ENGAGING FATHER CHRISTMAS
A woman has a homecoming with her long-lost family and prepares to experience Christmas traditions.
The apparently much-anticipated sequel to last year's Finding Father Christmas begins with a recap of events from the previous movie, making the sequel feel less like a "movie" in any sense, and more like the next episode in the Father Christmas television series, which is immediately off-putting. I've never seen a movie sequel on Hallmark Channel presented in such a manner. I can't explain why this bothers me so much, but I found myself annoyed with Engaging Father Christmas right off the bat due to this awkward introduction. Did it need an introduction? Would any potential newcomers who hadn't seen the original movie be hopelessly lost if they decided to watch the sequel first? No on both counts, since the movie is helpful enough to recap the events of its predecessor several times throughout its ninety-odd minutes, just in case anybody forgets what they're watching.
Miranda (Erin Krakow) is back in Seattle, packing her bags for a trip back to Carlton Heath, Vermont to spend Christmas with her boyfriend Ian (Niall Matter) and her newfound family, the Whitcombs. Ian and Miranda have seen each other often throughout the previous year, mostly through Ian traveling to Seattle to spend weekends with his lady love, but they miss each other dearly and can't wait to be reunited at Christmas once again in Ian's picturesque hometown. I spotted a sign at Mirands's workplace as she was leaving for her holiday vacation that identified itself as an interior design firm, so I guess she's an interior designer. I just felt I needed to mention this, since the previous film didn't really identify Miranda's occupation, at all. This doesn't alter the plot in anyway, so it's completely worthless. Mystery solved!
Waiting at the airport for Ian to pick her up, Miranda runs into her ex-boyfriend Josh (Andrew Francis), whom she hasn't seen in two years. Their relationship ended amicably, and the two decide to be friendly and catch up a little bit while Miranda waits for her ride. Josh asks Miranda if she ever discovered her father's true identity, which was something she apparently talked about to a lot of people back in the day, and she excitedly tells him that she has indeed gotten to the bottom of that particular mystery. Making Josh promise not to share this information with anybody, Miranda tells him that her real father is James Whitcomb, and Josh immediately recognizes the name.
Apparently, this James Whitcomb was a much bigger deal than anybody in the first movie cared to admit, being a world-famous star of stage and screen, so famous that Josh, a regular Joe, knows the guy's work very well. In Finding Father Christmas, Whitcomb was never presented as an individual who had achieved such a high level of fame, more of a local legend around Carlton Heath than anything else, so why the sudden retcon in the sequel?
Because drama, of course. The Whitcomb family made Miranda promise not to share her true parentage with any outsiders, since the entire world knew their patriarch as a kind and loyal family man, and if the news that Miranda was the product of an extramarital affair leaked to the press, it would be a tabloid scandal that could sully the Whitcomb family's good name for generations to come. Because James Whitcomb was such a big deal, you guys.
After arriving in Carlton Heath, Miranda receives a series of text messages with attached photos from an anonymous sender, calling him-or-herself the "ghost of Christmas past". The first photo depicts James Whitcomb dressed up as Santa Claus, hanging a wreath on the front door of his house, and the second photo is a candid shot of Miranda standing in a crowd in Carlton Heath, with an attached message asking if she is James Whitcomb's daughter.
At first, Miranda believes Josh may be the culprit, since he followed her to Carlton Heath to spend a little more time with his ex over the holidays, but Josh is in the background of the second photo, so he clearly didn't take it. And besides, Josh swears that he would never betray her trust in such a way as he takes his leave, traveling home to spend Christmas with his parents in New York City. So who could the "ghost of Christmas past" be? Perhaps Natalie Garrett, the genial-seeming reporter in town ostensibly to write a story on the 30th anniversary of the restored James Whitcomb Theatre in Carlton Heath? Perhaps it's... well, it couldn't really be anybody else, unless...
The real culprit is an unscrupulous tabloid reporter named Steve Decker, who overheard Miranda's conversation with Josh at the airport and followed her to Carlton Heath to dig up the truth behind James Whitcomb's sordid past. There's even a handy flashback sequence that shows Decker snapping the candid photo of Miranda with his phone, even though that would be impossible for him to do, considering he doesn't arrive in town until after that photo is delivered to Miranda's inbox. There's your fucking Christmas miracle, right there!
Such a blatant and easily corrected continuity error, but clearly nobody involved in making this movie gave a damn about it, which is sad because all the editor would have to do is swap two little scenes and there wouldn't be any issues. Just put the ten second shot of Decker driving into Carlton Heath ten minutes earlier in the story and everything's just peachy. This error is just pathetic, and speaks to a lack of quality control in these movies.
Decker comes clean to Miranda and demands she speak to him before he departs for Boston the next day, otherwise he'll write a less kind version of the story that will make the late James Whitcomb look like a complete piece of shit, which will bury his family in scandal and heartache, so her bright idea is... to leave town! Yeah, after accepting Ian's marriage proposal and making plans to relocate to Carlton Heath on a permanent basis, she decides it's time to repeat her exact same character arc from the first film by running away, because she thinks this act will somehow prevent Decker from writing his story... somehow.
This plan is the dumbest thing I may have ever heard. Decker's already told Miranda that he's going to write the story on Whitcomb no matter what she does, so why does she think flying back to Seattle three days before Christmas, abandoning her new fiancé in the process, will fix anything? Because it won't. Running away in this case won't spare the Whitcomb family any potential heartache, unlike her decision to leave in the first movie. Miranda keeps swearing she's going to leave Carlton Heath because she doesn't want to hurt her new family, but they're going to get hurt regardless of her actions when the story comes out. So Miranda's just running away because she doesn't want to stick around for the fallout, which is completely unlike the character as established in the last film.
And while I'm thinking about it, what the fuck is wrong with the Whitcomb family? They refuse to acknowledge that Miranda is a member of their clan in any public forum, introducing her to strangers as a "friend of the family", despite the ultimately warm welcome they gave the newcomer in the final scenes of Finding Father Christmas. It's been a year since Miranda found out she had a family waiting for her in Carlton Heath, and they have spent that year keeping her at arm's-length because they're worried that the world learning Miranda is the illegitimate daughter of the late James Whitcomb might bring shame to the family.
Margaret (Wendie Malick) eventually sees the light and invites Natalie Garrett to tell the entire story of James's short love affair with Evelyn Chester as told by Natalie and Miranda, beating Decker's hatchet job to the press on Christmas Eve, and there's absolutely no fallout, since the Whitcomb family controlled the story, which they could have done all along, instead of treating Miranda like a fucking pariah for having the audacity to simply exist. For two-thirds of the movie, the Whitcombs treat Miranda like a second-class citizen, then they suddenly remember they're all in a Hallmark movie in the third act and decide to be one big, happy family once again, and no harm done. The entire subplot feels shoehorned in just to manufacture some completely unnecessary drama and pad out the run-time, since there clearly wasn't much of a story to work with otherwise.
I remember wondering why Finding Father Christmas refused to show even a single moment of the town's annual production of A Christmas Carol, finding the omission of even a brief montage of scenes from the play to be a very odd choice after the story made such a big deal out of the production beforehand. Well, we do get to see a few bits and pieces of the play this time around, and I now know why this stuff didn't make it into the previous movie. The first ghost introduced isn't Jacob Marley in this production, since he shows up later for no reason but to point at an open window and shuffle away without saying a word, but the ghost of Christmas past, only it's actually the ghost of Christmas future, since the actor portraying the ghost is dressed like the Grim Reaper, complete with a rubber scythe.
The scene depicted is clearly from Scrooge's journey to his own past, visiting himself as a child in school, but the ghost accompanying him on this journey is, somehow, the completely wrong ghost for the fucking scene. How, how, how, did these people fuck up one of the most well-known and adapted literary works in the history of the world so completely? Seriously, I want to know. What the fuck is wrong with these people that they care so little for their own movie to make such an egregious error? This isn't complicated shit, folks. Everybody knows A Christmas Carol. Fucking everybody. But not the fools who made Engaging Father Christmas!
Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this movie is terrible, just a half-hearted rehash of last year's more successful model. It's not like Finding Father Christmas was a great movie, because it wasn't. But it was good, and that was enough. Engaging Father Christmas can't even manage to reach those lofty heights, constantly tripping over its own poor dialogue and hastily scrabbled-together story structure that just listlessly repeats plot points from the first film instead of doing anything else, even when repeating plot points makes absolutely no sense in the context of this film, like Miranda's ridiculous decision to leave Carlton Heath in the third act, despite the fact that leaving in this case would accomplish absolutely nothing.
I don't know why they even bothered making this sequel. It adds nothing to its predecessor, actually serving to make Finding Father Christmas look somehow worse in retrospect for being tied to this putrid outhouse of a movie. Even the actors aren't as engaged with the material this time around, seeming to go through the motions on order to collect an easy paycheck. That's what Engaging Father Christmas honestly feels like in the end: an easy paycheck. The last movie was well-received by audiences and critics, so the producers had to be sure to cash in with a tired and unnecessary sequel, even teasing a surely-coming third movie with the closing moments of this tripe.
And Andrew Francis needs to get a better agent, because this is the second Hallmark movie I've seen in a row that features the actor playing the third wheel in a romantic relationship who just smiles and takes his leave after he's rejected by the heroine. This shit's getting old, Andrew. But at least Niall Matter actually played Santa Claus in one scene of the movie, so the title Engaging Father Christmas actually makes sense. I was worried the producers just thought the title was cute and decided to run with it, but I guess they actually had a meeting about something before they starting shooting this fucking thing.
I just know that they're going to make another one of these movies next year, and of course it has to be called Marrying Father Christmas, because it literally can't be called anything else. Hopefully it won't be shouldered with all the crap that dragged down this largely unnecessary- feeling middle chapter and actually stick the landing. It certainly can't get any worse.
Assistant Chef Jen - This Steve Decker guy is just a dickhead who wants to sully the good name of James Whitcomb in order to advance his own career, and the only thing he does when he realizes he's been screwed out of his story is scowl and retreat from bucolic Carlton Heath like a vampire from the approaching sunrise.
VERDICT: WHERE ARE YOU, CHRISTMAS?
I think I started this whole misguided saga years ago as a way to find the spirit of Christmas, searching through the airwaves for clues to point me to the heart of this holiday I used to adore with all my heart. But instead of finding what I'm truly looking for, I keep forcing myself to endure all of this cynical, overly-marketed and overly-sanitized pablum. Christmas doesn't live in these cheaply fashioned products, this plastic façade that hides nothing but manipulative mediocrity to placate a society of ignorant rubes who only want to be lied to by their safe and cheerful entertainment.
Keep your blinders on to the suffering and injustice in this world by gorging yourself on a seven-course meal of family-friendly holiday cheer. It's so easy for these people to pretend everything's gonna be alright in the safety of their cookie-cutter, prefabricated suburban communities. It's so easy to pretend that nothing outside of their little bubble matters at all. Ignore the news, ignore the truth, ignore the pleading faces warning you that the world is coming apart at the seams.
So what if Christmas is a little warmer around here next year? That just means I can wear short sleeves and fire up the grill instead of roasting a turkey inside. And who cares about this North Korea crisis? A little radiation never hurt anybody. Healthcare? Why should I bother worrying about how you're going to pay for your kid's appendectomy? You've been leeching off our tax dollars for far too long as it is. A bunch of pathetic welfare queens, that's all they are. Let these parasites get a real job and provide for their children if they want there to be presents under the tree this Christmas. If they can't afford to pay their heating bills and end up freezing to death in their own beds come January, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves. If they'd rather die, then they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Where's the Christmas Spirit? I haven't found it, and I've been looking for years. But it seems I've been looking in all the wrong places. It's Christmas Eve, and I feel farther away from the day than when I began this series at the beginning of the month. Hell, I feel farther away from Christmas right now than at any other point in my life. When did everything change? I've been trying to "fake it 'til I make it" for years, and it's done no good. I started forcing myself to watch these movies in an attempt to jump-start that warm and inviting Christmas spirit that came so easily to me when I was younger, but it hasn't worked. All this has done is make me realize how shitty I truly feel. Enduring an endless parade of artificial holiday romances that have the depth of a paper doll collection has only dragged me further from my beloved Christmas, and at this point I don't know if I can claw my way back to it.
Honestly, why should I bother? What's so great about Christmas? Family and friends? I see my family all the time. There's no special significance to gathering on an arbitrary date to wear stupid sweaters and eat bland turkey. I cook all day and when I'm done all I want to do is eat in peace and be left alone. I don't want to socialize with a bunch of people with whom I have nothing to say beyond a half-hearted "Merry Christmas" when they walk through the door.
Christmas used to mean something to me. I used to enjoy it when December came rolling around, knowing that Christmas was finally right around the corner. But those days are gone. I now dread Thanksgiving, knowing that the next day I'll have to drag up all the Christmas decorations and start putting everything up for another year. Hanging the ornaments on the tree holds no joy for me anymore. It's just another thing I have to do because Christmas is almost here. I do these things not because I enjoy them, but because they're my routine. These are the things one does when Christmastime arrives.
The last Christmas that meant anything to me was the last Christmas I spent with Titus. We got drunk after watching the latest Doctor Who holiday special and just talked for a few hours. It was such a simple time, but looking back, the memory of that experience means everything to me. Not a single day has passed that I haven't missed Titus, but I always miss him a little more on Christmas. I've found myself enjoying everything in my world a little less since he's been gone, just going through the motions because I don't know how else to live my life in his absence. I loved celebrating Christmas with Titus, and the pain in knowing that I never can again wounds me to my core.
I remember how we made a habit of hanging out and watching slasher films or cheesy exploitation pictures on the weekends, poking fun at all the plot holes and amateurish performances, just laughing and having a good time. Those mundane moments are some of my most cherished memories. There was nothing lyrical or grandiose about sitting on a couch and watching a bad movie, but that's why those memories matter so much. We were just spending time together, simply enjoying each other's company.
That's the only spirit of Christmas that truly matters to me. The memories of watching Samurai Cop or The Nail Gun Massacre and laughing along with my best friend as the ridiculousness unfolded on my television screen are some of the best memories I've ever made. Last year, I broke from my blog's tradition on two occasions and watched a pair of holiday-themed B-movies I actually wanted to revisit, Jack Frost and Christmas Evil. Both of those films have more of the true spirit of Christmas in them than anything Hallmark has ever produced.
Tomorrow's Christmas Day, and my original plan was to watch the latest Candace Cameron Bure-starring wasteland of a holiday movie, but I just don't think I can put myself through that kind of torture again. I'm done punishing myself with this garbage. No, there's a movie I always wanted to introduce to Titus, but unfortunately never got the chance, one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time that I think he would have loved. And tomorrow, I'm going to go out on a high note with my final step in this journey to drive a stake of holly through the black and withered heart of Christmas.
"Were there ever any stars in sky, and did the sun ever shine so bright?"
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