The queen of the Christmas movie is former Mean Girl Lacey Chabert, set to star in her 40th Hallmark movie, The Christmas Quest.
Chabert has the essential likeability required of a leading lady, which puts a sweet smile above overt sexiness. She also regularly demonstrates a willingness to wear clothes that could be on loan from your nearest Millers sales rack.
Christa Taylor Brown, Nikki DeLoach and Erin Krakow have also mastered the key Christmas movie traits of chaste kissing, pretending empty coffee cups are full and steaming hot and throwing flour during cookie-baking scenes.
They are adept at playing journalists, bloggers, chefs, event planners, fashion designers or stressed executives who must return unwillingly to their hometown before Christmas. The more unrealistic the depiction of their careers, the better.
Lacey Chabert and Kristoffer Polaha in The Christmas Quest (2024).
Journalists will be sent on assignments to cosy bed and breakfasts for a week, all expenses paid. Company boards will oversee the quality of blog posts and computers won’t need to be plugged in on desks in ridiculously large offices.
The men are mostly interchangeable, with the bodies of personal trainers but a willingness to cover their muscles with plaid shirts. In risque movies, these men are divorced, but mostly, they are widowed with precocious children or brokenhearted after dating uptight women from the city.
There is always a sassy friend, slightly less attractive than the main star. Quite frequently, they are people of colour to demonstrate diversity. If they’re lucky, the plot line will match them up with the lead actors, best friend, brother, or even father.
Christa Taylor Brown and Chad Michael Murray in Christmas on Windmill Way (2023).
Finally, there is a recognisable actor from an eighties or nineties TV series, willing to add some faded Hollywood glamour with only 10 lines to memorise. Lindsay Wagner from The Bionic Woman, Wendy Malick from Just Shoot Me and Patrick Duffy from Dallas are on the producers’ speed dial.
The cast is the only surprise. The lead character will break up with her boyfriend, who works too hard with a minimum of fuss, move to her hometown and marry the first man she sees after getting off a plane at an airport that looks like a local gym.
They will kiss once and only once before declaring their undying love and constantly be surrounded by enough fairy lights to keep Bunnings profitable for the next five years.
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The problem with Netflix’s attempts to crash the Christmas movie party is that they’re trying too hard. They have kept the fairy lights but stray from the formula with outrageous plots involving magical snowmen who come to life with zero per cent body fat and single-figure IQs, or handymen willing to dance like the Aldi version of the Chippendales.
The charm of a Hallmark-style Christmas movie is its lo-fi production and complete lack of ambition. The harder the producers work, the harder it is to watch. Don’t change the one thing about Christmas that is guaranteed to bring you peace and joy, and keep your blood pressure at a healthy level in a running time of one hour and 24 minutes.