Schlock-Mas: Day One

CHRISTMAS AT GRAND VALLEY

Artist Kelly Riley returns home to Grand Valley just in time for Christmas.

Kelly (Danica McKellar) is an artist living in the big city of Chicago, still looking for her big break at the tender age of... whatever age she's supposed to be. 35? 40? Who can say? Kelly paints shit. No, she doesn't paint shit, rather she paints pictures of shit. Not "shit" meaning fecal matter, but "shit" meaning stuff. Ya know, things. Buildings, food, trees, the occasional crime scene... the usual. Kelly's been painting up a storm in the Windy City for years, but she's never made any real impact on the local art scene, and she's been busting her hump (a disgusting turn of phrase, by the way. Never use this phrase. Learn from my mistakes) for a long time, hustling her wares to every gallery she can find, but nobody ever lets poor Kelly get her foot in the door.

If you ask me, I think she keeps getting rejected by all the galleries in town because her artwork simply isn't very good. Everybody who takes a gander at one of her paintings just fills their shorts with unbridled glee when their eyes take in the wonder and majesty of her work, but then when any of her paintings are actually displayed before the camera, they look like fucking paint-by-numbers crap. There's no sense of vitality, no spark of creativity in any of these paintings. It's just a series of flat, uninspired landscapes broken up by the odd character study with a crooked, amateurish face and unrealistic proportions that make the figure look like a ghoulish caricature. The galleries aren't returning Kelly's calls because somebody would have to be out of their mind to display any of these hideous works of "art" in a public exhibition.

After her latest professional rejection, Kelly decides to take an extended leave of absence from her busy life of failing utterly at her intended vocation and heads back to her hometown of Grand Valley, Wyoming, hoping to spend an uneventful holiday season with her loving father Dad (Dan Lauria, best remembered for playing Kevin Arnold's pater familias on The Wonder Years, now playing Winnie Cooper's papa in this movie. I'm sure that "interesting" little factoid is a big hit over at IMDb trivia) at their family's picturesque hotel. Actually, does her family own the hotel? I know Dad owns a diner, Dad's Diner, and he seems to have his hands full with that place. Kelly's cousin, some tow-headed buffoon who can't seem to grasp the concept of proper book-keeping, is the assistant manager of the hotel, but he doesn't own the business. What was this asshole's name? Chet? Was it Chet? I'm not looking it up, so I guess it's Chet. Kelly teaches arts and crafts to the kiddies who are staying at the inn for Christmas, and she certainly seems to be heavily invested in the future of this place, but I don't remember any deeper connection than that.

Back in Chicago, corporate sleazeball Leo (Brennan Elliott, now knee-deep in his career of playing the generic "affable leading man" for Crown Media Productions) has been tasked by his even sleazier boss to check out their property out in Grand Valley, Wyoming, an under-performing inn, to see what the fucking problem is with the clowns running the place. If Leo can't find a valid reason for their company to keep the inn in their portfolio, than they're gonna sell the absolute shit out of that place ASA-fucking-P and turn the quaint little hotel into a goddamned strip mall or something equally horrifying to the fine folks of Anytown, U.S.A. Leo sees this is a fine opportunity to take his two children out for a Christmas holiday, killing two birds with one stone as he investigates the property while spending quality time with his sadsack children, who just haven't been the same since their mommy died of dysentery a few years back. They're a boy and a girl, and I'm not even going to pretend that I remember their names, so I'll just refer to them as Thing #1 and Thing #2.

Coincidentally, Leo once spent an idyllic Christmas at the very same inn when he was a wee lad, although this never actually figures into the plot in any meaningful way. There's never a moment when Leo recognizes anything familiar in the town of Grand Valley, and no cozy memories are ever rekindled by his time at the inn. It would have been the simplest thing to have Leo find an old tree that he carved his initials into when he was a child while out walking with his future love interest Kelly, and he could have told her all about the time he spent running away from the cops after stabbing a kindly old man selling roasted chestnuts in the park or whatever, hiding behind the very same tree while the boys in blue rushed by, taking an extra moment to carve the words "death is but a door, time is but a window" into the tree's gnarled trunk before sneaking back to the hotel under cover of darkness.

That was basically the easiest thing this movie could have done to illustrate some sort of deeper connection between Leo and Grand Valley, giving him a stronger reason to fight to save the hotel when his boss decides to sell the property to some greedy investor, crusading to preserve the place that gave him such warm childhood memories in order for this magical location to do the same for future generations. But Christmas At Grand Valley decided it would be easier to do nothing, instead. Because it's always easier to just do nothing.

Thing #1 and Thing #2 immediately imprint on Kelly when they're introduced, inviting her along at a number of family outings, warmly hugging her every single time they meet, even hanging up a stocking with her name on it over the fireplace in their cabin. They treat this complete stranger like she's already their new mommy from the moment they meet, and this behavior just feels incredibly uncomfortable. These kids presume an awful lot from this strange woman they've never met, but I guess they read ahead in the script, so whatever's clever. There's a goddamned ice-skating scene, and a fucking tree-lighting scene, and even a scene at Dad's Diner where Thing #1 gives Dad a hastily-drawn picture of a Christmas Tree, and he immediately tacks it on the wall behind the cash register, telling the bovine-featured youth that this touching gift has truly touched his heart, and he'll never forget the kind gesture. This is the first and last time these characters share screen time, and Dad's acting like these little gremlins are already his fucking grandchildren. But I guess he read ahead in the script, so bully for him.

I know in real-life if an adult is handed a shitty drawing by a snot-nosed little kid, they'll shower the fucker with false praise and put it on the refrigerator for a few days or something, but they don't really mean the things they say. They're only calling the incomprehensible scribbling a masterpiece of the macabre because they want to build up the kid's confidence, and they certainly don't want to hurt their little feelings, but inside they're thinking "what the fuck is this shit I'm looking at" and they're beginning to worry that the child might have some sort of learning disorder. Of course, in Hallmark land, Dad meant every word he said to Thing #1, because that's just the way this particular cookie crumbles. He truly cherished this strange child's pathetic attempt to draw a festively-decorated evergreen on a crumpled sheet of paper and chooses to proudly display it in his diner for all patrons to see. And the simple act of meeting this child has apparently made this the single greatest Christmas of his long life, no horseshit.

Anyway, to make a long story... less long, Leo learns to love the blah, blah, so he chooses to buy the inn at Grand Valley for himself to save it from ruin at the hands of his (former) employer, because I guess he just had a few million bucks on hand, even promoting that mouth-breathing dope Chet to full-time manager, moving in lock, stock and barrel with his two shitty children because he'd rather live in some nowhere town in Wyoming than that cesspool Chicago. He's also fallen in love with Kelly, who had already told him that she had decided to move back to her hometown to spend more time not being a successful artist  a few minutes earlier in the film. But fate has other plans for Kelly, after her slacker agent calls with exciting news: some desperate gallery in Chi-Town has decided to display Kelly's latest series of holiday themed masterworks, and Kelly changes her mind again, deciding to move back to Chicago and try her hand at being the next Thomas Kinkade. Then Leo and Kelly have a quick heartfelt conversation that ends with him wishing her luck in Chicago and walking away in the most unbothered manner I've ever seen for a supposedly heartbroken fellow, head held high, neutral expression on his face, hands in his pockets, casually sauntering right out the door and out of Kelly's life after humorously musing that the pair have just crossed like ships in the night as they've each chosen to follow their respective bliss.

So of course Kelly just changes her mind yet again, telling her agent that she's staying in Grand Valley to teach arts and crafts to the children at the inn for the rest of her life. Then they kiss and Christmas and all that jazz.

Truly a masterpiece.

Does nobody want to address the elephant in the room? The reason Leo's boss wanted to sell the curious little inn at Grand Valley in the first place was due to the business routinely losing money. Simply put: not enough people have been staying at the inn. The place is a money pit. Some random lady who spends a lot of time at Dad's Diner and acts like she's Kelly's aunt or something with a voice like Aunt Lil from Squidbillies tells Kelly that a friend of hers saw her paintings on the hotel's website and booked her family vacation there near the end of the film, but one booking isn't enough to turn things around for this doomed venture. Oh, but what about word of mouth? It's a Hallmark movie, so of course things will work out in the end. Aunt Lil's friend will tell her friends about the inn, and their friends will tell their friends, and so on, and so on... It's a regular Christmas miracle.

A handful of mediocre paintings posted on the website of an inn nobody wants to go to in the first place aren't going to fix anything. Search your feelings, and you'll know I'm right.

I didn't really enjoy my time watching Christmas At Grand Valley, if that wasn't already clear. The script is just dreadfully dull, Brennan Elliott and Danica McKellar have zero romantic chemistry, and the third act has the female lead change her mind about her future no less than three times in ten minutes. It's enough to give a viewer whiplash. Christ, this is just the first movie? It's a good thing I'm only doing four this year, because I'm not sure I could have survived a full twenty-five. Hell, I'm not entirely sure I can survive three more, if they're all like this little "gem".