Ranked from Least-Favorite (Worst) to Favorite (Best) and Updated Throughout the Season
What a boring, bland waste of time. Yet another "girl returns home to her small town to close a business" movie mixed with a "plan a Christmas festival" movie, this time starring the usually-charming Brooke D'Orsay and the utterly devoid of charisma Trent Donovan. I loved D'Orsay in 2017's Miss Christmas (it was my favorite of that year's crop), but after this and last year's Christmas in Love, I've realized her default is just a giant, toothy grin at all times, and that's both exhausting and uninteresting. Add in a terrible supporting performance from Ron Lea as her father in which he can't decide which accent he wants to use (in the first few moments of the film, he pronounces nostalgic as "noss-stalgic"), a stupid character trying to get his successful, New York City executive daughter to move back home and keep a wooden toy shop open in 2019, and you have a truly forgettable, seemingly interminable movie that represents the worst of the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Christmas films. It's schlocky, silly, grating, and full of dull padding.
9. A Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas (Aired Thursday, November 7, 2019)
The only reason this isn't the worst of the season is because Nostalgic Christmas exists. What a snooze of a movie. There is nothing distinctive or fun or emotional about this; the acting is stilted and there is absolutely zero chemistry between leads Rachel Leigh Cook, who was so charming fifteen years ago but now may as well have "I'm here for the paycheck" tattooed on her face, and Benjamin Ayres, who is mildly attractive in the way some car salesmen are attractive. There's very little plot, and what plot there is does not inspire. This is the kind of movie where you forget what it's about as you're watching it.
8. Holiday Hearts (Aired Saturday, November 23, 2019)
Paul Campbell is my favorite Hallmark leading man, mostly because he's not just a beautiful face with a mega-watt smile. He looks like a regular guy, and he charms in every movie thanks to his humor and personality. But for whatever reason, Hallmark keeps giving him terrible Christmas movies to star in (last year was A Godwink Christmas), and that sucks because he starred in one of my top five all-time favorite Hallmark Christmas movies way back in 2013 (Window Wonderland). This one is dull and lacks any kind of common sense, and it's made more rough because Paul and Ashley Williams have zero romantic chemistry but all the friendship chemistry. So it's weird when they get together at the end. The whole plot hinges on a bunch of ridiculous things (that a guy is in the hospital for days on end for a minor surgery, that there's a maybe-magical reindeer, etc), and there are a handful of scenes that are just extended commercials for Balsam Hill. Paul and Ashley make it watchable (though I'd never willfully see it again), and therefore not the worst movie of the season, but it's not an easy one to get through.
7. Our Christmas Love Song (Aired Sunday, November 24, 2019)
I always think positively of Alicia Witt when she's announced for a movie every year, but this just reminded me that I almost never actually like those movies (The Mistletoe Inn is the exception, and even that one wasn't all that great). This one revolves around a stupid story about potentially plagiarizing an unremarkable song and Witt's character returning home to find her original sheet music from when she wrote it in high school. (Which, without any kind of attempt at copyrighting, would never actually hold up if she got sued.) But facing a potentially career-ruining lawsuit doesn't phase Witt, so she decides to bake cookies and throw a Christmas concert instead of looking for proof that she didn't plagiarize this song. So dumb. Also Witt is supposed to be playing a huge country star, yet she only ever had one gold record? Ugh. This is really only ranked so high because the movies behind it are more boring (at least this one has music, however mediocre it is!) and bland.
6. A Godwink Christmas: Meant for Love (Aired Sunday, November 17, 2019)
This one was rough. Though much better than the disastrous first film last season, at least that movie had a decent cast; the acting this time around is occasionally painful, especially toward the beginning. Kathie Lee Gifford's face doesn't move, and Cindy Busby has all the warmth of a refrigerator. But it gets better over the first hour, when the movie turns into a giant meet-cute, which is both adorable and sometimes cheesy (as romances often are!). But then the narrative devolves into a mushy, sappy, manipulative movie about chronic illness. The whole idea of "godwinks" (coincidences that are actually all part of "God's plan") is still stupid, too.
5. A Christmas Miracle (Aired Thursday, November 14, 2019)
As bland as the title, this one felt very retro, and not in the best way. The plot of a journalist looking for a Christmas miracle to write about, only to find a man trying to reunite with his estranged child sounds like a 90s made-for-TV movie and the element of Tamera Mowry's character's son befriending the man has echoes of Christmas on Division Street. The writer also seems to have no idea how magazines work, since the whole premise is looking for a Christmas story for the December issue the week before Christmas. Anyone who reads a magazine knows they're published 1-2 months in advance, let alone how much earlier the pieces are written. But the movie is still inoffensive and relatively swift, though the romance between Mowry and Brooks Darnell's characters feels shoehorned when they had better friendship chemistry than lover chemistry.
4. A Merry Christmas Match (Aired Friday, October 25, 2019)
A very standard entry into the canon of Hallmark films. Ashley Newbrough is supremely charming and sweet as the leading lady, but as much as I love Kyle Dean Massey, his character comes across as a bit of creep. There's a nice scene in the middle of the movie where the central couple takes a star-lit walk through town, but the scenes around that one aren't nearly as interesting or sweet or well-written. There are too many plots and too many characters (the wannabe girlfriend in LA, the friend who runs the music program in town), but it's just fine for a Movies & Mysteries entry, which tend toward being more low-key.
3. Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen (Aired Saturday, November 30, 2019)
It is really a testament to how utterly terrible the Miracles of Christmas films are this year (and maybe every year) that this particular movie is so high up on the list, because it is thoroughly mediocre. It's everything you think of as a Hallmark Christmas movie: a too-serious CEO is charmed into loving Christmas by an obnoxiously joyful young woman who wears ugly Christmas sweaters and scarves and drinks lots of hot chocolate. And there are some almost-parallels to a Jane Austen novel. On top of that, both Erin Krakow and Luke Macfarlane are miscast here (though he tries to make up for it by playing his stuffy character as almost a parody of Austen's leading men).
Yet... it's still one of the best offerings of the season, if only because it's exactly what you'd expect it to be. It doesn't swing for the fences, but it doesn't strike out either.
2. Holiday for Heroes (Aired Friday, November 8, 2019)
They don't get much more manipulative than Hallmark's annual military Christmas movie, but this one was one of the less offensive ones. Melissa Claire Egan is immediately one of the best new leading ladies of the season, her combination of optimism and sweetness and caring making for a winning presence, especially next to the typically stoic but somehow still warm Marc Blucas. They have nice chemistry together, particularly in the s'mores scene, and even the more cloying scenes of trying to bring the troops home for Christmas and create care packages don't grate as much as they could thanks to the eternally upbeat performances. The final scene is ridiculous and stupid, but it's also effective in its manipulation of the audience's emotion, just like every video on the internet of a dog jumping into its soldier owner's arms when they come home.
1. Two Turtle Doves (Aired Friday, November 1, 2019)
Here's a shocking statement: this is legitimately a decent movie. There are a few eye-roll moments, but no other film Hallmark has ever so deftly and touchingly dealt with grief, loss, and moving on like Two Turtle Doves does. What is a mashup of some very typical plot points (successful girl returns home after the death of a relative to complete a bunch of Christmas traditions and decide whether to give up her career and move back into her childhood home, and oh, yeah, the next-door neighbor is a widower with an adorable child) doesn't play nearly as poorly as it could thanks to some strong writing from Sarah Montana (who gave a similar TED talk in real life to Nikki DeLoach's character) and two really earthy, sweet performances by Nikki DeLoach and Michael Rady. This was a surprisingly emotional movie; heavier than many entries tend to be but ultimately enjoyable.
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