INGREDIENTS
1 lb sweet or hot Italian sausage (removed from casing if in casing) 

Christmas Chalet —starring nobody and no-one—is a surprise entry for me this year. It has come up zero times in my searches for movies to review this year, but came up as a suggestion after watching another movie for the first time on Amazon Prime. A story of a divorced photographer, her daughter, and her mother all taking a holiday work-vacation to a “chalet” in Vermont, so she can take photos of the town and chalet for an online travel agency. Unfortunately for them, it was accidentally double-booked with a Scrooge of a man who was self-isolating to finish his latest YA novel.

I was surprised because, while starring nobody and no-one, the acting was good, the cinematography didn’t seem completely amateur, and the story—while always a bit predictable in these movies—was sweet. The writing for the grandmother is particularly brilliant. Also, they didn’t write the angsty daughter/granddaughter as irredeemably caustic then suddenly change her to happy-go-lucky, as a lot of these stories do. She has heartbreak from her parents’ divorce and a boy she likes, but she isn’t just a bitch for no reason let alone a bitch every minute of the day. She has some mood swings, like a teenager should, and it made her small arc much more believable. And it passes the Bechdel Test. Low bar, I know, but so few movies these days do, let alone these schmaltzy holiday rackets.

I recommend!

Amazon Prime

I was prepared to be so-so on this one. The 12 Dates of Christmas (2011), starring Amy Smart and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zack!), is a show is about a young woman being set up on a blind date for Christmas Eve (who does this?!). The twist? It’s really Groundhog Day! That is, she is perpetually stuck re-living the same Christmas Eve, from afternoon through evening. Then at midnight she is reset back to the afternoon, while being the only person retaining memories from the previous days’ adventures.

While the concept is very Done, the execution is really cute. Amy Smart is a low-key fave of mine, and she plays a character on a challenging journey who really uses it to learn, grow, and enjoy life rather than a darker Sisyphus-ian turn it could have taken. She’s plucky without being annoyingly so. And Mark-Paul as the usual “too handsome to be a regular guy, too regular-guy to be an annoying supermodel-type” is charming and believable, while leaving space for Amy’s character to move through her stages of growth—the recognizable cycle of denial, negotiation, anger, and acceptance.

We know the girl is going to get the guy. The photo on the cover of the box is the punchline writ large in these holiday romance movies (not that we even need that to know how the hero’s journey will end). But the path to that is filled with cute side characters she meets and befriends—and learns from—along the way. The ending may be a little predictable and bordering cheesy, but we wouldn’t love these movies if they weren’t. 

Definitely recommend.

ABC Family/Disney+