Written by: Carrie Freedle, Amyn Kaderali
Directed by: Bradley Walsh
Starring: Kat Graham, Quincy Brown, Ethan Peck, Ron Cephas Jones
Rated: TV-PG
Watch the trailer
Plot
A struggling but talented photographer inherits an antique holiday advent calendar, the contents of which seem to predict the future. Will this magical calendar lead her to love this holiday season?
Verdict
If you want a Hallmark channel type Christmas movie that asks very little while providing a predictable story. This is it. It's not a good movie, but it does achieve the goal of being a holiday movie that you can miss large portions at a time and not be lost.
Skip it.
Review
Just in the introduction this crams a lot of Christmas tropes into a very short time.
Abby is a photographer that wishes she was chasing her dream, and Josh is a childhood friend and travel blogger back in town. Josh's hair is an intriguing style choice. At first I thought it was a slicked back middle part like gangsters from the '30s and '40s but it's actually a middle part braid that wraps around his head. He also has a strong affinity for cookies. The movie frequently highlights Josh eating cookies for no discernible reason.
While the movie frequently tries to make it seem like Abby is hard up, she has a seemingly good job and she has a very nice apartment.
Grandpa gives her a special advent calendar. He wanted to be secretive about it which seems difficult when it's three feet tall.
While Abby doesn't notice at first, the calendar seems to foreshadow what will happen during the day. This really seems like a fortune cookie/horoscope scenario that the toys in the advent calendar are so general that you'll find some magical link regardless. The movie actually supports this idea and undercuts the them of the movie, when Abby later reinterprets the meaning the toys had with an even looser connection than the first time.
The most magical thing about the advent calendar is that none of the toys rattle around inside when people carry it. It also lights up with no power source and only opens on prescribed days.
Abby meets a potential love interest when a Christmas tree falls off the roof of his Audi. I have to wonder how he got a tree home previous years. The advent calendar seems to support the connection. There are lots of coincidences, but that relationship goes South when he questions the magical advent calendar.
There's the love triangle, occupational ups and downs, it all works out in the end. You will be able to guess exactly what happens in this movie five minutes in. One question I have is whether the town can support to portrait studios. I'm guessing not.
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