's intervention. Maybe it would have taken re-immersing herself in her old lifestyle for a few months, but her heart clearly wasn't in the whole Broadway thing anymore, anyway. So how much good did Nick really do, here?

And as for Vincent... well, Nick doesn't really do anything for Vincent. In fact, they never even interact once during the movie, and I think Nick maybe mentions him off-hand once. So his unrequited love for Jessie sadly remains unrequited. He probably hangs himself shortly after the events of the movie, anyway. He looks like the type.

In the end, Rossman's department store is saved, all of the three employees are happy-ish, and Meredith and Nick make out in a horse-drawn carriage after Nick offers to take her around the world on a magic sleigh ride while a trio of gawking elves spy on the necking pair through a store window. Yes, a trio of gawking elves. Real elves, with the pointy ears and everything. They watch hungrily as Nick and Meredith play tonsil hockey in this horse-drawn carriage, like a bunch of knife-eared peeping toms. Look at their goddamned faces!

Mother of God...

What even is this? Is Nick really Santa Claus? I fucking guess so! The movie keeps dropping hints about Nick's true nature throughout the movie, but they're all so ambiguous and low-key that the audience is allowed to make up their own minds about whether or not he's really Santa or just some dude who loves Christmas. Even his little remarks to Meredith about seeing the world together on Christmas Eve and that there are other modes of trans-continental travel aside from airplanes and boats are played off as harmless holiday flirting, then bam! Creepy peeping elves. Fade to black.

This movie threw me for a loop. It has its share of genuine sentiment, I suppose, but most of the characters don't leave much of an impression, and there's just not a lot of meat on this story's bones, really. Nothing for a viewer like myself to sink his teeth into. Charming Christmas is light and insubstantial. Not a bad movie, I guess, but more of a frustrating one because there were hints of promise scattered throughout its runtime, but mostly it just settled for mediocrity.

Just look at the title for proof of that: Charming Christmas. What the hell does that mean? That's the best title these people could come up with? The movie was based on a book entitled The Secret Life Of Mrs. Claus, and that's a much better name than Charming Christmas. Why didn't they use that evocative title instead of the generic Charming Christmas? There's nothing charming at all about that title. It could apply to any of these movies. You could swap out the title of any of the movies I've reviewed since I started this crap with Charming Christmas and the name would fit just as well there as it does here.

Take My Christmas Dream, for example. It's another movie about romance in a thriving department store at Christmastime. The title refers to the protagonist's dream of moving to Paris, France, which comes true when she's offered the managerial position at a brand-new store opening in the City Of Lights. That title makes sense. But you can replace that title with Charming Christmas, and it means absolutely nothing, just like it does here. What were they thinking?

Julie Benz is great in the movie. Her transformation from an unfeeling shark who's willing to dismantle her family business in order to get ahead professionally to a sentimental, effervescent woman whose entire outlook on life changes all because she chooses to let love in is a believable one, and she pulls off her role flawlessly. She's not just a highlight of Charming Christmas, she's unfortunately the only one. Nothing else in this movie can keep up with Julie Benz, and it's a damned shame, because if the script had been just a little bit better, and the rest of the cast had been a little more game, Charming Christmas could have really been something. It could have been The Secret Life Of Mrs. Claus.

I Hate You! Kiss Me! - Considering the animosity Meredith demonstrates toward Nick in the first act, this qualifies.

Scrooged - In the beginning, Meredith hates Christmas, only really caring about how the season helps the store's bottom line. Then she falls in love with Santa Claus and the rest is history.

Slumming It - I'm throwing this down. Julie Benz is too good for this fucking movie.

Secret Santa - You better believe there's a secret fucking Santa in this movie! I won't hear otherwise. This guy's either really Santa Claus, or he's got a pack of wild elves following him through Portland, shadowing his every move, waiting for the opportune moment to strike him down and feast on his supple flesh. As much as I would love the explanation to be the latter, we all know it's the former.

VERDICT: NAUGHTY

(But Julie Benz gets a NICE because she's the MVP and she deserves it)

You deserve it! *clap-clap clap-clap-clap*