tek's rating: ¾

A Christmas Movie Christmas, on UPtv
Christmas Specials Wiki; IMDb; TV Tropes
streaming sites: Amazon; Fandango; Google Play; Hulu; YouTube

This first aired in 2019, but I was unaware of its existence until I came across it online in 2024, and I liked the sound of the premise. So I watched it on Hulu.

There are these two sisters, Eve and Lacey Bell. Eve is a huge fan of Christmas movies, you know, the kind that air on Hallmark every year. Lacey is not. One night they're out walking and talking together, when Lacey wishes her life could be a Christmas movie. A street corner Santa Claus hears the wish, and Eve makes a donation to him. Lacey also makes a wish and donation, but doesn't say what the wish is. The next morning, they wake up in the small town of Holiday Falls, where everything is very Christmassy. They're staying with their Gram Gram, but they've never met her. They soon realize they're in a Christmas movie, which Eve is excited about, but Lacey just wants to get home.

Eve discovers she has a boyfriend, a famous singer named Russell, who is played by an actor named Chad, who's been in a lot of the movies Eve watches. (Though he doesn't see himself as an actor, he only knows himself as Russell.) Eve also meets the proprietor of an inn, Dustin (Ryan Merriman), with whom she begins planning the town's upcoming Christmas celebration. And of course she begins falling for him, and doesn't tell him she has a boyfriend. Meanwhile, Lacey meets a baker named Paul, who keeps giving her hand-drawn Christmas cards. At first she thinks he's too stalkery, but eventually she starts to like him. Eve and Lacey also befriend a young girl named London. And there's a Scrooge-like man who looks like Eve's boss, in the real world. And eventually Dustin's ex-girlfriend, Noele, comes to town to help plan the Christmas celebration, though she has very different ideas of how it should be.

Anyway, Eve and Lacy figure they have to play out the movie (and fulfill both of their wishes) in order to get home again. I don't want to spoil any more of the plot, but I did kind of like the movie. I like the meta nature of the plot (a Christmas TV movie about people being trapped inside a Christmas TV movie). And I liked both Eve and Lacey well enough. It's all rather silly and saccharine, as Christmas TV movies generally are, but I think it works for the story. It's definitely not a great movie, but it was reasonably entertaining.


holiday TV movies index