IT'S CHRISTMAS, EVE
A school superintendent meets a widower music teacher and his daughter.
So one-time country music sensation LeAnn Rimes has decided to try her hand at the Hallmark Channel original movie game with the recent premiere It's Christmas, Eve, a movie in which Rimes plays a woman named Eve... at Christmastime. So did LeAnn Rimes succeed where her peer Kellie Pickler failed miserably with the excruciating Christmas At Graceland? Let's find out, shall we?
Rimes plays Eve Morgan, a professional "interim" school superintendent, hired on a temporary basis by school districts looking to balance their budgets, often making very difficult decisions that cost good people their jobs, hence the perpetual interim status; being the school system's hatchet man...er, hatchet woman... hatchet person doesn't make Eve very popular with the citizens of the towns that require her services, so as soon as the heads start to roll, Eve tends to make herself scarce, moving on to the next scholastic blood bath, because there's always a next scholastic blood bath.
But at long last, Eve's travels have brought her back home to her old stomping grounds of Franklin... let's say Ohio... for a few weeks in December, where her particular set of skills are very much needed to drag the local school district's annual budget kicking and screaming out of the red and into the black. Her initial plan to accomplish this task is to cut school art and music programs district-wide, because that's always the go-to plan a for number cruncher. School music and arts programs nationwide are already operating on shoestring budgets, and too many districts keep asking their teachers in these departments to do much more with much less, with many teachers paying out of pocket for crucial art supplies and sheet music for their students, among other necessary supplies to help keep their programs afloat.
You rarely see any scholastic sports programs suffering from budget cuts, and most parents don't give that fact a second thought, because of course sports are necessary. They're just as essential to any well-rounded student's curriculum as Algebra and English classes, maybe even more so, since how many people ever come out to watch a local spelling bee? School sports are big business, that's why they're never in danger of getting cut to balance the budget. But music and arts? Expendable trivialities, things that don't mean a thing out there in the "real world", so why should school districts indulge the whims of children who want to sing, paint, learn to play a musical instrument, or sculpt?
Useless skills, according to too many closed-minded individuals who fail to see the good these programs do in our communities. These programs give children a chance to be creative, a chance they may not have in their personal lives, depending on their circumstances. Arts and music programs allow children to tap into their imaginations, to accomplish things they may not have believed they were capable of accomplishing. The arts allow us to express ourselves in ways that are otherwise denied to us, and this is a valuable resource for many people who may only find our voices through the stroke of a paintbrush or a vocal harmony. School arts and music programs are absolutely essential, and maybe one day the powers that be will realize this, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Eve once thought Franklin was everything she ever wanted, until her jazz musician father died when she was a teenager. After this tragedy, Eve found she couldn't get out of her hometown quickly enough, seeing painful reminders of her beloved father's presence everywhere she looked. Over the years, Eve would only return intermittently, a few days here and there to visit her lonely mother and a few close friends, never staying long, never wanting to put down roots in Franklin or anywhere else, for that matter. In fact, the last time she returned home was to attend her mother's wedding to a kindly chap named John over four years prior.
Finding herself back in Franklin for the holidays, Eve meets with the local school board and makes her recommendations for budget cuts, including the immediate elimination of all arts and music programs district-wide. Eve wishes there were another way to balance the budget without taking such drastic measures, but there's really no other good option in front of her in this case. Now Eve has had to make similar choices many times since she began this work, but this time it's different. Franklin is... was her home, and that makes this case personal.
Enter Liam Bailey (Tyler Hynes), next-door neighbor to Eve's mother, high school music teacher and father to ten year-old daughter Abby, a man who used to dream of making it big with his old band mates, but had to let that particular dream go once Abby entered the picture, knowing that her future and well-being were more important than his delusions of sell-out tours with his grunge band, Bingo Jones (named after his friend's dog). Contrary to what the above plot description states, Abby's mother isn't dead; Liam and the unnamed ex-Mrs. Bailey are merely divorced, with her living in Chicago and taking custody of their daughter every summer.
Liam meets Eve outside of her mother's café one morning, both of them watch a pair of strangers run into each other on the sidewalk, the man pouring coffee all over the woman's coat. As the strangers apologize and begin to chat, Liam tells Eve that, having met under such circumstances, the pair are now destined to fall in love, having seen too many movies in his life to believe otherwise. Eve scoffs at his remark, but can't help but notice as she leaves that the strangers are being awfully pleasant to each other considering one of them has hot coffee soaking into her clothes.
Once Liam learns who Eve is and why she's back in town, he doesn't give her the cold shoulder, as one would expect, considering she's basically ensured that come January he'll be unemployed. Liam understands that she's just doing her job, and besides, his daughter Abby has already made friends with Eve, so he decides not to let the circumstances of her presence in Franklin ruin his daughter's Christmas.
But as Eve gets to know Liam and Abby, she knows she can't just let the school district cut music and the arts to balance their budget, so she comes up with the idea to organize a district-wide concert on Christmas Eve, where the students can all come together and prove to the citizens of Franklin that the arts are worth saving. She even creates an online registry detailing all of the equipment and supplies the district's arts and music programs need to continue operating, giving people an opportunity to donate what they can from the comfort of their own homes, allowing donors to see exactly what their money is paying for.
And a few days before Christmas, Eve notices the couple she witnessed meet in front of her mother's café, smiling warmly at each other as they walk hand-in-hand down the sidewalk..
While decorating a Christmas Tree with Liam and his daughter, Eve is asked by Abby to join her onstage at the concert and sing a song her father wrote for the big event, but Eve isn't sure she's ready to take that leap. Once upon a time, music was a big part of Eve's life. She loved to sing, and she was quite talented, but it was a special bond she shared with her father, and after he died, Eve's desire to pursue her own musical dreams seemingly died with him. Looking through a box of her father's old things, Eve finds an unfinished song named "It's Christmas, Eve", a song he had begun writing for his daughter before he passed. She shows this fragment to Liam and Abby, who begin to perform it without knowing its origins. As Liam and Abby sit at the piano and bring her father's words to life, Eve nearly breaks down in tears, leaving the weathered sheet music behind as she walks home in a daze.
When the concert arrives, Abby is too scared to set foot onstage when it's her turn to perform. Liam sits at the piano, waiting for his daughter, and Eve tracks the girl down. Having formed a pretty special bond over the past few weeks, Eve convinces Abby to sing, but only if she joins her, making the song a duet. Eve agrees, ready to sing again for the first time in nearly twenty years. Holding Abby's hand the entire time, Eve and her young protégé sing their hearts out with Liam accompanying them on piano, thrilling the gathered crowd with their original song, a lively number called "You & Me & Christmas".
On Christmas Day, Eve struggles with her decision to leave Franklin behind once again for another temporary position in San Diego, until she spies a particular gift under the festively decorated tree. Addressed to Eve from Liam, she opens it to find some familiar sheet music along with a note from Liam hoping that what he's done would make her father proud. Eve realizes that Liam has finished her father's song, and she fights back tears as she sings the lyrics softly to herself while pacing the living room floor.
As she finishes the song, Eve's walks next door and tells Liam that she's staying in Franklin to take a full-time position as school superintendent, that his work with her father's song would have made him very proud indeed, and that she has fallen head over heels in love with the good-natured music teacher who wears his heart on his sleeve. She even deliberately spills hot chocolate on his shirt, because, as she claims, she was tired of waiting for fate to intervene.
It's Christmas, Eve, is, quite simply, a pretty good movie. Like yesterday's Christmas On Honeysuckle Lane, there's nothing at all special about the story, which is nearly identical to that of nearly every other movie the Hallmark Channel factory pumps out every year. Unlike yesterday's feature, It's Christmas, Eve succeeds almost entirely due to the performances from its romantic leads. There's really nothing special about the way the movie was directed (by Tibor Takács, the man who, coincidentally, directed 1989's I, Madman, a clever slasher film that I enjoy quite a bit) or in the screenplay itself, which is pretty straightforward fluff on its face. But LeAnn Rimes and Tyler Hynes brought their characters to life so completely that I found myself emotionally invested in them and their burgeoning romance, something which is increasingly difficult for me to do as time goes on and I see more and more of these movies made in such a slapdash and careless manner.
When your network premieres 22 new movies in less than two months, as Hallmark Channel is doing this holiday season, one can't help but look at this process as a factory assembly line, the same parts being grafted together again and again with very little variation. There's very little room for art to be made with this process, very little room for something resembling genuine human emotion. Hallmark has a formula, a very popular one, and they stick to it because it works. And yet, miraculously, every now and then a product slips out of this assembly line that simply succeeds where so many other similar products fail. And in the case of It's Christmas, Eve, the product succeeds because LeAnn Rimes and Tyler Hynes are very good actors who know how to make the tired story on the page come to life onscreen.
LeAnn Rimes is kinda fantastic in this movie. Her performance is loose and natural from beginning to end, and when the story calls for her to play some particularly difficult moments, like the sequence where Eve watches Liam and Abby sing her father's incomplete song, LeAnn Rimes soars. You can see a storm of emotions cross her face as the song plays, as Eve tries to contain her combined sorrow at knowing that her father never completed this beautiful song and her delight at hearing his words finally brought to life after so many years stuffed inside an old box, gathering dust in the family garage. As the song ends, Eve puts on a brave face, smiling and complimenting Abby's voice and Liam's skill on the piano before excusing herself and walking home, afraid of breaking down and crying in front of the gracious father and daughter.
It's a fantastic bit of performance, and just one example of many wonderful moments LeAnn Rimes delivers in this movie. Not to mention the original songs featured in the movie, all co-written by Rimes, which are all very catchy and very emotionally resonant. She's a damned talented musician, and the fact that she tosses off a few holiday songs for this cheap, made-for-television movie and they aren't just not-terrible but actually good is a small miracle in and of itself.
So just for future reference, if anybody at the Hallmark Channel ever reads this: less Kellie Pickler, more LeAnn Rimes. It's the only logical choice.
Mommy's Dead - Eve's father died when she was just a teenager, and his death caused her to flee her hometown, staying away for years until her career brought her back just in time for Christmas.
Small Town Salvation - Eve returns home to Franklin for Christmas, and this experience changes her entire life, as she falls in love with Liam and gains a newfound appreciation for the wonders of the holiday season with her beau and his daughter by her side.
#HallmarkSoWhite - Surprisingly, at least initially to me, this is the first time I've been able to use this trope. Every other movie I've watched so far features at least one or two people of color in supporting roles large enough that, despite the actors still not being prominently featured, their presence was enough to avoid this label. Unfortunately, even though I really enjoyed the movie overall, It's Christmas, Eve features maybe two non-white actors in minor roles in one scene, featuring maybe one or two lines each, and if their names were mentioned, I can't recall them. So shame on you, It's Christmas, Eve, for not properly utilizing your token minority actors.
I probably shouldn't have included this trope in the first place, since Hallmark has made a concerted effort this past year to populate their original movies with a more diverse group of actors, still mostly in supporting roles, but there actually are a few movies premiering this season featuring primarily minority casts, and if I can remember their names, I'll try to watch them before this year's festivities come to an end. Hell, Hallmark Channel just announced last week that next year's holiday lineup will include one or two Hanukkah-themed movies, which is a pretty big step. So things are changing, slowly but surely. Hopefully that means this is the first and last time I'll have to use this trope.
VERDICT: NICE
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