A SHOE ADDICT'S CHRISTMAS
When Noelle gets snowed in at the department store she works at, she meets a quirky guardian angel.
Candace Cameron-Bure is back again for another go-round on that Hallmark holiday carousel with A Shoe Addict's Christmas, playing Noelle (another Noelle? Two days in a row? What are the odds?), the chipper HR manager for Foulton's Department Store in New York City. Once upon a time, Noelle had dreams of becoming a professional photographer, but getting dumped by her shitheel boyfriend at Christmastime destroyed her confidence, so her best friend Lorna (Tenika Davis) set her up with a job at Foulton's, the department store at which she worked, on a purely temporary basis while Noelle would presumably continue to strive to achieve her artistic goals. Three years later, Noelle hasn't picked up a camera since, and she's still working at Foulton's much to Lorna's dismay. Noelle, it seems, is just too afraid of failure to pursue her dreams.
Meanwhile, firefighter Jake (Luke McFarlane) is up for a desk job promotion at the fire station, and he isn't sure if it's what he really wants, preferring to stay out in the field with his friends at the station where he feels he's doing some tangible good in his community. He's also just moved into a new apartment in the same building as Noelle, making a terrible first impression on his new neighbor as she trips all over his boxed up junk in the building's lobby. He tries to apologize, but he makes a few terrible jokes in the process and Noelle's just not at all amused, and eventually Jake realizes that his continued presence is not helping matters at all, so he sheepishly retreats to his own apartment in shame, and rightfully so. What a putz.
One day at work, Noelle is sent to the basement by her boss to search through old files for information on ex-employees (it's supposed to be part of a Christmas gift for the boss's mother, who is also his boss. I'm not sure what exactly finding these files is meant to accomplish, since the movie never really clarifies this in any way, dropping the little plot that might have been entirely after this sequence) This whole mission from her boss is really just an excuse to keep Noelle in the basement until the store closes early due to a blizzard, trapping her alone in the building after hours. Once she understands her situation, Noelle calls the boss man, who promises to send the fire department to get her out of the building since he's now trapped at home thanks to the snowstorm and can't make it out to unlock the doors himself.
Soon after that, Noelle is startled by her guardian angel as she stumbles through the shoe department like a bull in a china shop, knocking over shelves and making a tremendous racket. Of course Noelle doesn't know that Charlie (Jean Smart) is her guardian angel yet, initially mistaking the scatterbrained old lady for an unusual shoplifter. Charlie tries to explain her true purpose at Foulton's this night, but she's new at this and hasn't yet memorized the guardian angel manual, which is apparently a real, tangible object. After a whole bunch of yammering from both parties, Charlie finally just convinces Noelle to try on a very special pair of shoes, if only to humor the batty broad Noelle thinks is off her meds.
As soon as Noelle slips these shoes on, she finds herself reliving a moment from her past, guided by Charlie to recognize the specific instance where she zigged when she should have zagged, in this case an evening just over three years ago when Noelle shrugged off Lorna's idea to call an art gallery that might be interested in displaying her photography, instead asking her friend if there are currently any job openings at Foulton's. At Charlie's urging, Noelle changes her mind and tells Lorna to make that call after all, then Noelle catches a brief glimpse of a potential future where she is an in-demand professional photographer who is happily married to a mystery man whose face she can never quite see.
Back in Foulton's after hours, Noelle tries to get Charlie to explain what exactly just happened, but at that moment the fire department breaks through the front doors to rescue the nonplussed employee. Noelle is not terribly happy to see neighbor Jake among the firefighters walking through the department store, and he tries to make a few more dumb jokes in an ill-advised attempt to be charming, but Noelle just gives him a dirty look and walks away. The next day, Noelle's employer assigns her to work with a liaison from the fire department to plan their annual charity ball (another charity ball? What the fuck is going on?!) that Foulton's has sponsored for years and years. And wouldn't you know it, the fire department's liaison is...
Jake. The liaison is Jake. Who else would it be? Don't be stupid.
The rest of the movie follows Noelle as she spends more time with Jake while they plan the charity ball, with occasional detours to Noelle's past courtesy of that meddling Charlie. Charlie also keeps popping up all over the place while Noelle and Jake are together, subtly manipulating events to kindle a little romantic magic between the two, because the movie needs these two goofy bastards to get together by the end of the story. It's like rule #1 in the Hallmark bible, which I know is a real, tangible object, kept in a well-guarded vault somewhere deep in the bowels of the company's world headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.
The true purpose of Noelle's shoe-enabled flashbacks is not to alter Noelle's past, which is impossible, but rather to show Noelle that fate has been trying to gently nudge her in the right direction regarding her professional life for quite a while now, and she's just been ignoring all of the signs since she's too worried that she simply isn't good enough to realize her dreams. And after being wrecked by a bad breakup with a man she once believed she was going to spend the rest of her life with, Noelle just doesn't want to take any more chances in life or in love, preferring to take a safer path that all but guarantees she won't face anymore rejection.
But Charlie keeps pushing Noelle and Jake together because she knows that Noelle has kept her heart under lock and key ever since she got it broken three years ago, and that without a little outside assistance Noelle was never going to try to find real love again, since she was too afraid of the chance of getting hurt once more when her soulmate might be just around the corner... or maybe just next door.
You can guess by now that it all works out for Noelle in the end, as she finally quits her job at Foulton's to follow her passion for photography, and she even allows herself to fall in love with fireman Jake, who decides not to pursue a desk job in favor of a path to captaincy that will keep him in the field where he feels he belongs. And thanks to one final flash-forward via magic shoes, we see that Noelle's big leap of faith will pay off massive dividends in the near future, with a successful and fulfilling new career and even wedding bells not too far ahead. Mission accomplished, Charlie fucks off back to Heaven to get her wings or whatever, and the movie ends.
A Shoe Addict's Christmas is a good movie. After yesterday's wretched experience, I was wondering if I would even be able to recognize a decent movie at all, or if perhaps I would just be stuck on my default setting of "fuck this" until Christmas Day. Luckily for me, that was not the case. I don't want to give you the wrong impression and imply that this movie is great, because it's not. It's good. Decent. Fine. But you know what? That's enough for me.
Candace Cameron-Bure is very engaged in her role, with a certain spark of life found in her eyes that's been missing from her most recent performances, clearly having a wonderful time playing a shoe-obsessed dreamer who's gotten her heart broken too many times to dare to dream or to fall in love again, until a half-crazy guardian angel not-so-gently reminds her that a life without dreams isn't much of a life at all, and a life without love doubly so. It's nice to enjoy seeing a Candace Cameron performance again, and maybe next year I'll actually be looking forward to her next movie, rather than the subtle dread I felt when I started watching this one.
And Jean Smart, who has been turning in stellar work recently in Legion, is perfectly charming playing an excitable guardian angel who maybe isn't playing with a full deck of cards, even though she certainly means well, and her somewhat questionable methodology does eventually produce desirable results, so perhaps she knew what she was doing all along, despite all evidence to the contrary. Luke McFarlane was a perfectly serviceable love interest. That's all I really have to say about the guy. He and Candy Cams make a cute onscreen couple. Or maybe she's just cute regardless, and he looks cute simply because he's standing next to her, like he's an average fish swimming in her cute wake. That could be it.
I think I've said pretty much everything I can say about A Shoe Addict's Christmas, because there isn't all that much to say. The movie connected all the dots it needed to connect in a perfectly cromulent manner, and it never really made any egregious mistakes along the way. Good. Decent. Fine. If you are in the market for a holiday-themed made-for-television romance about a wannabe photographer with a shoe fetish who falls in love with a less-than-noteworthy fireman thanks to the cosmic meddling of a guardian angel suffering from an undiagnosed case of dementia, then you can't go wrong with A Shoe Addict's Christmas!
Or maybe you can. What the hell do I know.
Mommy's Dead - Noelle's mother has been dead for years. Did I not mention that? Oh well. Must have slipped my mind.
Christmas Magic - Charlie's a guardian angel who curses fancy shoes to force Noelle to relive moments from her past whenever she puts them on. That sounds like magic to me. Or a bad acid trip, which might as well be magic.
I Hate You! Kiss Me! - Noelle and Jake really don't get along at first. At the end of their first meeting, Noelle gives Jake a look that makes his dick shrivel up like a stack of dimes.
VERDICT: NICE
No comments:
Post a Comment