I haven't updated this awful blog since December 25th of last year, it's currently approximately one million degrees outside, and I've decided now is the perfect time to return, because I felt compelled to review a Christmas-themed Hallmark Channel original movie. What better time to dwell on that merriest of holidays than the dog days of summer, am I right? Last December, my original intention was to watch and review the latest Candace Cameron-Bure holiday trifle, Switched For Christmas, on Christmas Day. Obviously, things changed, mostly because I was simply burnt out and needed to watch a movie that actually meant something to me as a last ditch effort to find the elusive Christmas Spirit that I had been searching for these past several years and maintain what remained of my sanity after twenty-four straight days of this nonsense. But I had already recorded Switched For Christmas, and I let it sit on my DVR for over half a year, inexplicably refusing to delete the recording, and this morning, for... some reason, I decided to finally watch the damned movie, mostly to clear a little space on my hard drive, but also because Christmas!
So did Candace Cameron-Bure, that patron saint of Hallmark's festive season, redeem herself after the exercise in frustration and lost opportunities that was her previous seasonal effort, the execrable Journey Back To Christmas? Did this movie work its chilly Christmas magic on my cynical heart in the miserable, blistering heat of this summer season? Will anybody ever actually read this pointless little review?
Spoiler alert: the answer to at least two of these questions is a resounding "no".
SWITCHED FOR CHRISTMAS
Identical twin sisters switch places and plan Christmas events for one another.
Candy Cams stars as a pair of identical twin sisters named Chris (short for Christine, I guess) and Kate (short for Kaaaaaaate) Lockhart, each living very different lives in Colorado's greater Denver metropolitan area. Uptight Kate is single and childless, working for a big-time real estate developer and living in a sterile condo downtown, while free-spirited Chris lives in a cozy house in the suburb of Littleton, divorced and sharing custody of her two tween children, Jack (some kid named Cooper) and Jill (played by real-life daughter Natasha Bure) with her unseen ex-husband (name withheld upon request), working as an art teacher at the local high school (Columbine?), constantly giving her principal shit every year for never updating the staid local holiday festival, dubbed "Winter Wonderland" by this grinning goon, who seems to take great pleasure in telling his goofy subordinate that he doesn't have time for any of her stupid, stupid ideas to "improve" his unimpeachable masterpiece of a pageant.
Why a high school principal is in charge of an entire town's holiday festival, one that doesn't seem to involve any actual high school students, is beyond me, but whatever. I didn't write the movie.
Despite living less than an hour's drive away from each other, Kate and Chris rarely talk face-to-face, probably because the production just didn't have the special effects budget to afford more than two scenes in the entire movie featuring Candace Cameron-Bure acting opposite herself, but this movie wants me to believe that these two crazy kids just became estranged after their mother died under mysterious circumstances several years earlier, never even finding the time for their annual Christmas season sister brunch, because they're just so gosh darned busy doing whatever it is they do. They're too busy for one brunch a year. These pricks can't even find the time to get together once a year for maybe an hour to share an egg white omelette and maybe a fruit plate while exchanging bland pleasantries to honor their late mother's memory. Can you feel the love?
We never actually see Chris teaching anything, since the high school is conveniently in the middle of its winter break when the movie begins, which is great because it means we don't have to bother with watching Kate pretending to be Chris while awkwardly teaching an art class in a hilarious scene that would keep cutting to the confused faces of the students as they try to comprehend whatever bizarre lesson their uncharacteristically frazzled teacher is attempting to convey. Although oddly, Chris hangs around her school quite a bit, but we do thankfully spend time with Kate in her office as she trades... I don't want to say "witty" regarding the banter with her milquetoast personal assistant, because there's really nothing even remotely witty about anything in this movie, so I'll just say tedious banter, before she gets saddled with organizing the annual office Christmas party since the office manager abruptly quit after selling her first novel, some trash heap entitled Dogs Sleds To Dallas, to a major publisher.
What the hell does that title even mean? Hearing at least two characters in this movie utter that title in quick succession just made me unreasonably angry. It reminds me of something The Miz, you know, the oiled-up pantyman who starred in Santa's Little Helper, recently said on one or another wrestling program. He lobbied to be named the special guest referee in a match between two other oiled-up pantymen that didn't concern him, and he claimed he was doing this as research for an upcoming role in a family comedy called Ruff Ruff Ref, about a dog who becomes a professional wrestling referee, because Miz was set to play the role of the veteran referee who begrudgingly takes the neophyte dog ref under his wing, and he wanted some real-life experience to add verisimilitude to his performance, being an old school method actor.
Ruff Ruff Ref, of course, is not a real movie, and Miz just wanted to involve himself in this match because he's a heel and he wanted to cause shenanigans, but he still drops the movie title on occasion, because when Miz lies, he lives the fucking lie. He'll be damned if he slips up and admits on live television that Ruff Ruff Ref was merely a clever ruse to convince the general manager of Smackdown Live to let him legally screw with some other wrestlers without having to actually be one of the wrestlers. I'm half-convinced that through sheer willpower, Miz will somehow make Ruff Ruff Ref a reality at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.
Miz is the kind of wrestling heel that pretends to bring his infant daughter to a live wrestling event, purportedly to shill his new reality series, entitled "Miz & Mrs.", hiring an "actor baby" to portray his daughter in backstage segments, then walking out into the arena with a not-terribly-convincing baby doll strapped to his chest, all to trick his arch-nemesis (and fellow father to a young daughter) Daniel Bryan into thinking that he has no violent intentions, only to throw the baby doll at a panicked D-Bry, who scrambles to catch what he thinks is an imperiled infant, providing the distraction for Miz to devastate his enemy's world with his finishing maneuver, a well-timed Skull-Crushing Finale.
I can't reiterate this enough: Miz lives the lie. He commits to the bit. This is why he's the greatest of the modern villainous oiled-up pantymen, the greatest of all-time being, of course, Nature Boy Ric Flair. But that's a conversation for another day. I guess the point I was trying to make is that Ruff Ruff Ref is also a very stupid title, but everyone treats it like a very stupid title, whereas Dog Sleds To Dallas is meant to be taken seriously, and that's just fucking nuts.
What's the book even about? Is it about a plucky young man who somehow drives a dog sled from the wilds of Alaska to the urban sprawl of Dallas, Texas to visit an ailing relative? Because that's madness. Or is it the story of a plucky young man and his sled dog team who relocate from the wilds of Alaska to the urban sprawl of Dallas, Texas, perhaps to pursue a romantic future with the girl he loved who moved to the big city to take a big office job, and all of the goofy fish-out-of-water situations that might occur as the lad and his very confused dog pals adjust to their new living arrangement?
Either way, Dog Sleds To Dallas is a garbage title, and I hate it with every fiber of my being.
Kate doesn't want to organize the office Christmas party, but her boss tells her to get over herself and take care of business, otherwise Kate's out on her ass come January, so that's that. I guess office superstar Kate, who is also currently working on the single biggest development deal her company has ever negotiated, is the only person in the organization who is qualified to plan something as monumentally important as an office Christmas party. I believe the proper term for that is "plot contrivance".
As for Chris... well, she just... I don't know. I don't know what's going on with Chris. The principal tells her that he doesn't have time for her garbage suggestions to improve his precious "Winter Wonderland", so who knows what's going on with this lady. She loves her kids. She, um... she likes Christmas? There's really nothing else to Chris, is there? I mean, there is absolutely no depth to this character at all. She doesn't even have any friends. At least Kate has her personal assistant to talk to, and they're friendly enough, although they don't seem like they hang out after work.
Maybe the movie wants Chris's kids to fill that void, but we don't get to know them, either. They're just around in a handful of scenes to act as mobile props, never even spouting any of that inane "cute" dialogue that kids always seem to share in movies like this, the kind of cloying crap that the writers think is funny or precocious but really just gets on your nerves. No, these kids don't do anything in Switched For Christmas. They just exist in the margins, like hastily sketched doodles in the margins of a bored 3rd Grader's math homework. The script never even attempts to make these kids feel like actual characters.
What the hell even is this movie?
Chris and Kate's father (some guy who looks like he ate Jerry Van Dyke and chose to wear his flesh like some kind of horrifying skinwalker) tricks them into meeting for brunch one late morning/early afternoon, and these two wacky twins hatch the brilliant idea to switch places for the holidays, so that Chris can plan her sister's big office party, and Kate can... not plan the annual "Winter Wonderland" festival, because the principal has already made it abundantly clear that she's not welcome on that particular planning committee.
I really have to question the logic of the characters, here. They really think that digging up the old switcheroo from their bag of tired tricks at this point in their lives is a good idea? I guess I can understand Kate's point of view, because Chris is on her winter break and has no scholastic responsibilities, so she sees switching as basically a vacation from herself, but what good does Chris get from any of this? Separated from her children and her home, living in an environment that is alien and unfamiliar, surrounded by a bunch of coworkers she doesn't know, fumbling her way through a job she's not qualified to perform... where's the upside?
A whole bunch of funny hijinks occur as Kate tries to live her art teacher sister's life, preparing breakfast for "her" kids and making goo-goo eyes at Littleton's latest eligible bachelor, the independently wealthy Tom Kinder (played by that guy who starred as a badboy adult Pinocchio in Once Upon A Time) who conveniently has just donated a big check to the local high school in exchange for requesting some last-minute additions to the town's winter festival, which the principal oh-so-conveniently assigns to "Chris" because he wants nothing to do with this bullshit. It seems a little odd that this dude just breezes into town, waving around some money and demanding that these perfect strangers work to accommodate him and his bratty son, but I guess that's just something rich people do. Someone should just start punching rich people, right? Don't they have it coming? The principal should have told this Kinder prick to go fuck himself, but if he did, the movie wouldn't have a plot.
And I was lying about the "funny hijinks". There are no jinks, high or low, to be found in Switched For Christmas. Some stuff happens, to be sure, but it's just that: stuff. Just stuff, sitting around, neither good nor bad. There are no peaks or valleys in this plot. It's maddening, baseline banality that serves no purpose aside from just taking up space, filling out this story to feature length. The screenplay is just on auto-pilot, and that's really fucked up, because at least the bad stories are memorable. Every Christmas Tells A Story is wretched, down to its core, but at least I haven't forgotten any of its rottenness. It's seared into my memory, like the shadows of those poor folks who were vaporized by the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were seared onto walls and sidewalks by the intensity of the blasts. I may hate the bad stuff, but it still leaves an indelible impression.
Movies like Switched For Christmas are like plain oatmeal, except even plain oatmeal has nutritional content. Oatmeal can keep you alive. This stuff has no redeeming value.
Anyway, Kate falls in love with this single dad, whom she actually used to date when they were teenagers, which is an incredible coincidence to say the least, but he stood her up one night at the ice skating rink, and that was the end of their storybook love affair. By "her", I mean Kate, not Chris. Kate falls back in love with Tom while pretending to be Chris, and Tom tells Kate, who is pretending to be Chris, that he did show up at the skating rink that bleak December evening, but he saw Chris, who was pretending to be Kate, kissing the boy who was destined to be her future ex-husband, and, mistaking Chris for Kate, and not knowing that Kate had an identical twin sister at the time, Tom fucked off and started a new life somewhere else. Did you get all that?
Now that she's falling in love once again with Tom, she's worried that he's falling in love with "Chris" and not the real Kate, so that's a pickle.
Meanwhile, Chris is living it up in Denver, decorating her sister's boring old condominium with a bunch of expensive Balsam Hill (© Balsam Hill) decorations, and growing very close to her company's resident architect, some hunk named Greg (played by Mark Deklin, whose biggest claim to fame is playing a guy named Bosk in that episode of Charmed where Pheobe becomes a genie for some reason. Not to be confused with Bossk, the reptilian bounty hunter from The Empire Strikes Back, who was played by some guy named Alan Harris, and as far as I'm aware, was never in Charmed. By the way, did you hear the news? Charmed has been rebooted, and is coming back to television this autumn! I am, of course, thrilled by this development) as they plan the office Christmas party together.
But as Chris is falling in love with Greg, she's worried that he's falling in love with "Kate" and not the real Chris, so that's a pickle.
But it all works out in the end when everybody comes together for the new and improved "Winter Wonderland" festival in Littleton, after Chris and Kate come clean to their respective suitors, who are actually pretty chill about the whole affair. They all gather at Chris's house for some warm cider and some kissing under the mistletoe, and that's the end of the movie. Everybody's happy, I guess, which is really the way all of these movies end. It's Christmas, and everything works out for everybody, so hooray!
I have to mention how put off I was by the abundance of green, green leaves on all of the deciduous trees during a Colorado winter in this movie. Foam and wet paper flakes were sloughing off these leaf-laden branches in the clearly sweltering heat during many daytime scenes, and the actors looked incredibly uncomfortable wearing coats and gloves in their numerous outdoor sequences that were filmed in the middle of the summer. I never for a moment bought into the illusion that this movie took place in the heart of winter, which kinda killed the whole "Christmas" vibe for me right from the start. Is it really so difficult to plan these movies in advance, filming them, at least in part, during the actual winter time? Every now and then you'll come across one of these movies that actually was filmed during the cold season, and the season itself adds a great deal of production value to the whole endeavor. That's not something you can replicate on a set with a pile of white fluff.
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| What the hell is up with that Santa on the white board? Is he... is he eating his own beard?! |
And there are two establishing shots in the opening moments of the movie, of "Denver", and neither of the locations captured in these establishing shots is actually the location they purport to be. One of the shots is actually Salt Lake City, and the other is fucking Pittsburgh. Could they not find one stock shot of Denver? Was that too difficult for this production? This is just fucking lazy.
I gotta say, I really didn't like this movie all that much. Most of the performances were fine, and Candace Cameron seemed engaged in her dual role, although I don't think she did enough to differentiate the two sisters in her performance. Chris wore her hair in a ponytail, and Kate didn't. That was pretty much the only difference between these two "so different" twins, and it was purely superficial. Their personalities, despite being told numerous times how different the two were, were essentially identical. It's just the same role twice, in two slightly different stories, contained in the same movie. It's a decent performance, but it wasn't enough. It just wasn't enough. But I can say that about everything in this movie.
I honestly couldn't be bothered to care about anything that was happening in Switched For Christmas. I'm not sure if this can be blamed on the boiling heat that's currently baking the Kansas prairies and coloring my mood, or if I would have felt the same about this movie even if I saw it under more ideal conditions. The script is just uninspired dreck that wastes a potentially exciting "identical twins switch places" plot by not actually ever attempting to do anything exciting at any point in its story, and that's just sad. Somehow, Switched For Christmas did less with its "same actor plays identical twin siblings" plot than Adam Sandler's horrifying Jack And Jill, which I didn't think was even possible. This is the second Christmas movie in a row starring Candace Cameron-Bure that completely squandered the possibilities of its story. Maybe this holiday season they can go for the hat trick.
I think more than anything, I've just found that I have no patience for this "Christmas In July" bullshit. What the fuck is wrong with people that they need a mainline injection of Christmas Cheer in the middle of the summer? It's obscene.
Hallmark Channel is currently bombarding the airwaves with two weeks of endless Christmas movies, and constantly reminding their viewers that their annual Countdown To Christmas begins on October 26th this year, so we can all gather round our television sets on the eve of Halloween to soak up all of this manufactured Christmas delight. I can't take it. It's not enough that you bastards are stepping all over my favorite holiday with your wretched seasonal pablum, but you're trying to shove it down my throat in the middle of the fucking summer, when the last thing I need is a reminder of the so-called "most wonderful time of the year".
I should have just deleted Switched For Christmas on December 26th. I shouldn't have kept it on my DVR. I should have left well enough alone. But now here I am, slightly more miserable than I was before I watched Switched For Christmas, because watching this movie that was filmed during the summertime while suffering through the summertime just fucked me up emotionally. I couldn't see past the cheap artifice to even attempt to make any kind of meaningful connection with the paper-thin story or characters. I just spent two hours wondering how uncomfortable the actors all were wearing those thick sweaters in the summer heat.
VERDICT: LIBERATE TUTEME EX INFERIS
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