A Christmas Love Story premiered on Hallmark Channel's Countdown to Christmas on December 7th and stars Kristin Chenoweth (Katherine/Miss Clark) and Scott Wolf (Greg). This was the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie this season. While I think that this probably had more significance when these movies appeared on network televisions, I found that the main difference was that that commercials seemed to be primarily long Hallmark ads.
RATING (out of 5): 🎄🎄🎄
General Movie Details: Katherine is a former Broadway star who is now working as a teacher. She is currently rehearsing her choir for their big Christmas Eve choral concert. Unfortunately the composer for their original song has flaked and she is forced to write music and lyrics and rehearsal the new song about angels in less than 14 days. Greg is an architect and widowed father to Kevin, a high school student. Kevin came to volunteer one day and after he got caught singing and piano playing after rehearsal he is recruited for the choir. However, Greg has some serious apprehensions because he thought the Kevin was volunteering at a start up to bolster his resume for getting into a good business program at college.
Meet Cute Moment: Katherine gets into a car not realizing it's actually a rideshare so they meed over her bags of angel wing costumes for the choir. Of course it turns out that he's the dad of her undiscovered vocal performer.
Obligatory moment of snark/personal rant: There is a lot that could be said about the questionable behaviour that is often found at the heart of romantic comedies... and some day I might just delve down that problematic rabbit hole. In this film we see the unusual situation where the women is exhibiting some of the hallmark poor choices and I feel it would be unfair not to address them. Just because you have Greg and Kevin's address in Connecticut does not mean that you should travel out there to try and convince Greg to allow his son to participate. This is especially true after Katherine called and left several messages to which Greg hadn't responded. And since this is a romantic dramedy this is totally fine so much so that they then spend the day doing Christmas things like getting a tree. Not even a shadow of awkwardness even when she gets stuck in Connecticut because of a storm. I actually liked the storyline about adoption and searching for your child/birth mom but I do wish that the writers planted seeds of that a bit earlier so it was part of the entire story instead of all coming up in the last half of the movie. Do you think that it would get weird if Katherine and Greg were to get married? Kevin's stepmom would also be his birth mom... seems a bit much to have to explain to outsiders.
Hallmark Movie Connection: Kristin Chenoweth is a well-known actor on TV and Broadway but I think that this might be her first Hallmark film. Some of my favorite TV appearances by her were her role on West Wing and Disney's Descendants. Scott Wolf is a TV veteran who also appears to be making his Hallmark debut. Scott previously starred in a holiday movie on the legacy ABC Family network called Picking Up & Dropping Off (2003) with Amanda Detmer that I recall really enjoying as well.
I am now wondering if Hallmark Hall of Fame movies typically include actors that are more well known and are not typically in Hallmark-esque films. Let me know if you think that there is a meaningful difference anymore between the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies and the better movies in their lineup.
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