HOPE AT CHRISTMAS
A teacher tries to make Christmas extra special for Sydney and her young daughter.
Sydney (Scottie Thompson) has been divorced for over a year, but she's still having a hard time getting over the whole ordeal. She's been a stay-at-home mother ever since her daughter Rayanne was born, and now that the little kid's a little older, Sydney wants to get back out there and join the rat race once again, interviewing for a big job at one of New York City's biggest ad agencies. Not the biggest, but let's say top five. Top ten. It's up there, anyway.
Meanwhile, Sydney's beloved grandmother, whose name we never learn, has recently passed away, leaving her favorite granddaughter her mansion in the small town of Hopewell, North Carolina. Sydney treats this place like a quaint little home nestled away in an adorable little hamlet, but the house is fucking huge. Ridiculously large, so big that you question how an old woman living on a fixed income could even afford the property taxes, let alone the surely exorbitant heating bills each winter. So Sydney has inherited this magical home that she made so many happy memories within during her childhood, and she's chosen to bring her daughter along for one more Christmas in Hopewell before she sells the place and becomes a big-time advertising executive in the big city.
Of course, fate has other plans...
Visiting her favorite business in town, The Book Bea, a whimsical little shop owned and operated by an old busybody named Bea Peabody, Sydney catches a suspicious-looking gentleman tucking a series of books into his messenger bag while he thinks nobody is looking. This guy is glancing around nervously before he lifts each book, just generally acting like that stereotypical shoplifter you imagine in your head, the kind that has no tact whatsoever and appears so inept that you wonder how they could ever hope to get away with what they're doing. Sydney confronts this goof as he attempts to leave the store, and as she accuses him of being a book-thieving piece of shit, he warmly greets Bea, who informs Sydney that this supposed shoplifter is actually Mac (Ryan Paevey), the local 4th grade teacher, and he routinely just walks out with a bag full of childrens' books every other week, settling up his tab at the end of every month, because this is just a thing small town folks do, I guess.
That flimsy explanation aside, this doesn't explain the man's behavior while pocketing all of those books. He looks and acts like a cartoon shoplifter during this scene, and he has no reason to do so, aside from looking suspicious in the eyes of newcomer Sydney, which isn't nearly a good enough reason for this foolish behavior. But we needed a meet-cute, I guess, and this is as good as Hope At Christmas can deliver.
Later on that day, or maybe it was the next day, I'm honestly having trouble remembering at this point, Mac catches Sydney and Rayanne as they're heading home for the evening after the town's big tree lighting ceremony, just as Sydney's car conveniently decides to stop working. Mac offers to give them a ride home, since no mechanic in town will be able to fix the car until morning, and after this kind gesture, he even volunteers to fix Sydney's malfunctioning furnace, which is a skill he just happens to have in his personal tool belt. He's like a human multi-tool, this Mac fella.
You can see where this is going. Mac fixes Sydney's furnace (if you know what I mean), Sydney offers Mac some of her gingerbread cookies (if you catch my drift), and they end up trimming a Christmas tree together (with a manic Rayanne), giggling sipping hot cocoa and merrily carrying on into the wee hours of the morning.
The next day, one of Mac's pals breaks his leg while playing Santa for the exuberant children of Hopewell, and begs his generous friend to fill in for him over the next few days. Reluctantly, Mac takes up the mantle of jolly old Saint Nick, and finds he's actually pretty good at the gig. He even learns from a visiting Rayanne that her mother is feeling down in the dumps this Christmas season, and Mac secretly learns a few pointers from the child to help raise Sydney's holiday spirits, like finding out that she's always wanted to go to Paris, so Mac arranges a charming meal for her at Hopewell's own fancy French restaurant, which is a thing this town has, for some reason.
Hopewell doesn't have WiFi, but they have a five-star French restaurant, complete with "authentic" French staff, all too eager to bend over backwards to give their patrons a first class dining experience. Sure. That makes sense.
Meanwhile, Bea is getting ready to retire from the book-slinging business, because she's old and tired, and the movie needs a financial excuse to keep Sydney in Hopewell when she decides she doesn't want to return to the big city during the film's climax. Bea was planning on selling the business to a developer who wants to tear the place down and build some condominiums, but she'd much rather hand her beloved book shop over to a like-minded soul who wants to keep it open on Main Street in perpetuity. This is so fucking transparent that it drives me crazy. Between this and Bea's repeated and blatant attempts to set up Sydney and Mac during the film's first half hour, this character just gets on my nerves, never feeling like anything other than a cheap gimmick created by the screenwriter to get the romantic leads from point A to point B with as little finesse as humanly possible.
Or maybe it's the fault of Nancy Naigle, author of the original book upon which this movie is based. I'll never read the damned book, so I don't know. I did find it slightly annoying that Nancy Naigle's work is prominently featured in every scene set at the book shop, and Sydney even recommends a curious customer read Naigle's latest book at some point, which was just a bridge too far for me.
Sydney and Mac's relationship really takes off after he tells her that he used to be a novelist, but couldn't find the heart to write a second novel after his beloved wife died around Christmastime several years ago, which really seems to rev Sydney's engine. So she's a bit of an odd duck, but Mac doesn't seem to mind, so all systems go, I suppose.
Hang on a moment there, kids! It's not all peaches and cream for our lovebirds, not after Sydney learns that Mac's been moonlighting as Santa Claus for the past few days, which really isn't a big deal at all, but whatever. She figures that Mac learned how to properly serenade her from her bigmouth daughter Rayanne, and that he's only been so nice to Sydney recently because he just feels sorry for her, so she storms off in a huff and I start screaming "give me a fucking break" at my television in sheer frustration. What a fucking joke.
This whole Santa thing doesn't matter. It's nothing. But Sydney treats this revelation like she just learned Mac strangles puppies in front of his students for kicks or something, and now she hates this asshole forever, and that's that. Two minutes later, Sydney's sitting in front of her fireplace, re-reading her new favorite book, a volume written by obscure author James MacLaren Howell that was recommended to her over a week earlier by that meddlesome Bea, and she finally checks out the photo of the author on the dust jacket. Sydney is positively shocked to learn that James MacLaren Howell is her beloved Mac, and fuck this movie.
Deciding to remain in Hopewell and take over stewardship of The Book Bea, Sydney has chosen to take her grandmother's house off the market and give life in New York City the fucking finger in favor of a smaller, quieter life in small town America with her darling daughter and that handsome prick Mac. Who even gives a shit? This dim bulb couldn't bother to look at the dust jacket of the book she's been reading until after she's read the damned thing? That's fucking nuts.
I don't get this movie. It's just not very well put together. The story is a collection of tired clichés that I've seen ten thousand times before, with absolutely no attempts to try anything different. Hope At Christmas is just the safest, cheapest creative way to tell this kind of story, and this crap just drives me up the wall. Try harder, for fuck's sake. Do something to separate your particular movie from the pack. It can't be that difficult to push the boundaries in some form, if only just a little.
None of the actors are to blame for this garbage, however, because they're all trying their best to sell this lazy narrative and dialogue like true professionals, but it's all in service of nothing, which is a real shame. Lead actors Scottie Thompson and Ryan Paevey are convincing enough and have decent chemistry, but this screenplay just lets them down by giving them nothing worthwhile to work with.
Hope At Christmas is a shiny little box, adorned with attractive wrapping paper and a big, festive bow, but inside it's a tacky little plastic bauble that nobody wants, the kind of gift that winds up in a landfill by New Year's Eve, and good riddance, because it's not even worth re-gifting.
Very Merry Tragedy - Mac's wife died at Christmas, and he's been pretty broken up about it for the past few years. Until Sydney shows up to help this vulnerable widower move on with his life, even inspiring him to begin writing his second novel, conveniently titled "Hope At Christmas". Fuck.
Little White Lies - Mac playing Santa Claus shouldn't have been such a big deal, but apparently it was a real deal breaker for Sydney.
Third Act Shenanigans - Mac and Sydney's romance was moving along just fine, until this "secret Santa" bullshit blew up and became the perfect excuse to Sydney to push her paramour away for a few minutes, until she sees his face in the back of her favorite book and decides to forgive the poor bastard for doing nothing wrong.
Small Town Salvation - Sydney eschews life as a big-time ad exec in New York City to run a small book store in Hopewell, North Carolina, playing house with her darling schoolteacher boyfriend and adorable daughter, after her eyes were opened to love and happiness by the charms of this picturesque small town.
VERDICT: NAUGHTY
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