The Mistletoe Secret premiered on Hallmark Channel's Countdown to Christmas on November 10th and stars Kellie Pickler (Aria) and Tyler Hynes (Alex). Supporting cast includes Patrick Duffy as Aria's dad and Christopher Russell as Sterling Masters.
RATING (out of 5): 🎄🎄
General Movie Details: Aria is the owner of the Mistletoe Diner in Midway, Utah and also the chairperson of the local Christmas council. This year's holiday season is an important one in Midway because the local businesses have been losing business to the new fancy ski resort that opened nearby. Aria has nominated their town to be featured as the holiday adventure locale to be featured on the website of Sterling Masters, host of the travel show Masters of Travel. What she doesn't know is that Sterling Masters has a ghost writer (his best friend Alex who is also a novelist) who handles the website for him. Alex is less than thrilled to be spending 3 weeks in a small town for the holiday because they are all the same. Alex is pleasantly surprised and finds keeping his cover story straight is pretty easy until THE Sterling Masters arrives in town and tries to steal the spotlight and the girl.
Meet Cute Moment: Alex enters the closed diner and follows Aria's singing and catches her off guard while she is hanging ornaments in the banquet room. He luckily catches the glass mistletoe ornament (it's a thing that will come up again) and prevents it from shattering. Unfortunately, he then accidentally blows a fuse while trying to "help" with the lights. Aria takes pity on him and hooks him up with some coffee and pie. She gives him the scoop on the town while he kind of talks down about small towns at Christmas but he really does like her pie.
Notable Knitwear Alert: Alex is sporting a cozy blue cabled sweater with a shawl collar at the very end of the movie. I think that I might have to do some pattern searching because I think that sweater would be a great project and a warm sweater to have for this cold winter.
Giant Nutcracker Sighting: There is a giant Nutcracker that can be seen in the background during the snowman building scavenger hunt.
Obligatory moment of snark/personal rant: I love the idea of the town's Christmas passport that you can get stamped at each event you attend - breakfast with Santa, tree lighting, yule log, snowman scavenger hunt and so many more. I appreciate that they allude to Aria being a transplant from North Carolina because her accent does stand out and is a bit off compared to the other characters. In general, while I like the premise I feel it fell flat. I didn't really feel like there was real chemistry or a connection between the main characters. They seemed friendly but nothing really special. I also know that you aren't really supposed to "like" Sterling Masters but since he's Alex's best friend I kind of expected him to be less superficial and more likable. He redeems himself in the end but he still doesn't improve on the likability meter. Sterling also seems very stupid and/or clueless about maintaining both of their cover stories. While I know that the movie plot has to plant the seeds to uncovering the deception for the other characters, this seemed too contrived and abundantly obvious. The magical view in the background landscape really looks like a painted set piece and the shooting star was an almost comical lighting effect. Just saying that should have spent a few more $$ on getting this look more realistic.
Hallmark Movie Connection: Kellie Pickler was previously in the Graceland series (Christmas (2018) and Wedding at Graceland (2019)) with Wes Brown. She is primarily a singer but this movie is her third movie with Hallmark. Tyler Hynes was in It's Christmas, Eve (2018) with LeAnn Rimes, another singer who dips her toe in the acting pool.
Feel free to share your thoughts on the movie and whether it lived up to your expectations.
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