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healingmirthMaddie loves shoes and somehow made a company out of that. Having sold the company and found herself completely rudderless, she is back home for Christmas, where she will (*gasp*) inevitably run into her high school sweetheart.
Carter is a woodworker/furniture shop manager who has made his home in the town where he and Maddie grew up, and is working for Maddie's family's business. The only things I like about him are his work ethic and his appropriate level of disregard for how important this imperiled high school dance is.
This, friends, is the point where Homegrown Christmas broke me. It leads into a cute idea about a thing Maddie used to do as a kid which they IMMEDIATELY step all over. I can not get over how clumsy this movie is. How it is simultaneously over-written and under-written, sometimes within the space of 30 seconds.
Just. Y'all. Y'all. This movie is Not Good.
The cast (Lori Loughlin as Maddie, Victor Webster as Carter, some other people as other people, Isabella Giannulli as Carter's niece Ava) - great! The cinematography and set design and whatnot - mostly also fine! The director was...probably doing their best?
The writing is... when I was thinking, last night, about how it was waiting on my DVR, I did consider watching some of it on mute to see if it improved the experience. Also, turning on captions to see if the dialogue was really all as terrible as it seemed. I did not do that, but only because I left the movie playing while I was doing other things today. I just wasn't willing to stand still and let it win again.
Look. This all my fault. I made a bad call to overlook what were serious flaws in the first five minutes because all these movies make the same dumb mistakes in the name of expediency and not trusting their audience to figure it out from hints. Fine. I was lulled into a false sense of competence by the establishing scenes, which were, in order: 1) corporate babble, 2) the heavy-handed backstory shoehorning that you just have to roll with in most of these movies and then 3) small-talk with a Big City Driver chauffeuring Maddie back to her Charming Small Town.
I'm willing to roll with some nonsense, and entertain the idea that these currently middle-aged former high school sweethearts are meant for each other, if they could just have one uninterrupted conversation. We've all read that fic.
Here is the thing. Carter needles Maddie, constantly. Only Maddie. I think some of it is supposed to be cute, and the same collections of words he uses to pick on her in this movie could be cute, next week once they've gotten their shit together, but right now, he's just being mean for no reason.
Here is what we are meant to believe, and this is meant to justify all manner of rudeness, including Carter poking holes in Maddie's cover story when he finds her trying to dodge him outside her mother's house.
They were MADLY IN LOVE in high school until he JILTED HER by NOT SHOWING UP AT THE TRAIN STATION when they were going to move to New York together after graduation, and then they Never Spoke Again, I Guess, Even Though She Comes Home for a Day or so Every Christmas.
God, everything about this makes less sense by the minute.
So Carter genuinely makes beautiful things from chunks of wood, with his own hands, for fun and profit, and couldn't imagine his way to a successful business in New York City, as opposed to New York Somewhere Upstate. Maddie likes shoes.
Somehow we get from liking shoes to running her own shoe business for a long time and a lot of money. Did she go to college? Business school? Unclear. Did she design shoes in her youth, or do anything traditionally creative? Apparently not.
It wasn't until the rewatch that I realized what a mystery it is where the shoes actually came from. Her mom "never throws anything out" but there aren't piles of sketch books or any crafting supplies or whatever other detritus a budding shoe designer might have generated in her childhood bedroom.
What she does still have is the cheerleading baton, which she was terrible at. What are we doing here? Are we establishing that she's a klutz? Because there are literally hundreds of items that she could have picked up in this scene instead of that baton that would have contributed to the story rather than muddling it. Is this intended to indicate to use that she does not, in fact, lead a charmed life? Because she was bad at baton-twirling as a teenager?
I guess what she loves is business? Entrepreneurship, if you want to be fancy about it. That's fine. But that was not what it said on the tin.
She doesn't have a dog. No one has a dog. I wish this movie had a dog.
Hallie, Maddie's much younger sister, feels justifiably abandoned by her fancy sister who ran off to pursue her own dreams and can't seem to remember the most basic details of her Hallie's adolescence. Hallie has a daughter, and a husband with whom she's clearly in love, and a great relationship with her mother, all of whom make compromises for each other's success and happiness. Hallie's emotional maturity is not the problem here.
She can't cook! She doesn't know how to relax! She doesn't know anything about her kid sister, whom she professes to love.
As several people tell us (and her) repeatedly, Maddie can do anything she puts her mind to. It does appear that the only things she has ever put her mind to were planning her winter dance in high school, starting a shoe company, and planning this year's winter dance. It's fine to be bad at cooking and baton twirling and...walking down icy stairs, I guess, if they were things she didn't want to learn to do, but there's being bad at baking and decorating cookies and then there's putting salt into the dough instead of sugar.
If I were Maddie, I would have an existential crisis, too. At least they got that part right.
Leaving aside, forever, the fact that that is not how dreams work:
The B plots, in clankingly obvious echoes of Maddie running off to the city to pursue her dreams while Carter stayed behind for security or whatever, are: Carter's teenage niece who is a ~wonderful~ aspiring fashion designer with dreams of the Big City; and the struggle to maintain a successful family business. These plots also manage to be both super repetitive and clunky within their own arcs. Also there's some borderline deception on Maddie's part that seems inconsistent with her having been a successful CEO whose employees loved her, but whatever.
Also, like it even matters at this point, but there is just so much lazy garbage in this, in six different directions. Girls take a long time to get ready for a dance, har-de-har-har. At the winter dance, the principal of what appears to be a school with about fifty students, introduces himself as the principal, to this small crowd consisting almost entirely of kids who have attended his school for one-to-four years. He certainly appears to be the only black person in the entire town. Hallmark movies are notoriously white, but come on, y'all. Thanks for making sure we noticed him, and that he had a name, I guess.
No.
the verdict: 1 out of 5 candy canes. Maybe 1 out of 10 candy canes.
Candy canes instead of stars or snowflakes or everything else most of you voted for because I could sharpen it a point to poke the writer in the forehead if I ever meet them.
Carter is a woodworker/furniture shop manager who has made his home in the town where he and Maddie grew up, and is working for Maddie's family's business. The only things I like about him are his work ethic and his appropriate level of disregard for how important this imperiled high school dance is.
Aw, I love Christmas lights. The way they blink in a pattern.
This, friends, is the point where Homegrown Christmas broke me. It leads into a cute idea about a thing Maddie used to do as a kid which they IMMEDIATELY step all over. I can not get over how clumsy this movie is. How it is simultaneously over-written and under-written, sometimes within the space of 30 seconds.
Just. Y'all. Y'all. This movie is Not Good.
The cast (Lori Loughlin as Maddie, Victor Webster as Carter, some other people as other people, Isabella Giannulli as Carter's niece Ava) - great! The cinematography and set design and whatnot - mostly also fine! The director was...probably doing their best?
The writing is... when I was thinking, last night, about how it was waiting on my DVR, I did consider watching some of it on mute to see if it improved the experience. Also, turning on captions to see if the dialogue was really all as terrible as it seemed. I did not do that, but only because I left the movie playing while I was doing other things today. I just wasn't willing to stand still and let it win again.
Look. This all my fault. I made a bad call to overlook what were serious flaws in the first five minutes because all these movies make the same dumb mistakes in the name of expediency and not trusting their audience to figure it out from hints. Fine. I was lulled into a false sense of competence by the establishing scenes, which were, in order: 1) corporate babble, 2) the heavy-handed backstory shoehorning that you just have to roll with in most of these movies and then 3) small-talk with a Big City Driver chauffeuring Maddie back to her Charming Small Town.
I'm willing to roll with some nonsense, and entertain the idea that these currently middle-aged former high school sweethearts are meant for each other, if they could just have one uninterrupted conversation. We've all read that fic.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Be nice to me."
Here is the thing. Carter needles Maddie, constantly. Only Maddie. I think some of it is supposed to be cute, and the same collections of words he uses to pick on her in this movie could be cute, next week once they've gotten their shit together, but right now, he's just being mean for no reason.
Here is what we are meant to believe, and this is meant to justify all manner of rudeness, including Carter poking holes in Maddie's cover story when he finds her trying to dodge him outside her mother's house.
They were MADLY IN LOVE in high school until he JILTED HER by NOT SHOWING UP AT THE TRAIN STATION when they were going to move to New York together after graduation, and then they Never Spoke Again, I Guess, Even Though She Comes Home for a Day or so Every Christmas.
God, everything about this makes less sense by the minute.
So Carter genuinely makes beautiful things from chunks of wood, with his own hands, for fun and profit, and couldn't imagine his way to a successful business in New York City, as opposed to New York Somewhere Upstate. Maddie likes shoes.
I've run a company for 17 years.
Somehow we get from liking shoes to running her own shoe business for a long time and a lot of money. Did she go to college? Business school? Unclear. Did she design shoes in her youth, or do anything traditionally creative? Apparently not.
It wasn't until the rewatch that I realized what a mystery it is where the shoes actually came from. Her mom "never throws anything out" but there aren't piles of sketch books or any crafting supplies or whatever other detritus a budding shoe designer might have generated in her childhood bedroom.
What she does still have is the cheerleading baton, which she was terrible at. What are we doing here? Are we establishing that she's a klutz? Because there are literally hundreds of items that she could have picked up in this scene instead of that baton that would have contributed to the story rather than muddling it. Is this intended to indicate to use that she does not, in fact, lead a charmed life? Because she was bad at baton-twirling as a teenager?
I guess what she loves is business? Entrepreneurship, if you want to be fancy about it. That's fine. But that was not what it said on the tin.
"You need to talk about the elephant in the room."
"No elephants, I'm a dog person."
She doesn't have a dog. No one has a dog. I wish this movie had a dog.
Hallie does want to connect, she just doesn't know how.
Hallie, Maddie's much younger sister, feels justifiably abandoned by her fancy sister who ran off to pursue her own dreams and can't seem to remember the most basic details of her Hallie's adolescence. Hallie has a daughter, and a husband with whom she's clearly in love, and a great relationship with her mother, all of whom make compromises for each other's success and happiness. Hallie's emotional maturity is not the problem here.
If I am so determined, talented and capable, how come I can't make an edible batch of cookies?
She can't cook! She doesn't know how to relax! She doesn't know anything about her kid sister, whom she professes to love.
As several people tell us (and her) repeatedly, Maddie can do anything she puts her mind to. It does appear that the only things she has ever put her mind to were planning her winter dance in high school, starting a shoe company, and planning this year's winter dance. It's fine to be bad at cooking and baton twirling and...walking down icy stairs, I guess, if they were things she didn't want to learn to do, but there's being bad at baking and decorating cookies and then there's putting salt into the dough instead of sugar.
If I were Maddie, I would have an existential crisis, too. At least they got that part right.
That's the funny thing about dreams, Ava - if you believe in them, they come true.
Leaving aside, forever, the fact that that is not how dreams work:
The B plots, in clankingly obvious echoes of Maddie running off to the city to pursue her dreams while Carter stayed behind for security or whatever, are: Carter's teenage niece who is a ~wonderful~ aspiring fashion designer with dreams of the Big City; and the struggle to maintain a successful family business. These plots also manage to be both super repetitive and clunky within their own arcs. Also there's some borderline deception on Maddie's part that seems inconsistent with her having been a successful CEO whose employees loved her, but whatever.
Also, like it even matters at this point, but there is just so much lazy garbage in this, in six different directions. Girls take a long time to get ready for a dance, har-de-har-har. At the winter dance, the principal of what appears to be a school with about fifty students, introduces himself as the principal, to this small crowd consisting almost entirely of kids who have attended his school for one-to-four years. He certainly appears to be the only black person in the entire town. Hallmark movies are notoriously white, but come on, y'all. Thanks for making sure we noticed him, and that he had a name, I guess.
Maybe what's been missing the whole time was Carter?
No.
the verdict: 1 out of 5 candy canes. Maybe 1 out of 10 candy canes.
Candy canes instead of stars or snowflakes or everything else most of you voted for because I could sharpen it a point to poke the writer in the forehead if I ever meet them.
