2005 Home for the Holidays starring Sean Young (Bladerunner) is very VERy different than the 1972 Home for the Holidays* with a young Sally Field (everything). One starts with a tragic death and orphans, the other is a fun holiday romp involving a father asking daughters to come home at Christmas to kill his new wife who he thinks is poisoning him. Happy Holidays!

(*or the Holly Hunter-starring, Jodie Foster-directed movie from 1995)

12 Days of Christmas Eve, in which Steven Webber (Wings) and Molly Shannon (SUPAHSTAR! SNL) play out a sort of Scrooge-meets-Groundhog Day story of a rich businessman who has lost touch with his humanity and keeps replaying Christmas Eve over and over to try and get it right. Bonus Teryl Rothery (Stargate SG-1) as the ex-wife, and Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy) as the South American businesswoman. It took a bit to get charming, but it got there. Enjoyed.

In my second Howard Hessman holiday film of the season, 2005’s problematically named “Crazy for Christmas” (A Christmas in Vermont being the other one), we experience a far-too-drawn-out Christmas Eve with a single mother limo driver and a zany millionaire inexplicably throwing all his money away. Is he dying? Is he compensating? Has he experienced a psychotic break? And will this abrasive single mom get the answers she seeks before she pushes everyone away with feckless grating negativity? Don’t bother tuning in to find out; it’s boring as hell.

The Christmas Switch: Natasha Henstridge and Leo the Whitelighter—ahem, I mean Brian Krause—star in this delightful redemption story where an old man just wants to be Santa one more time and another guy just wants to bone Natasha Henstridge.

Okay, not really, it had more to it and some charming qualities, but honestly...**SPOILERS**

...the “we’ve never met, but I took your dad’s job and my alcoholic father used to beat me up so maybe you wanna skate and hold hands?” ending really killed the whole movie right at the finish for me. WHYYYY try to make this into a love story at the last minute??

If you ever wondered what Diz from Starship Troopers and Christopher from Gilmore Girls would be like as a contentious advice column journalist love story set to a Christmas theme in 2005, “His and Her Christmas” is the movie for you!

Note: Christmas is entirely incidental and nothing to do with the story ultimately. And this was BEFORE the huge Christmas movie push in the past few years, so it has no damn excuse.

#HolidayMovieMusings2019 #HuluMovies