HOMEGROWN CHRISTMAS
When tasked with organizing a high school Christmas dance, a former CEO and her high school sweetheart rediscover...
That's the point where the viewing guide's plot description just decided to stop describing the plot, leaving me with nothing but an unanswered ellipsis and some idle speculation. What is it exactly that these two dorks rediscover? Their love? A mutual appreciation of Christmas? One-Eyed Willie's treasure? Lyme Disease?
Lori Loughlin is back on the Hallmark beat with today's movie, playing the CEO of a shoe company she built from the ground up, clawing and scratching for years and years to make her dream of exploiting Chinese factory workers to provide the wealthy snobs of the world with the footwear of their illicit dreams a reality, and now that she's done just that, she decides that the season of giving is the perfect time to sell out, turning her independent company over to a multinational conglomerate for a massive golden parachute while her loyal employees wonder if they'll even be able to keep their jobs after the first of the year. That's really what happens. Lori takes the money and runs, getting the fuck out of New York City before the dust settles, leaving all those poor saps who used to work for her to face the consequences in her absence. The movie doesn't present the situation in such a dire context, but that doesn't really matter, because corporate takeovers like these never work themselves out without collateral damage.
So Lori Loughlin basically just fucked over all of her old employees because she wanted to get out of the shoe game while still on top, walking away with the corporate equivalent of an enormous bag stuffed with cash slung over her shoulder, leaving all of her dutiful ex-employees to be torn limb from limb by a pack of wolves wearing power suits. Sure, everybody's all smiles at the big meeting where Lori signs over her life's work for a cashier's check with a whole lot of zeroes on it, but that's bullshit. Oh, but this is one of those golly-gosh holiday movies where everything always works out for everyone, isn't it? So I'm sure Lori made a deal with the kindly board of directors of whatever soulless corporation to retain her company just as it is, and all of her employees will be taken care of, and everybody will have a very merry Christmas indeed this year, because Hallmark says so.
The movie never presents any good reason regarding why Lori Loughlin just arbitrarily decided to sell the business she created and built up from nothing, her fondest dream made manifest, so we're left to assume she was just waiting for the right offer to come along and leave her laughing all the way to the bank. This is how the movie begins, and I could never move past it. The first scene in Homegrown Christmas is Lori Loughlin gleefully signing away the company she dedicated her entire adult life to for a very large sum of money, and she never doubts this decision once throughout the rest of the movie, not even for a moment. Why? That's a reasonable question. Why did she want out of her own business so badly that she'd just abandon it all for a hefty payout? Was she unhappy? Did she feel less than satisfied with some other aspect of her life? Had she taken the art of shoes as far as she possibly could?
I don't remember the name of the character Lori Loughlin plays in Homegrown Christmas, nor do I remember the names of any of the other characters introduced in the movie. They don't matter. The names are inconsequential. It's all inconsequential, when I really think about it. This is just the same story as Christmas Joy, or Rocky Mountain Christmas, or any other movie I've watched this month, or last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that, just wearing a slightly different benign face.
Some of the pieces on the board have been rearranged, but they all serve an identical purpose.
Lori Loughlin comes home from (Insert City Name Here), where she's a mover and shaker, to her small town of Who Cares to spend Christmas with an older relative, in this case her dotty mother, who owns an independent furniture business she runs out of the barn on her property, and there's a big Christmas dance and a fucking cookie party like in Christmas Joy, and we're even subjected to yet another flirty cookie baking montage, for the love of all things sacred. There's even a love interest who chose to stay behind years back when Lori followed her dreams to (Insert City Name Here), and maybe they don't get along at first because there's some uncomfortable history between them both, but eventually they both realize they're still very much in love with each other and they can't fight their feelings anymore and it all culminates with a big kiss on Christmas Day after the heroine decides to stay in the small town where she truly belongs to live another, more personally fulfilling dream of being Mrs. (Your Name Here) in Who Cares.
I can see the assembly line now, watching a series of inattentive laborers hastily screwing together all of the components of these movies, one after another, a series of cheap products rolling off the conveyor belt, new and attractive but ultimately hollow and flimsy junk that will break as soon as you take it out of its glossy packaging. Each product gets its own new paint job, but it's the same damned thing if you just scratch the surface, like the difference between the old Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus Transformers action figures. But when you're making over thirty new movies each year to air over a period of two months, you're going to cut some serious corners to fill that schedule.
That's all this is, that's all any of these movies are, boxes designed to fill holes in a network's programming schedule. It's been eighteen days since I started this, so maybe I'm just being beaten down by the startling homogeneity of the product and I can't help but fixate on the visible seams holding the whole enterprise together. I see the strings that control the system, but I am broken by the knowledge that those strings cannot be severed. Only Atropos can cut these strings, but alas, I don't have the Three Fates on speed-dial.
So what do I do? How do I move forward? There are seven days left. Seven days, and seven movies. I can't just throw in the towel. There's got to be a better movie on the schedule somewhere. There are two Hallmark channels, and they both air nothing but Christmas movies all day and all night, so one of them has to air something that isn't a complete waste of time every day. Or maybe I'll try one of the other channels. Lifetime, maybe. Or ION. Perhaps I'll get lucky. At this point, I'd accept something entertainingly inept over any more of this perfectly satisfactory, cookie-cutter product.
But I'm not being fair to Lori Loughlin, and to a slightly lesser extent, her co-star in Homegrown Christmas, Victor Webster. They're both very good in their respective roles, and they have a fine rapport, making it easy to ignore the unimaginative story in which they're trapped whenever they share the screen. Victor's character was in love with Lori once upon a time, but when she left their hometown to pursue her dreams, he stayed behind, too afraid to take that extra step to pursue his own aspirations, instead toiling anonymously in the furniture workshop owned by Lori's mother ever since he graduated from high school, ignoring his own prodigious talent for carpentry and woodworking, which could have made him a millionaire in his own right if he'd had the guts to take a chance and you know the rest.
The characters themselves are all pulled from the same well-worn templates that anybody who has ever seen a Hallmark Channel movie knows all too well. Their story arcs are indelible, chiseled into stone tablets and presented to the producers of these movies as sacrosanct commandments from a higher power, at least a few floors above at the corporate headquarters, maybe on one of those floors that's only accessible via executive elevator. There is no deviation from the sacred commandments allowed. Your movie must follow each and every one of these commandments, lest your immortal soul face dire consequences.
I can't say that Hallmark Channel is a bad brand, though, because it isn't. It serves its purpose, and it does so well enough. For example, Hallmark Channel is one of the few places on television that is happy to cast women over forty as viable romantic love interests and even solo stars of their own ongoing movie franchises, like Lori Loughlin in her continuing Garage Sale Mystery series of movies (currently at fifteen installments and showing no signs of stopping) over on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. I have my own issues with that particular channel making murder the focus of a series of sanitized, family-friendly franchises, each following their own very specific and similar formula, but I don't have the strength to get into that right now.
My point is that Hallmark is a brand that is very good to women actors of a certain age, a place where they're shown a level of respect and even reverence that they won't get from other, more prestigious outlets. I get the appeal for these actors, even if they're not lucky enough to build a singular franchise, because every time they come back for a new movie they're often working with the same producers, the same writers, the same directors, and they form their own little communities with the crews who help make each movie come to life. Each time they set foot on the set of a Hallmark Channel production, they're coming home in a way, surrounded by friendly faces and just generally having a good time while earning a living, which is something I think we would all enjoy quite a bit.
I personally believe that they dilute their brand quite a bit with this 24/7 Christmas nonsense every year, but they're not going to change this very lucrative plan simply because one loser with a blog nobody reads cries foul. Their Christmas movies would definitely feel a bit more special if they weren't making thirty-plus new ones each year in a market that is already over-saturated with similar product, but next year they'll likely produce even more new movies for their Countdown To Christmas, much to my dismay.
This is why I can't see myself doing this again next year, at least not to this grotesque extent. I want to pull the plug on this whole Schlock-Mas thing right now, because I feel like I'm just fed up with all of these movies. How am I supposed to envision myself doing this again next year, when I can't currently envision myself finishing this year's reviews? But that's my problem, and I'll find a way to soldier on and deal with it this year, just like I always have in the past. I guess I'm just venting in an effort to get all this "woe is me" bullshit out of my system. I mean, I do this to myself every year, so there's ultimately nobody to blame but myself. It's nobody's fault but mine.
I know after everything you've just read, you'll probably assume I hated Homegrown Christmas, but I didn't. It was perfectly adequate. As I've already said, Lori Loughlin and Victor Webster make their scenes compelling despite the material with which they're both saddled, and the movie certainly looks attractive enough, although the fake snow is at times extremely noticeable, which I always find very distracting.
So Homegrown Christmas was fine. I can't hate it, and giving the movie a negative grade would seem cruel, because as far as following the Hallmark formula goes, Homegrown Christmas does a better job than some. I guess that means the movie gets a passing grade, but just barely, like a D+. Not a ringing endorsement, but this is about all the generosity I can currently muster.
I Hate You! Kiss Me! - Lori and Victor aren't on speaking terms at the beginning of the movie, since he just stayed home when she went to New York to make her shoe-shaped dreams come true. I mean he literally just stayed home, since he was supposed to accompany her, even buying his own train ticket, but he never showed up at the station, so Lori left without him. They never talked once over the decades after Victor just pulled a disappearing act at the train station either, making himself scarce whenever Lori came to town to visit her mother, hiding in the sewers until air raid sirens sounded the all-clear. So there's a bit of animosity on Lori's part when they cross paths for the first time in maybe thirty years early on in the narrative.
Mommy's Dead - Lori's daddy's dead, and I'm pretty sure both of Victor's parents have kicked the bucket as well.
Christmas In July! - The piles of white fluff all over town never look like anything other than piles of white fluff. Victor Webster has to roll up the sleeves on all of his sweaters because it's so hot outside. Lori Loughlin looks flush while wearing a thick knit cap in her outdoor scenes. This movie isn't fooling anybody.
Small Town Salvation - Lori returns home to Who Cares to shift gears after her time in New York City as a big-time shoe company CEO, taking the time to slow down and enjoy the finer things in life, courtesy of good old-fashioned rural living. She eventually decides to stay in town to help run the family furniture business and canoodle with Victor Webster. She's also filthy fucking rich after selling her company at the beginning of the movie, but the story just seems to forget this particular detail after that establishing scene.
VERDICT: NICE, I GUESS. WHATEVER.
Wait, what am I doing? This movie doesn't deserve a NICE, not even a marginal NICE. Homegrown Christmas is not a good movie, and I can't just give it a pass because I thought the two lead actors were charming and made a cute couple. There is no energy in this movie. Whenever anything happens, it just happens, like you can feel the screenwriter off-screen ticking off the little boxes on their "holiday movie tropes" checklist.
Lori and Victor go to cut down a Christmas Tree, and the scene just plays out for two minutes out in a small field covered in puffy cotton wadding, following our leads as they wander through this faux winter wonderland, trying very hard not to bump into any of the evergreen trees with their tree stands hidden underneath said cotton wadding evenly spaced around them, lest they knock them over. These trees are supposed to be in their natural environment, waiting to be cut down by anybody adventurous enough to venture out among them with a handsaw to claim their seasonal trophy, but they're clearly just pre-cut trees set up in a vacant field that's been dressed to resemble a snow-encrusted tree farm, complete with wads of cotton randomly adorning the branches of the trees in an effort to trick the viewer's mind into thinking they're actually covered in snow, which might actually work if the camera never captured any of these trees in a close-up.
Unfortunately for my suspension of disbelief, the camera seems to linger on these pine trees with their branches laden with craft store fluff, as though the film itself were mocking me in some obscene manner for having the temerity to take note of this pathetic attempt at genuine artifice. And then when the big moment arrives, when Lori Loughlin, strong independent woman that she is, yanks the handsaw out of Victor Webster's hands and steps up to cut down their chosen tree, even though she's never cut down a tree before in her life, so you can just imagine the hilarity that's about to ensue, the moment she kneels down to begin hacking away at the hapless tree's trunk, the movie cuts to the tree already in the living room of Lori's mother's house, festively decorated while our leads drink hot cocoa and admire their handiwork.
Nearly the exact same thing happened in a movie I watched last year, and I couldn't believe it then, and I can't believe it now. As far as funny, heartwarming and wacky holiday-related situations go in movies like these, the goofy tree-cutting scene is a fucking layup. How do you miss a fucking layup? How does a network keep missing fucking layups?! This has got to be some sort of stupid running joke, right? Does nobody have the balls to actually follow through with this, the simplest and most straightforward of Christmas-themed shenanigans?
Just have a grip push the fucking tree over harmlessly on top of Lori Loughlin, who hollers and laughs while Victor Webster picks up the tree and rescues her from her evergreen assailant, then after he helps her to her feet, they look into each other's eyes as she thanks the big, handsome man for his assistance and he says "no problem, ma'am" like he's John fucking Wayne with a dumb half-smile on his face, then their shared gaze lingers for a moment too long and the moment suddenly shifts gears from charming and fun to romantically charged as you practically see the sparks fly between them. Maybe they'll even lean in for a kiss...
...then some family with a gaggle of loud and annoying children rushes through the scene looking for their own Christmas Tree, breaking the reverie and Victor Webster and Lori Loughlin start laughing again to hide their embarrassment, then Victor Webster will grab the tree's trunk and they'll begin making their way back to the car, then we cut to our leads sitting next to their newly decorated tree with the hot cocoa and the admiration and the gentle flirting.
That's the simplest fucking thing a movie like this can do, and I've seen two movies just completely fumble the execution of their tree-cutting scenes in the most bizarre possible way, by simply ignoring it altogether and just moving on to whatever's next like a bunch of cowardly assholes. You have to work to fuck something like this up, and Homegrown Christmas puts in that work, by gosh.
And the ending, the final ninety-odd seconds, is just the final nail in the coffin. Lori Loughlin and Victor Webster are standing outside his house on Christmas Day, telling each other of their plans for the new year as she's staying in town to take over the family business and he's going to finally start to focus on his handmade wooden crafts, and then they just sort of look at each other and Victor Webster says, in the most unappealing monotone, "so are we doing this?", and Lori Loughlin says they are, and then they just kiss. There's no buildup whatsoever for this kiss, and as such it feels like a complete afterthought. They don't even look like they're enjoying this kiss as it happens, and the music that "swells" during this supposedly soaring romantic moment clearly doesn't give a shit either, since it doesn't change its tone or volume at all while this is going on.
The kiss just happens, the music doesn't notice, and the movie fades out, and that's all she wrote.
How do you fuck this up? I don't understand this at all and I want somebody to explain it to me. It feels like the movie just gave up in every single respect during this moment, the big payoff to the whole will they/won't they romantic courtship in which Lori Loughlin and Victor Webster's characters have been engaged since they were fucking teenagers, and that is simply unacceptable. There is absolutely no excuse for this sort of incompetence, and everybody involved knew better than to let this lazy bullshit fly, because this was nobody's first rodeo.
And yet here we are, with this limp dick of a climax resting pitifully on my television screen this morning, and all the Viagra in the world isn't going to coax this dead fuck back to life. So I'm going to have to revise my final verdict for Homegrown Christmas, because I am just mystified as to how utterly the movie manages to shoot itself in the foot while crossing the finish line. I almost want you to watch Homegrown Christmas, just to see this completely fucking ludicrously inert climax for yourselves. But I would advise against it, because this shit might have scarred me for life.
FINAL VERDICT:
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