With Christmas just around the corner, I’m going to try my best to bring you reviews on the absolute best/worst thing about Christmas….Hallmark movies. Hang on, because we’re going for a wild sleigh ride.
Directed by: Christie Will Wolf
Written by: Helen Frost, Don MacLeod
Starring: Lacey Chabert, Paul Greene, Andrea Brooks
Sara Thomas (Lacey Chabert) lets people step all over her. Or maybe just one person. But they want you to think she gets stepped on a lot, even though they only show one scene of it happening. She works at a marketing firm, I think. It’s difficult to tell because they really don’t get into many details about her job.
She has these great ideas that her boss Dirk ignores — until it’s time to present something to his boss – so he claims her ideas for his own! What a douchebag! With a name like Dirk, you just knew he was no good.
She goes to the company Christmas party, where she meets Santa Claus. The jolly fat man grants her a wish, and it can be anything – even a million dollars! No thanks, she’ll take the ability to say how she really feels and stand up for herself. She has 48 hours to use this wish as often as she likes.
Sara Thomas is insane.
So she uses her wish to tell the owner of the company, Peter Williams (Paul Greene), about her boss Dirk stealing all her ideas and claiming them for himself. Peter fires Dirk and gives Sara the job. But the first thing she has to do is sell her idea (Christmas 365, which is something…I don’t know) to this wealthy businessman named Wilson — and he’s tough as nails.
Peter and Sara are late to the first meeting, so they have to meet up with Wilson in a QUAINT LITTLE CHRISTMAS TOWN (this will always be in bold and underlined in future Hallmark reviews for the impact, just so you know).
We come to find out that the quaint Christmas town is Peter’s hometown, which he escaped years ago because he and his father got into an argument. Apparently, his father wanted Peter to become a lawyer and join the family firm, but Peter wanted to be a shiftless lay about and own a successful marketing company. What a hobo.
Sara and Peter hang out in White Ridge (that is the name, I’m not making it up) and do Christmas-y things, like listen to carolers, buy a tree, and hang ornaments, all the while getting to know each other. Included in this by the end is Sara getting Peter and his father to reconcile.
The two finally get the meeting with Wilson, but Sara blows it by telling Wilson they basically don’t need him because he’s a dick. He doesn’t take that too well, and Peter is mad at her.
It ends rather anticlimacticly, as she finds a way to sneak into Wilson’s limo and convince him to take the account. They don’t really get into how she convinces him, and maybe we don’t want to know. Peter forgives her, they make out a little, and that’s the end of the film. I don’t recall ever seeing the clock strike midnight or anything sappy like that, so they missed a golden opportunity there.
I could mention Peter’s Aunt Libby – who owns the Quaint Inn they stay in at White Ridge – or Sara’s best friend Molly, who also somehow takes advantage of Sara, but really, I’ve told you everything they want you to know about either of them.
For a Hallmark picture, there weren’t enough unintentionally funny moments or cringe-worthy ones to make this a classic in the Hallmark library, but Lacey Chabert almost makes up for it with her smile.
Rating: 
