CHRISTMAS IN EVERGREEN: LETTERS TO SANTA
Lisa Palmer's trip home to Evergreen for the holidays finds her shepherding an effort to save the town's beloved general store.
Letters To Santa is a sequel to last year's premiere movie Christmas In Evergreen, a burgeoning franchise based on the illustrations of Hallmark artist Geoff Greenleaf, whose work is meant to capture snapshots of an idealized, timeless Christmas holiday. The producers of these projects work very hard to evoke the mood of Greenleaf's illustrations onscreen, occasionally recreating specific images he has painted as closely as possible with their limited resources, and based on my feelings on the first movie, I'd have to say they were largely successful in this endeavor. The fictional town of Evergreen is a nostalgic holiday dream, a place that never existed in reality, but a place you certainly wish you could visit every December.
This sequel doesn't continue the first film's story of town veterinarian Allie Shaw (Ashley Williams, who appears in an extended cameo) and her beau Ryan Bellamy (who is conspicuously absent, despite his character now living in Evergreen as the resident doctor), instead focusing on a new romantic pairing, ambitious retail designer Lisa (Jill Wagner) and general contractor Kevin (Mark Deklin. You know, Bosk from Charmed. We've been through this before) as they experience the magic of spending a wonderful Christmas in Evergreen.
Lisa was actually born in Evergreen, but moved away as a child due to her parents both being in the military, and she has carried wonderful memories of her happy time in this seemingly perfect little town with her ever since. This year, with a little push from her design partner Oliver (Andrew Francis), she decides to return to Evergreen for the holidays and see if this place really is as perfect as she remembers. Kevin was born and raised in Evergreen, but as an adult his work keeps him constantly on the move, and only in the past few years has he found the time to come home for the holidays.
When she finally returns to Evergreen, Lisa is saddened to learn that the town's general store, a beloved fixture on Main Street, has been closed for several months, ever since the owner and proprietor, a kindly old woman named Daisy, passed away. The mayor has been trying to attract a buyer who will maintain the building as a general store, but thus far he's had no luck, and if he doesn't find a buyer who will preserve the integrity of Daisy's shop by the end of the year, a state-run bank will take control of the building's deed and surely sell the property to some big box store that will push all of the small shops in town out of business and destroy the town of Evergreen as everybody knows it. For a place like Evergreen, this is kind of a worst-case scenario.
Luckily for Evergreen, Lisa is determined to use her interior design skills to make the run-down property shine for Christmas, hoping an appealing veneer will attract potential buyers and make them fall in love with the old place, saving it from almost certain demolition. Kevin volunteers his carpentry skills to help restore the old building that served as the source of so many happy childhood memories, and basically the entire community follows suit, doing whatever they can to save their cherished general store. Lisa's best friend Oliver even travels to Evergreen to join the effort to resurrect Daisy's Country Store, refusing to miss the chance to finally see the legendary town that Lisa's told him so much about year after year.
Christmas In Evergreen: Letters To Santa is, much to my delight, kind of fantastic. This sequel takes all of the gorgeous aesthetic choices from the first movie and improves upon them, capturing images that evoke a dreamlike atmosphere, transforming this fictional village into a sort of living Christmas card. I thought Christmas In Evergreen looked good, but Letters To Santa looks wonderful, from the too-big snowflakes perpetually swirling in the clear air to the picturesque locations festooned with classical holiday décor to the ever-present cherry red antique Ford truck that Kevin drives around town (having borrowed it from his good friend Allie), a truck that has become a star of sorts in its own right, even being made into a Hallmark keepsake ornament this year.
But where the original Christmas In Evergreen didn't have a whole lot to offer beyond its gorgeous façade, offering a relatively rote main plot with very little else to see, Letters To Santa actually gives its supporting characters things to do, allowing them to pursue their own little adventures (mostly) independent of the developing romance between leads Lisa and Kevin, coloring in the story's margins and making the town of Evergreen feel more alive than it ever did in the first film. Holly Robinson Peete's character Michelle, who was basically set dressing in the first film, is a full-fledged character with a romance of her own, falling in love with single father Thomas (Colin Lawrence), visiting brother of Hannah (Rukiya Bernard).
And speaking of Hannah, in Christmas In Evergreen, her character literally only existed to hand veterinarian Allie a box of puppies in one scene before disappearing almost entirely from the narrative. In Letters To Santa, Hannah is a solid supporting character, befriending Lisa and taking on a series of tasks to help save the general store. She even has her own subplot involving her young nephew David (Marlon Kazadi), with the pair traveling all over town trying to find the lock that fits a mysterious, ornate key Kevin found in a box of junk at the local hardware store. Allie's parents, Carol (Barbara Niven) and Joe (Malcolm Stewart), the owners of the Chris Kringle Kitchen (a name I still despise no matter how much I may enjoy the movie itself), even get a little something extra to do as they interact with the rest of the cast while serving waffles and hot cocoa during the breakfast rush.
Even Santa pops up again in a few scenes to give certain characters a little nudge in the right direction to help make a little Christmas magic happen.
The movie's main subplot kicks off when Lisa finds a forgotten, hand-typed letter addressed to Santa Claus underneath the dusty old "letters to Santa" mailbox in the general store. Reading the twenty-five year-old letter, Lisa learns that the writer had recently lost someone very dear to them and had asked Santa to make their next Christmas more like the Christmases they had experienced before the person they loved had passed, complete with traditions like a candlelight vigil outside the town chapel on Christmas Eve complete with a choir singing carols and the chapel's bells ringing in the coming of the most blessed day of the year.
Alas, Evergreen hasn't held a candlelight vigil in a long time, and the chapel's bells haven't rung on any occasion in a quarter of a century, since nobody still alive in town has the knowledge to fix the antique mechanism that controls them. Lisa sees the initials "KM" on the letter and assumes that the writer is Kevin Miller, her Kevin Miller, who lost his mother when he was very young, twenty-five years ago. When Kevin is shown the letter, he's overcome with emotion and excuses himself for a while, and when he returns he is determined to make the Christmas detailed in that old letter a reality this year.
Organizing the candlelight vigil and gathering the church choir to sing a few carols is relatively easy, but fixing the mechanism that will get those stubborn chapel bells to ring after so long proves much more difficult. On Christmas Eve, just when it seems like all hope of solving this mystery seems lost, Santa gives young David a little hint, suggesting that maybe the mechanism isn't broken; perhaps it's merely missing a little something special.
Putting the pieces together, David and Hannah rush to the chapel while the rest of the town gathers for the candlelight vigil and the choir begins to sing. Searching the chapel attic, David and Hannah find a keyhole in the mechanism and insert that rusty old key, and as they wind up the apparatus it springs to life, and the chapel bells ring out over Evergreen for the first time in over twenty-five years, to the utter delight of the assembled citizens.
It's at this moment that Lisa learns Kevin didn't write the letter; his father, Kevin Miller Sr., was the one who typed out that letter all those years ago, a man in mourning making a desperate wish to recapture a small piece of that magic that he and his son had lost after the death of his dear wife. After reading that letter, Kevin knew he had to do everything he could to make that wish for his father come true, and when Mr. Miller realizes what he and Lisa and the whole town have done, he breaks down in tears and wishes his late wife a merry Christmas, warmly embracing both his son and Lisa as they all listen to the chapel bells ringing out among the captivated people of Evergreen on this perfect Christmas Eve.
After failing to attract a buyer for the general store despite their best efforts, Lisa and Oliver pool their resources and buy the place themselves, with Lisa opting to remain in Evergreen and run the store just like Daisy would have wanted. And Kevin decides to stay in town as well, taking a managerial position in his friend Thomas's sustainable logging firm, which is opening a branch office in Evergreen in the new year. Thomas even figures he might as well stick around and run the branch office, since he's grown so much closer to Michelle, and he knows David would like nothing more than to stay in Evergreen and spend more time with his beloved Aunt Hannah. So it's happy endings all around as Lisa and Kevin finally kiss, marking the end of another perfect Christmas in Evergreen.
Christmas In Evergreen: Letters To Santa is just about as good as a Hallmark Channel original movie can get. It's got everything you could ask for from one of these movies, and it doesn't really make any mistakes. The characters are well-rounded and endearing, the humorous bits are actually funny, the locations look like they were ripped right from a Christmas card (because a lot of them really were), and the plot never stumbles over itself and its gathered clichés as it marches to its inevitable joyous conclusion.
Letters To Santa easily outpaces the original Christmas In Evergreen because it marries its progenitor's exquisite aesthetic with a strong central story and delightful supporting characters who feel less like living scenery and more like actual people with wants and desires of their own. This winning combination will hopefully inspire Hallmark Channel to continue making sequels to Christmas In Evergreen that will follow this template, giving delighted viewers the opportunity to return to this splendid little town for many Christmases to come.
Mommy's Dead - Kevin's mother died tragically when he was a child, and the letter his father is inspired to write after her death serves as the catalyst to bring the entire community of Evergreen together for a special Christmas twenty-five years later.
Small Town Salvation - Both Kevin and Lisa return to Evergreen for Christmas and by the time Christmas rolls around, they're both so content to remain and build a new life together that they decide to make Evergreen their home once again. Even Thomas chooses to relocate to Evergreen to pursue a romantic relationship with Michelle, and his son David falls so hard for this town that he would have to be dragged away kicking and screaming.
Secret Santa - I guess Santa just really loves Evergreen, since he's there all the time and everybody seems to know him, although they all call him "Nick", since he's technically incognito.
VERDICT: NICE AS NICE CAN BE
 |
| Knowing my luck, they'll probably never make another one of these movies. |
No comments:
Post a Comment