Schlock-Mas: Day Three

SWEET MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS

A country star is stranded in her hometown when a freak snowstorm hits.

It seems Lifetime has realized their error in producing last year's Santa's Boots without ever taking advantage of star Megan Hilty's formidable singing talents, since not only does this year's Sweet Mountain Christmas prominently showcase its star's vocal aptitude, but the story even casts Hilty as a professional musical artist. I suspect this turnaround may have something to do with the fact that Hilty is listed as a producer on Sweet Mountain Christmas, but don't quote me on that. But! Does this infusion of musicality to today's film actually improve the story in any way?

Well... yeah. Because have you heard Megan Hilty sing?

Although it is a little odd that she's been cast as a country music superstar in this movie, since, at least as far as I can tell, she has never even really dipped her toe into the country music well before in her career. Her character, Laney Blu (she dropped the 'e' at the end of her name when she hit the big time because her manager thought it made her sound more sophisticated [I actually just made that up because I have no idea why her character's surname is missing that letter 'e' and I think it looks weird]) hails from a small town in Tennessee called Baxter Mountain, that coincidentally lies atop a mountain called... Baxter Mountain, but she hasn't been home in years since her career took off and she's been non-stop touring and recording seemingly forever, much to the chagrin of her doting mother (Teryl Rothery, who bizarrely also played Hilty's mother in last year's Santa's Boots). Unfortunately, Laney's last two albums haven't exactly set the charts on fire, and she's been suffering from a severe case of songwriter's block for nearly a year now, so her loyal manager Danny (Patrick Sabongui, a talented character actor with a résumé as long as your arm, although he's probably best known these days as playing Captain Singh on The Flash), at the behest of Laney's record label, has attempted to reinvent his charge as a pure pop star, complete with Britney Spears-esque dance choreography and a new album of catchy, saccharine tunes written by committee in a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate Laney's musical career.

Now I may be speaking out of turn, but this plan of her record label's just doesn't sound all that great. Can you think of a single established musical artist who has completely reinvented themselves in such a blatantly manufactured manner after a decade or more of being entirely associated with one particular genre of music who has actually pulled it off? I don't think it's ever happened. Garth Brooks fell flat on his face with that execrable "Chris Gaines" fiasco back in the day, after all, and he was the biggest country music star in the world at the time. I just don't see how a country music artist in her mid-thirties, well known for singing soulful ballads could suddenly be accepted by the public as a cookie-cutter bubblegum pop songstress. The people would see right through that desperate attempt to remain relevant in such an unforgiving industry, and Laney's "career reinvention" would be D.O.A. It just seems a little late in the game for Laney to publicly reinvent herself as a teenybopper Top 40 artist. But that's the real world, so I guess I'm just wasting my time in trying to apply real-world logic to a made-for-television holiday movie.

Danny's even booked Laney to premiere her latest single at this year's Santa-Palooza festival in New York City on Christmas Eve, which is a pretty big deal, I guess. Can you believe that Santa-Palooza isn't a real thing by now? I mean, there is an adult movie called Santa-Palooza out there, but it's not very good. Something about seeing Mrs. Claus get gang-banged by a bunch of sweaty meatheads wearing dime-store reindeer costumes in a dilapidated barn subbing for Santa's workshop shot on cheap digital video in the mid 2000s just kinda kills the Christmas spirit for me, ya know? Laney isn't terribly enthusiastic about any of the recent developments in her professional life, but she doesn't really know what else to do with herself if she's not grinding away in the recording studio or performing onstage, so she just continues to go along with her record label's suggestions, no matter how far they may be pulling her away from her musical roots, because she just doesn't see any other path ahead to take.

Although she does insist on returning home to Baxter Mountain for a day or two before she heads to New York to visit her dear mother for the holidays. And of course, after Laney's arrival at her childhood home, a blizzard happens upon the Smoky Mountains and heavy snowfall makes the one road in and out of town completely impassable, stranding the wayward one-time country superstar in good old Baxter Mountain until conditions improve. Uh-Oh! I wonder if Laney will run into an old flame who may or may not still be carrying a torch for her! But Laney's ex-boyfriend Robbie (Marcus Rosner) happens to be the mayor of Baxter Mountain, which is a pretty prestigious gig, all things considered.

Robby used to be a big-time architect in some major metropolitan area, but when a building he designed was being constructed across from a local park he would frequent, he got depressed when he realized that the sheer size of the building would leave his favorite park in its shadow for part of the day, so he quit his high-paying job and went home to Tennessee to spend the rest of his life toiling in obscurity. That was seriously the reason why this guy turned his back on architecture, his life's great passion. A park in which he liked to eat his daily lunch became partially enshrouded by the shadow of a building he designed each day, and that was enough to get this chump to call it quits and run for mayor in his hole-in-the-wall hometown, because there's obviously no middle ground between "successful corporate architect" and "sad sack mayor of rural Tennessee community". Nope. None at all. Every building casts a shadow, genius!

If you've seen any of these movies before, you probably know where all of this is going, but I'll give you a guess, just the same. Have you got your guess, yet? Then let's hear it! If you guessed "being snowed in back home at Baxter Mountain helps Laney realize the things she's been missing in her hollow existence back in Malibu are all around her in her hometown, she rekindles her romance with the hunky mayor, rebuilds the friendships with the people she left behind when she became a superstar, and finds the confidence to reject her record label's plan to transform her into something she's not, finding the inspiration to write new songs from the heart with the love and support from the people all around her, refusing to attend Santa-Palooza and instead taking the stage at Baxter Mountain's annual Christmas concert to premiere her latest sure-to-be-hit country song before an adoring audience of hundreds in the local theatre, not to mention the hundreds of thousands watching her performance online thanks to loyal manager Danny's livestreaming the concert," then you win a prize! The prize is the knowledge that you're smarter than the folks who write these movies. Sure, you can't hang that on a wall or put it on a shelf, but you can keep it in your heart, which means absolutely nothing.

Why isn't this movie called Baxter Mountain Christmas? Nobody in the movie ever calls the place "Sweet Mountain". Maybe Baxter Mountain Christmas just sounds lame. Say it out loud a few times and judge for yourself.

But is the movie any good? Sure. It's a pretty good example of this sort of product, to be perfectly honest. The performances are decent across the board, with Megan Hilty committed to breathing life into her character despite not having much to work with on the page. She does attempt a spotty, inconsistent southern accent which never really sounds genuine, but it's so light when she bothers with it that you might not ever notice. Hilty has great romantic chemistry with Marcus Rosner, who plays good ole' Robbie, and the movie treats the reawakening of their love affair with surprising maturity, with the two ex-lovers admitting their feelings for one another haven't really changed over the years rather quickly, and when Laney decides to stay and make Baxter Mountain her home once again, she knows there's no reason not to pursue a relationship with the love of her life. And I appreciate that Laney isn't really giving anything up by moving back home, since she will record new music in Baxter Mountain, and fully intends to take that new music on tour on a regular basis. She just won't spend her off-time miserable in a place that never really felt like home, so I guess sometimes you really can have everything.

And the talented Megan Hilty sings on numerous occasions in Sweet Mountain Christmas, which was really the only missing piece that kept me from completely embracing last year's Santa's Boots, a movie I still enjoyed quite a bit, so I guess you could say I really enjoyed this movie. Go figure. It's not perfect, of course, but when the performances are good and the story's not an insulting mess, one tends to overlook certain shortcomings. Even the character of Danny, whom a lesser movie would have made a greedy prick who only cared about the bottom line, is a three-dimensional human being in this movie, which was a pleasant surprise, indeed.

There's a great moment in the third act when Laney and Danny are leaving Baxter Mountain en route to Santa-Palooza when Laney realizes this is not what she wants out of life, and she asks Danny to stop being her manager and to just be her friend for a while, and he quizzically looks at his client for a beat, momentarily at a loss for words before he stammers out that he doesn't know how to do that, causing Laney to smile, a plan forming in her mind. It's such a great, human moment for Danny, who has never been asked to just be somebody's friend in his career, having spent his entire professional life in a world where every human interaction is reduced to a transaction, and he simply doesn't know how to respond to the question. But Danny's a good man at heart, who cares more about Laney's emotional well-being than following their record label's rules, so he turns the limousine around and gets his client back home to Baxter Mountain where she belongs.

This one realistic interaction between two human beings immediately elevates Sweet Mountain Christmas above most of the holiday dreck I've watched over the years, because it just illustrates that somebody cares about the product they're producing, which is all I ever ask for. So thank you, Sweet Mountain Christmas, for caring. That's all I needed.