CHRISTMAS TOWN
Lauren leaves everything behind in Boston to embark on a new chapter in her life and career.
Here we are again. The... I don't want to say queen of anything, because it just doesn't feel appropriate... maybe the grand duchess of made-for-television holiday entertainment, Candace Cameron Bure, is back with another one of these damned garbage movies. I don't even remember what the last one was. Was it the one where she played a time-traveling nurse? The one where she played identical twins with nothing better to do than pretend to be each other during the holidays? The one where she played the daughter of Tom Arnold? Who has the energy to keep up?
So this movie's called Christmas Town, not to be confused with Christmas Land, another Hallmark original movie that stole a few hours of my life several years ago. In this movie, Candy Cams plays Lauren, I guess, a lady who lives in Boston with her bitchy little cat named Sassy, and she's probably a schoolteacher, but she takes a new job in the nearby town of Springfield, because she's looking for a fresh start in her life. It seems things have gotten rather stale in Bean Town, and Lauren just needs to get the fuck out before she goes apeshit and feeds her cat to a wood chipper. I know the feeling.
She doesn't bother to tell her boyfriend Eric any of this, leaving the poor chap a "Dear John" letter and trying to sneak away before he pops the seal on the envelope, which is a pretty dick move, if you ask me, but nobody did, so never mind. Eric manages to catch her as she attempts to slink away under cover of midday, and she just tells him to read the letter and orders the cabbie to put the pedal to the metal, because she's late for her train! Unfortunately, the train gets derailed en route to Springfield and a bunch of people die, and it's a real tragedy. Luckily, Lauren and her fucking cat are just peachy keen, so I guess they're like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable and Split now, only they don't bother to fight any crimes or end up getting drowned in a puddle in a parking lot like a chump because the guy who directed those movies is a professional troll.
No, Lauren and her cat just end up spending some time in a forgotten little town called Granny's Crotch while the authorities investigate the cause of the tragic derailment. Now this delightful village just loves Christmas a whole lot. Who would've guessed, right? These lunatics love the happiest time of year so much, the place has become known as "Christmas Town" by all the nearby communities, and I don't think they meant it as a compliment. Lauren's parents are dead, by the way. Her mommy died when Lauren was a wee baby, and her daddy died the day after Christmas when the girl was only six years old, sticking around just long enough to present his daughter with a porcelain tree topper in the shape of an angel, break one of its wings immediately after removing it from its box, and promising to send it back to the manufacturer to have it repaired after almost dropping dead while trying to place the damned thing on top of the tree. As to why this genius couldn't just glue the fucking wing back on and call it macaroni is beyond me, but I didn't write the movie.
Lauren mistakes some random schmoe standing near a sign that says "taxi" at the train station for a cab driver and demands he take her, her cat, and her plethora of luggage to the nearest hotel, forthwith. This dude, Travis (Tim Rozon), is a complete fucking pushover and immediately agrees to drive the stranger to the only available lodging in town, which happens to be the attic over an antique shop owned by some old guy who never really figures into the film's plot, so I can't even remember his name. Did the movie even bother to give him a name in the first place? It's a mystery I'll never solve. Lauren immediately falls in love with Granny's Crotch and its ridiculous citizens, who all immediately fall in love with this complete stranger and treat her like family, because that's just the way small towns are, don'tcha know? Lauren becomes especially close to the owner of the Christmas Cafe, a kindly old lady who is very close friends with a local schoolteacher who just so happens to be nearing her own retirement. I think she's also a silent partner at the cafe, and the pair seem so close that I suspect they're lovers, but these movies would never confirm anything like that, so I guess it just has to remain subtext for now.
This is, after all, the network that only this past week pulled a "controversial" advertisement that featured a same-sex couple kissing for one tiny moment due to the manufactured outrage from a marginal hate group calling itself "One Million Moms" despite being founded by two conservative white men. Because they don't want to rock the boat. When it was brought to their attention two days later that "One Million Moms" may not have quite that many members in its charter, the network loudly stated that they were bringing the banned commercial back, apologizing for being such a collection of spineless corporate cretins and once again proclaiming that they're supposedly still willing to explore the possibility of making perhaps one movie featuring overt LGBTQ characters at some vague point in the not-too-near future, maybe. So good work, guys!
Why do I watch these movies, again?
That lame wad Travis has a foster son named Jambalaya who is constantly giving away his winter coats to other, less fortunate kids, and Travis doesn't mind that his own legal ward is just going to freeze all winter because he's too
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| Pictured: a drug mule. |
I know it's cute that Jambalaya just loves helping other kids, considering his own circumstances, but it would make more sense for Travis to take a cue from the boy's magnanimity and organize a town-wide winter coat drive to help more children rather than just allowing this one kid to keep giving away his own coats at his own expense. Jambalaya keeps insisting that he's not cold at all while he rides his bike around town sans coat in the middle of December, but when the boy's dying of pneumonia in January, his blood will be on Travis's hands.
There's a framed photograph of Lauren's daddy posing with the angel tree topper he bought for his daughter hanging on a wall in the Christmas Cafe. Lauren notices this almost immediately and is never given an adequate explanation for this image's existence. It's just there, and nobody seems to know why. You'd think the owner of the fucking cafe would know why the photo of some random asshole holding a Christmas ornament would be adorning the wall of her own establishment, but nope! I guess it came with the fucking frame. The tree topper was apparently manufactured in Granny's Crotch, but I guess the guy who made it was trampled to death by horses outside of town in the mid-nineties, and he took his secrets to the fucking grave. This seems like a pretty big deal to me, but even Lauren, who has carried the ornament's broken wing with her ever since that fateful Christmas Eve, just sort of shrugs it off and moves on with her life pretty quickly after this truly bizarre revelation momentarily shocks her to her very core.
In a smarter film, this kind of thing would be a major plot element. The movie Finding Father Christmas comes to mind, using a similar trick to pull the protagonist into a deeper plot, uncovering mysteries about her own family and finding true love along the way. Christmas Town doesn't bother with any of that bullshit, because it's just too much work. No, this movie just presents the tantalizing sight of Lauren's father in a framed photo hanging on the wall of a cafe in a place she's never heard of before happenstance brought her there and just leaves it, festering like a pile of dog shit on a sidewalk for the cast to gingerly step around while attempting to ignore its presence. What a wasted opportunity. There's no mystery because literally nobody gives a damn. Wow. That's fucking astounding.
Lauren just starts working at the cafe the next day, because she seems to have nothing better to do. She thinks her father sent the tree topper back to town for repair, but nobody can find the damned thing because it's been over thirty years and who keeps track of shit like that, so she just sticks around town to look for the missing keepsake, although she literally never looks for it. Not once, for even one brief scene. She stays in Granny's Crotch to look for this tree topper, then she just forgets all about it because she wants to help out the owner of the cafe, because she's overworked during the busy holiday rush. You know what would make more sense? For the owner of the fucking diner to hire additional help for the holidays. Or to hire any help, since she seems to be the only regular employee of this establishment.
But that's okay, because Lauren's happy to work pro bono, although the owner insists on paying her something at the end of the day, which Lauren grudgingly accepts. Then she just turns around and tucks that money into a Salvation Army bell ringer's kettle, because a woman between jobs during the holidays never needs spare cash. Schoolteachers in Boston are just loaded, right? Inspired by the Salvation Army's slogan, "Doing The Most Good", Lauren decides to start a fundraiser in town to help the less fortunate, including a gaggle of refugees from a nearby town that was destroyed by a kaiju attack over the summer and are living on the streets like animals this Christmas season. "Doing The Most Good", huh? Sure, but considering the Salvation Army's appalling record of LGBTQ discrimination, maybe they don't particularly care about doing the most good for everybody who may be in need. I'm sure Candace Cameron Bure donates very generously to the Salvation Army every holiday season. By the way, the whole fundraiser thing is dropped entirely after maybe two scenes, because I guess the movie got distracted and forgot all about its own story.
I must say that I find it somewhat unsettling how easily the townsfolk of Granny's Crotch accept Lauren into their lives. This is a woman who's supposedly just passing through, but these creepy fuckers immediately embrace her like a long-lost member of their own family. Their behavior as depicted is too cloying, and as such it never feels even slightly genuine. The town's mayor eagerly invites Lauren onstage to flip the switch at the annual Christmas Tree lighting (because of course there's an annual Christmas Tree lighting, and an ice skating scene, and a snowball fight, etc.), although I'm not sure if the two characters had spent any time together onscreen beforehand. And when Lauren takes the stage, she begins rattling off an acceptance speech like she's just been awarded a fucking Daytime Emmy, thanking all of the little people who helped her reach this lofty position.
When Lauren shows a deep interest in becoming a permanent resident of Granny's Crotch, she laments aloud in front of her pals at the Christmas Cafe that there is regrettably no open teaching position at the local school. So of course her new teacher pal can't wait to provide her notice at school, taking early retirement and graciously stepping aside so that Lauren can take her place. Because these folks are just so nice they can't help but do whatever they possibly can to make Lauren stay in their beloved hometown. It's unnerving, and my broken brain can't help but wonder if these nightmarish caricatures of homespun hospitality are merely hiding something more sinister underneath their cheery veneer... of course they aren't, because this is a Hallmark Channel movie, but there is a difference between a realistic and inviting depiction of togetherness in a rural community and, well... whatever the hell is going on in Christmas Town.
Eric shows up in Granny's Crotch late in the game in an effort to win back the heart of the woman who didn't care enough about him to want to say goodbye forever face-to-face, but he quickly realizes that it's just not meant to be since Lauren has already pledged her body and soul to the dark yuletide god that rests in the heart of this diseased community, and he gets the hell out of town before he too is consumed by the festive madness. So in the final analysis, this guy contributes absolutely nothing of note to the plot, and if his scenes were excised entirely from the final product, not a soul would ever notice this character was even missing, probably not even the actor who "portrayed" him. Thanks for wasting everybody's time with more superfluous bullshit.
Speaking of superfluous bullshit, in a truly staggering example of shameless product placement, there's a scene where Lauren flips through a Balsam Hill catalogue, complete with loving closeups of the exorbitantly expensive wares within. It's pretty brazen. The movie doesn't even try to hide what it's doing, just stopping the plot dead in its tracks for Lauren to chat with her pals at the cafe about all the lovely Balsam Hill products between the catalogue's pages, even telling them that she used to look through these catalogues during her years in foster care, her eyes gazing on the festively lit faux-fir trees and related accoutrements while she would daydream of spending the holidays with a real, loving family. Don't it just break your heart?
So Lauren and this Travis creep get together, because he's the only eligible bachelor left in Granny's Crotch, and no adults dwelling within the town limits are allowed to remain single for long, lest they incur the wrath of their hideous holiday patron. And Lauren has chosen, seemingly on a whim, to adopt little Jambalaya, despite only knowing him for two weeks, and the local adoption agency actually approves her request within perhaps 48 hours of her filing, which I think is literally impossible since nobody from the agency ever interviewed her or even had time to perform anything more than the most cursory of background checks, but the movie's almost over and they gotta wrap this shit up.
Is that it? I think I've covered everything.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Jambalaya coincidentally found Lauren's broken old angel while out dumpster diving with Travis earlier in the movie and just took it home with him, claiming he wanted to "fix" the piece of junk without knowing of its significance to Lauren, even though he never bothers to attempt doing anything with it, as it just sits in his bedroom until the third act rolls around so he can present it unknowingly to his new mommy Lauren on Christmas Eve, who loses her goddamned mind when she realizes what she's holding. A few minutes and a little super glue later (Lauren's daddy really was an inept fool), and the fucking angel is as good as new and ready to be placed upon the Christmas Tree, where it begins to miraculously glow before the gathered "family", who take this all in stride, as though they'd seen miracles all the fucking time. I guess it's just hard to impress some people.
God, this guy who plays Travis... he's just such a dipshit. This weaselly, greasy, beady-eyed motherfucker just makes me sick. He looks like some brand of pervert, like he sneaks away from the crowd at parties to sniff people's coats while he touches his rotten pecker in the dark. Whenever I see him putting his hands on the kid who plays Jambalaya, I just want to call Child Protective Services. Why would Lauren fall in love with this oily prick? He's the kind of handyman who makes people nervous when he comes over to fix the dishwasher or replace a light fixture. Folks hide the jewelry and prescription medication when this Mr. Fix-It comes a-calling, I imagine. I'm just saying that this guy... he's not my kind of guy.
And Christmas Town is not my kind of movie. It's just a reeking pile of garbage. The script is unimaginative trash poorly realized by a cast of disengaged actors, all guided by the steady hand of a director who clearly couldn't wait to get this gig over with and just move on with their miserable life. It's the kind of lazy movie that features a scene where the main characters gather for a selfie and there's a flash that transitions into a frozen image that is meant to be the photo they just took, but it's just a still-frame with a cheap border placed around it. And it's doubly lazy because the director couldn't be bothered to properly set up the shot so that the characters appear to be looking at the camera.
Look at that shit. Candy's just holding out her iPhone and everybody's looking at it instead of the camera, and yet we're presented with a still image that is clearly meant to be the photo they just took, which is fucking impossible. Why even bother with this crap? I've seen other movies on Hallmark Channel that get this right. It's not that difficult. Just put in the bare minimum of effort and it pays off in the final product. You lazy fucking hacks, just phoning it in because your network has to churn out forty Christmas movies this holiday season, emphasizing quantity over quality like any "good" corporation. These assholes probably just use fucking Mad Libs to brainstorm the premises for all of their damned movies, anyway.
I'm just not feeling it so far, this year. Maybe the next movie will break me out of this holiday funk. Or maybe I'm not to blame and the movies are just terrible. Why does it have to be my fault? Make better fucking movies and maybe I will enjoy them. I've done it in the past, and perhaps, with a little luck, I will do so again in the future. But alas, it simply wasn't meant to be on this day.
Burn in hell, Christmas Town.
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