Schlock-Mas: Day Eleven

MARRYING FATHER CHRISTMAS

Miranda and Ian are getting married on Christmas to celebrate the special day they first met.

Marrying Father Christmas, thankfully doesn't begin with a recap of the events of the previous two movies, which is already an improvement over last year's middle chapter. Instead, Miranda (Erin Krakow) is just telling random people on the street about her whirlwind love affair with that rural hunk Ian McAndrick (Nial Matter) as she prepares to journey back to splendid Carlton Heath for a very special Christmas holiday. That's rather odd behavior, but she's pretty excited about her impending nuptials, so whatever. I guess she's moved away from Seattle and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, having started her very own interior design firm in Bean Town, although we don't really spend any time there, because, as per usual, Miranda's career is completely inconsequential to the ongoing plot of the Father Christmas movies.

I guess there's not much demand for an interior design firm in Carlton Heath, Vermont, but Miranda does intend to live with her future husband in the cottage once owned by her late father in town, so I guess she intends to commute from Boston every day. I'm not sure where fictional Carlton Heath is located in Vermont, but I know that on average, a journey by car from Boston to Montpelier, Vermont's capital, takes a little over 2 1/2 hours, and people in certain parts of the country do take rather long commutes from their homes to their jobs, so it's not that unusual, and I'm assuming the producers of Marrying Father Christmas are pretending that Carlton Heath is a bit further south than Montpelier, so I guess this doesn't really matter because it's only a stupid movie and I've just wasted a few minutes of my time here thinking about this pointless detail. And now I guess I've wasted a few minutes of your time, too, Dear Imaginary Reader, and for that I am truly not at all sorry.

As Miranda's preparing to leave work for the holidays, a mysterious bald man shows up at her office, wondering if she has any time to squeeze in another customer before closing time, but she tells him to take a hike because she's got a wedding to plan in some fictional village in Vermont. The bald stranger seems nice enough when he apologizes for bothering her so close to such a momentous occasion and takes his leave, but there's just something about this dude... some odd feeling that he'll factor into the film's plot in an important way before too long... like this supposed "random encounter" might not have been so random, after all. I don't know. It's probably nothing.

Probably nothing.

Returning to Carlton Heath, Miranda is greeted by her studly fiancé, all sweaty from just splitting firewood and posing like a swarthy lumberjack on the front porch of the cottage he just spent the past year restoring to its former glory. They kiss, but not too passionately, because this is a Hallmark Channel movie, after all, then Miranda immediately begins obsessing over all of the work left to be done before their wedding on Christmas Day, which is only natural for a bride-to-be, and Erin Krakow never really goes overboard with the histrionics while her character's planning the wedding of her dreams, so it's all good.

But Margaret Whitcomb (Wendie Malick), Miranda's future... stepmother? Wait, that's not right. She's already Miranda's stepmother, correct? If Miranda's father was married to Margaret, even though Miranda was the product of an extramarital affair, does that make Margaret Miranda's stepmother? I honestly have no idea. They are related via marriage, yes? But wait, the dictionary defines a stepmother as the wife of one's father by a later marriage, and Margaret and James Whitcomb were already married when he stepped out with Eve Chester and made baby Miranda, so that's not right. That means that Margaret isn't Miranda's stepmother, and this marriage to Ian, with whom Margaret shares no blood relation, doesn't change their familial relationship in any way. So Margaret is Miranda's nothing, but I think she sees the elder Mrs. Whitcomb as a surrogate mother of sorts, so that's something. Huh.

Anyway, Margaret Whitcomb is pretty excited about the upcoming wedding and has been helping the overwhelmed Miranda with all the planning for a while now, but she may have gotten a little overzealous with her duties, as she's ended up inviting a bunch of old friends from her late husband's theatre circles without asking Miranda's permission. So many new guests have been added, in fact, that the wedding party might be too big to fit inside the cozy Whitcomb cottage where Miranda and Ian want their ceremony to be held, so now Margaret is pressuring Miranda to change the venue to Margaret's spacious estate, which is a lovely enough place, but not exactly where Miranda pictures her ideal wedding. Unfortunately, Miranda is so thankful for all of Margaret's assistance with the wedding planning thus far that she's worried about upsetting Mrs. Moneybags and is too timid to take back the reins of her own dream wedding.

And wouldn't you know it, that bald stranger just pops up in Carlton Heath a mere day after meeting Miranda in Boston, talking to Miranda's half-brother Peter at the town's theatre, intending to make a large donation to keep the historic building open for many years to come. Miranda finally confronts the strange bald man, who introduces himself as Charles Finley, estranged brother of Eve Chester. In other words, this guy is claiming to be Miranda's uncle. Miranda's mother never told her about having any siblings at any point in her life, so the wary Miranda believes that this random dude must have some sort of ulterior motive in introducing himself as a long-lost family member, and she basically tells him to go fuck himself forever in some distant part of the world so that she can just continue to focus on marrying the man of her dreams come Christmas Day. Charles, all apologies, tells Miranda how sorry he has to have bothered her and just drives away.

Of course, Charles Finley really is Miranda's uncle, which she learns herself in the fullness of time, and he has no ulterior motive for wanting to meet his niece. Late in the narrative, Charles meets Miranda in Carlton Heath's town chapel and tells her his sad tale: Charles has been a pastor in a small town in California for almost his entire adult life, and when he learned that his sister had been carrying on an affair with a married man, being at the time a much more self-righteous man of God, Charles condemned Eve for her sinful ways and cut off all contact. Eve attempted to call him more times than he could accurately remember, even writing letter after letter that he never bothered to read, and eventually the letters stopped coming and the phone stopped ringing. Charles never spoke with his sister again before her tragic death, and never learned she had a daughter until the article about Miranda and her connection to James Whitcomb was published last year.

Traveling to Carlton Heath, Charles wants nothing more than to let Miranda know how sorry he has been for never having the courage to repair his relationship with his beloved sister, and for never being there for his niece over the years, a lifetime of pain and regret etched on his weathered face as he tells Miranda his life story. Miranda, moved by the sincerity of her uncle's words, forgives the man who cannot forgive himself and invites him to her wedding, overjoyed to be spending the first of what they both hope to be many Christmases together as part of a larger family.

Margaret Whitcomb even finds a new love of her own, inviting old family friend Thomas Reid (Barry Flatman), a longtime colleague of her late husband James, to Carlton Heath for the wedding and finding that perhaps their long friendship is at long last becoming something deeper. This courtship is very sweet and realistic, watching Margaret initially fight her evolving feelings for Thomas as she's never dared to give her heart to another man since James passed away, struggling with thoughts that she may be tarnishing her late husband's memory by moving on with anybody, let alone his one-time best friend. A frank conversation with Ian on Christmas Eve convinces Margaret to let go of her baggage and take another chance on love with Thomas, and during Miranda and Ian's wedding, the pair clutch hands and gaze warmly in each other's eyes, marking the beginning of another storybook love affair.

Marrying Father Christmas is, much to my relief, a very good movie. None of the issues plaguing the previous movie are present here, and there is no big dramatic twist in the third act that threatens to tear Miranda and Ian apart before their Christmas Day wedding. The introduction of Charles Finley is at first treated like a potential obstacle, because Miranda and Ian are both worried that the man might be a grifter working some unknown angle, but luckily he's exactly who he appears to be; a kindly old man trying to forge a connection with the family he never knew he had, providing a lovely callback to Miranda's own journey in the first movie.

And watching Margaret Whitcomb's journey through these three movies has been a very satisfying thing, considering how cold she was to this outsider when she first realized who Miranda really was. For many people, having a walking, talking reminder of your late husband's infidelity in your life might be too much of a burden to bear, but Margaret Whitcomb is a more forgiving and loving character than that, embracing Miranda as a member of her own family and even walking her surrogate daughter down the aisle at her wedding, which is a perfect illustration of just how far these two characters have come.

I don't have much else to say about Marrying Father Christmas, because it did everything it needed to do in order to succeed, continuing (and perhaps bringing to a close) a delightful story that began well enough, stumbled more than a bit in the middle, and delivered a touching and surprisingly thoughtful conclusion. I have no complaints. And none of the tropes apply, so I really mean it this time. It's a Christmas miracle!

VERDICT: NICE

Before I sign off for the day, I must take note that this post marks my 100th Schlock-Mas review, a dubious milestone I never thought I would actually reach. I can't believe I've done this one hundred times. It only feels like two hundred. What luck that my 100th review was a decent movie.

So congratulations to myself for writing one hundred mediocre reviews for one hundred mediocre movies. I'm going to go celebrate by drinking heavily and listening to sad music, which I was probably going to do anyway. Here's to the next one hundred reviews!

I'm just kidding. There aren't going to be a hundred more reviews. I'll be lucky if I manage to finish the rest of this year's reviews without losing my damned mind, so I'm not even going to think about coming back to do this again next year. So here's to fourteen more reviews!

Oh Jesus, I've got fourteen more movies to watch.

This is what all of these movies, good and bad, look like in my brain when I try to recall them afterwards.