November 27, 2024 • 37 mins
Seasons greetings! It’s time to ring in the holidays with the official start of the TENTH year of Stocking Stuffers! Emily is off to the races with a new entry from the Hallmark canon: 2024’s Holiday Mismatch, a slight twist on the usual story with Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick reuniting from their Sabrina days to set up/break up their adult children. This is a solo effort to remind you all of the formula, but the guests are coming soon!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Weird. We mean best of headbands for you. No, I'm
not wearing this now. Don't be so uptight. There's a
new woman on the Christmas committee. She is such a
(00:25):
piece of work. He is so cute. I found your
dream girl.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Two kids, unlucky in love. This is going to be fun.
I'm two meddling mothers. This is my mother, Barbara.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Lauren is your Oh no Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Holiday mismatch only on Hallmark Channel.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oh hello, and welcome to side Quest season ten point
one of stocking Stuffers of the Feminine Critique. I'm Emily
without me today is Christine, who will be here soon.
But some of you know, if you have not listened
to this podcast in the past year, then perhaps you
(01:07):
have no idea what's going on. And I am sorry.
I'm sorry for so many things in this world right now,
but in part one of those things I apologize for
is the season of stocking Stuffers, which are a series
of episodes, typically shorter than are usually episodes, where I,
typically with the subsistence of a guest, tackle one of
(01:31):
these movies. And you heard the Travelers, so you know
what I mean by these movies. We are talking Hallmark
Lifetime Marvista, whatever it might be, but not the Great
Family Network because fuck them. But anything else that does
this thing? Where come it used to be December, but
then it became November and now it's like October first,
(01:52):
where these networks and Hallmark certainly pioneered it, many others
picked up a slack just correctly. Guess that what a
large chunk of the population of America. Certainly I don't
know about the rest of the world, and if these
are popular there, I'd love to know more. Actually, now
that I say that, but everybody likes to I guess
not think during this time, which I understand. The holidays
(02:14):
are busy, you're stress. It's the end of year. So
even if you're not celebrating the traditional December holidays, you
might have end of year budget things to think about.
Whatever it might be. This form of entertainment, which I
call the cozy Cardigan Christmas movie, it has certain templates
that it hits, certain tropes that it has to have,
(02:35):
and at the end of the day, you know, there's
a very little conflict for ninety minutes or two hours.
Once you're adding commercials, often for Daisy sour cream. We
will get to it, but at the end of the day,
you have consumed a candy cane, nothing significant, nothing that
is going to challenge your worldview but makes you feel
good or distracts you, or whatever it might be. I
(02:57):
started doing this ten years ago, which I can't believe.
I am saying that I've done ten years worth of
these things, and it came in part because I started
kind of catching these movies somehow. I don't exactly remember
how I ever decided to sit down and watch them,
and I could kind of couldn't contain how much I
had to say about them because they are so empty,
(03:19):
and yet in their emptiness, they'rein lives maybe a lot
of truth. I don't know. I'm getting very deep, but
it's been ten years of doing these I feel like
I should have more reason other than just I don't know.
I like to kind of identify the tropes and see
how many public domain Christmas movie songs you can cram
in eighty seven minutes of film, and the answer is
usually quite a bit. But the way these episodes go
(03:41):
is I will usually be joined by a guest and
Christine will be on one, but it will also be
a lot of special celebrity guest stars, just like I
was doing my own Christmas special. What a world. We
will take one of these movies. You will hear the
trailer for it. I will tell you where to find it.
This was a Hallmark of twenty twenty four, so it's
going to be findable on the Hallmark network. A lot
(04:01):
of these are going to Peacock, so if you have Peacock,
you can probably find them too. I won't always do
once from this year. I'll I like to dig around
find what's you know, kind of in the bottom barrel
of Hulu and so on. It's really fun if we
find some from the late nineties where they hadn't quite
figured out that this was the thing they could do,
but you could see always see bones of things. Anyway,
(04:21):
these are movies that are rarely good. Sometimes they are
Sometimes they they're funny, they're charming, sometimes there's chemistry or
they actually do have a little bit of something to
say the but that's like not really why we watch them.
We watch them just to kind of I don't know,
pull these things, and it's fascinating, and I'd like, I'm
(04:41):
clearly not the only one interested in this phenomenon, because
otherwise others wouldn't join me for it, and these movies
wouldn't be popular. But the first movie of the year
I usually like to do alone just because it kind
of sets the stage. It lets me kind of orient
my brain back into this world and let's talk about
this world. This world. And when I say that, I
(05:03):
mean the Cozy Cardigan universe. There are different presentations of it.
Sometimes there's fantasy elements. Sometimes it is just make it
as quick as you can in eight days and try
to spend as little money as possible. You will see
minor celebrities. Sometimes it is retirees who kind of come
in to do a couple of scenes one day. Sometimes
(05:23):
it's you know, fresh young faces just off the CW
network or whatever network is happening. Now. I'm old, guys,
I don't know what's cool anymore. These movies are not cool,
but yet a lot of people watch them. And I
always kind of make a statement here to say I
don't It's okay if you don't want to listen to
these episodes and you just want to wait for Christine
(05:45):
to come back and us to talk about movies in
a more intelligent manner. I won't be offended. Don't worry
about it. But if you like this stuff, then join me,
won't you for this journey down In today's case, Holiday Mismatch.
So we are going to dive into this movie. And
the way I structure this is I kind of give
a quick blood synopsis. I will go through the ten
(06:07):
things that we kind of have to have in these
movies and then all the little bonuses that come up
along the way. So Holiday is Match twenty twenty four
from Hallmark Network. This is directed by Caroline Librish Libershe.
Something that is notable for a lot of these movies
is that there are often women behind the camera, many
many female screenwriters, female directors. Hallmark has always been very
(06:32):
forward about being a kind of you know, a network
that has its mass appeal to women and Lifetime the
same way, but also hires a lot of women. So
that's nice to see. There is a scandal, and I
don't know how true it is of where supposedly there's
a Hallmark casting director who's like saying they need to
hire younger female leads and Lasha Shaber, who is my age,
(06:54):
is getting too old for this stuff. So we're gonna
keep a watch on that. See where it goes as
of now, I have a hard time believing Hallmark is
ready to ditch it's, you know, the face of its
Christmas movies. But I could be wrong, and they could
be yet another terrible company making terrible decisions because they
hate women, which I don't know if you know this,
but so it does a lot of this country. Anyway,
(07:16):
I digress. Holiday Mismatch, let's talk about it. I should
mention Caroline Lebershet Librish. I don't know, but I'm gonna
say Labour Shae because it sounds funner. Director has something
that is often true of many of these movies. Is
a fun game to play is how many Christmas movies
today have the directors made and how many lifetime thrillers
(07:40):
have they made? So Libershet some of her credits include
Sweet as Maple Syrup, Farmers Seeking Love, and Fuck Mary
Kill So right away, I do want to make a
point that Holiday Mismatch is both a typical Hallmark movie,
but it does, from a structural point of view, do
something very different. There is a romance. It is two
(08:01):
unlikely people who wants a control freak and one's a
free spirit, and they fall in love. However, that's not
really what the movie is about. Instead, the stars of
this movie are Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray Raya. I've
never been sure you know these names. You have seen
these women in many a thing, including together on Sabrina
the Teenage Witch. And yes, they take a while to
(08:24):
get there. It's I think it is like the last
joke of the movie is a somewhat of a Sabrina
the Teenage Witch joke. So hang in there, guys, and
you will get there, So don't worry about that. But
we don't usually, you know, orientate our Hallmark movies around
the older leads, right, those are our supporting characters, our
(08:44):
sage old person number nine. But in this case, our
leads are two older women, and Barbara Beth Roderick is
a kind of uptight accountant and she has just retired.
She's married, she has an adult son, and immediately she's
one of those people who when they retire they need
projects because they are, you know, like to be busy
(09:04):
and do tasks and complete things very type A. And
Kath on the other side, which is really annoying to say,
so I'll probably stumble over that a lot. But Kath
works for the Chamber of Commerce, and you know, does
all of the events and kind of handles the committees
and such. And she have a little whackado. She's Caroline
ray Raya, so you kind of know, you know, she's
(09:24):
gonna wear big earrings and you know, kind of always
have like silly sweaters on. And Beth, I'm saying Beth,
what I really mean is Beth Broughtreck, who's playing the
character of Barbara. Thank you. Barbara decides to volunteer for
the Chamber of Commerce to kind of just keep herself busy.
Immediately gets there and is like, oh, this shit is
not organized. I can fix it, because Cath is kind
(09:45):
of a basket cave. But Kath knows what she's doing.
She's just organized about it. These two women, Oil and
Water don't like each other, and the one thing they
have in common is that both of them have children
who are single and and both of these mothers really
want their child to find somebody, and they find a
(10:06):
dating app for parents to try to find somebody for
their children. I guess it's a thing. I don't know.
It's probably not a thing. Oh, it probably is a thing.
I don't know. I haven't dated in a long time,
and what do you know, they end up without realizing it,
like setting up a date for It's Cat's daughter Lauren
and twist. Even though kath is the free spirit, her
(10:26):
daughter Lauren is the control free and Barbara's son Shane twists.
Barbara's uptid and her son Shane is kind of the
like actor, director, artist of the town. So they set
them up without realizing who's who. These two are both like, mom, Mom,
(10:47):
I don't want you to set me up with someone.
This is weird, but fine, I'll just do this so
I can get you off my back. They meet, they
have a date, they like kind of both agree like, look,
I hate that our mothers are doing this. Hey, I
have an idea. How about we pretend that we're dating
to keep our parents off our back for the holidays
and then we can go our separate ways and guys,
(11:08):
I plot twist. I don't know if you're if you
could possibly see this coming, But it turns out Shane
and Lauren actually really like each other, and you know what,
they kind of fall in love, which of course is
annoying to the moms who are like no, no, no no.
The whole point of this is that I don't want
you dating somebody whose mother I just met and don't
(11:28):
like fair enough. So it's a little you know, it's
that kind of thing. So then the mothers try to
break them up. There's other minor conflicts where Lauren has
a big she's an architect and partner in firm and
has a big presentation. And Shane owns a theater but
he's thinking of selling the theater because he's like really
bad at everything other than cough cough, improv. We'll get there,
(11:54):
but okay, no, I gotta jump ahead to this. Imagine
a local like your little local theater is doing her
Christmas cal Great. I love a Christmas Carol, right, it's nice.
Every couple of years you go see a stage production
of Christmas Carol and everybody's happy. You get there, You
sit down and the narrator like you're gonzo, but like
in human form, in like knock off Jonathan grofth form,
(12:14):
because this guy is like Jonathan Groff but not he
comes out and instead of being like Marley was dead
to begin with, says Okay, I need a suggestion from
the audience, because it's like improv Christmas Carol. Nothing has
ever been made better with improv. I'm sorry anyway, Shane's
the worst. He's actually not that bad, except the fact
(12:35):
that he does run an improv Christmas Carol him and Lauren.
Lauren of course helps him figure out what he can
do with the building and how to get a chamber
of commerce grant again, conflict of interest. Maybe separately, Barbara
and Kath like argue, but they kind of come to
respect each other. Barbara convinces Kath she should stand up
(12:58):
to her boss, and Kath and everything's fine, and in
the end everybody is happy, and surprisingly that's how these
movies tend to end. But now we get to the
fun part, which is going through the things that these
movies all have, and this one has not surprisingly nine
out of ten of the musks and then all of
the bonuses pretty much. So the first thing is our
(13:20):
female in female lead in need of a lesson, And
this does do a bit of a twist obviously, because
we have kind of three women, and of course they
all need to learn lessons of different types. But you know,
cav needs to learn to stand up for herself, Barbara
needs to learn to let go a little bit, and
Lauren needs to learn to let love in. This is
(13:40):
what happens in these movies. No Christmas themed names. We
do give bonus points for that. I say that as
if I keep score. I don't actually keep score. But
often we have Holly's and Noel's and that kind of
thing we don't in this case. Number two is our
bland love interest, which typically breaks down into poor little
rich boy or widowed dad who works with his hands,
(14:01):
maybe as a kid, has his heart broken from his
wife who died. There's never talk of divorce. Every now
and then there is. We're getting a little more progressive,
but you know, kind of like a man's man in
this case. We have a bit of a twist on that.
So Shane is again not the man. He is an actor,
he is creative. We see early on that he is
(14:23):
not handsy at our handy handsy because he's on handsy
either that we saw, but we don't know what goes
on behind closed doors. But he is not the guy
to fix things. Lauren kind of is, so you know,
there's kind of a twist on that. And we even
get a scene where when kath is trying to break
them up and Barbara has kind of given her some
notes on Shaine Cath figures like ooh, I can make
(14:45):
Shane look bad by like showing like what not a
man he is. So again it sounds more toxic than
it is in the context of this movie. It's not.
But of course there's that other part of this of
do they speak to a bigger truth and are they
really forcing stereotypes? Of course they are, but this one
honestly was kind of okay. So Shane, and again we've
(15:08):
talked about how he is also doing improv when he
should not be. And law I mentioned Lauren as our
other you know, is she the bland love interest? Is
she a lead? She's not really the lead, but she's
sort of the central person that has to fall in love. Yeah,
type a just like Barbara. Oddly enough, and she does
(15:29):
even get to say the line you know, I am
a perfectionist, So just in case you don't get that,
she's that type of person. Something rare in this movie
because normally the romance is very chaste. Maybe we will
get the start of a kiss at the very end
of the movie. And these are the kind of movies
that if you've watched anything on Lifetime or network TV movies,
(15:51):
there's no time for a coda. There's no time for
like a credit sequence. So when characters like get together
to kiss, it just immediately, Like the credits take up
three quarters of the screen. You can actually read any
of the credits. This one does a rare thing where
it actually lets our characters kiss, like halfway through the film.
It's wild, guys. I don't know. I think times are changing.
We'll see I mean, none of the country. But you know.
Number three is our setting, which I always list here
(16:13):
because it breaks down into one of three things. Is
it a big bad city. Is it a magical winter wonderland.
Those are rare, they're more expensive to make, but they're
my favorite, but we don't get them often. Or is
it a charming small town ding ding Ding, charming small town,
cheapest of film. And and this town is called Brooklane.
(16:33):
And it's very annoying because of course you're trying to
figure out did they just not want to say Brooklyn? No, Brooklane?
And it's hard to say anyway, Cass, why is this
movie challenging me so much? Is the first one of
the season. It's supposed to be a warm up anyway.
Number four dead parents or dead wife usually dead parents.
It's like a given that we get dead parents. Guys.
(16:55):
I don't know if I am cursing myself for this season,
but how did I pick a premier movie that did
not have dead parents? Everybody's alive, even you wonder, Okay,
Well Barbara's husband shows up, you know here and there.
Well Kat's husband doesn't. Did he die? No, he left
what he left the family, And it's part of the
(17:17):
story because it's like when Lauren became a perfectionist. And
I don't know what to do with this. It's a
little unsettling because I would rather have dead parents than
a movie than a dead be dad. It's weird. Will continue,
just keep that note. I don't know. We're going to
see if this tracks or not. Number five is our
sasy sidekick, often a best friend, assistant, coworker, sometimes a
(17:43):
sister character. Some things we always look for is that
usually the sassy sidekick, especially if the movie is like
from a focusing on a woman. If it's a female
sassy sidekick, she can never be as attractive as a lead.
She will never dress as well as the lead. She
will often wear like gigantic dangling earrings in part to
(18:03):
maybe like underplay her own good looks, because again, we
need a very clear trajectory to know who we need
to pay attention to falling in love, so it can
confuse things if our sassy sidekick is too attractive. In
the case of Halidy mismatch, it's kind of it's tough
to say, well, who's the sidekick, because both Barbara and
(18:24):
Cath are sort of like normally they would be kind
of that, especially Kath who wears gigantic earrings, who wears
like the ugliest sweaters and not even just Christmas sweaters,
like she's wearing like a lot of pink, and it's
very strange. But I guess we can't. They're the leads.
I can't. I can't call them. So instead we have
a couple of others. We've got the two kind of
(18:44):
other men on the community of Chamber of Commerce, and
they're both kind of like, I don't know, they have
their moments, they're just getting to be goofy. One of
them ends up being Santa Claus and has like an
existential crisis about it. So I guess that's kind of
sassy and not sassy but kind of nice to have.
And certainly the sidekick role is be Beth. I keep
(19:05):
saying that Barbara as Beth Broderick has two sons, so Shane,
who we obviously were focusing on, and then she has
another son who shows up a few times, and that
son is gay, and the movie makes mention of his husband,
and never a thing. It's just treated the way it
would be if oh, this is my other son and
his wife and it's like Hollmark. Obviously it's amazing. How
(19:30):
I don't want to say how quick, because in many
ways this is not quick at all, Like it's I
don't want to give credit to a network for coming
around to a gay relationship in twenty twenty four, especially
when they did some pretty shitty things over the last
couple of years. But it is nice, refreshing to see
it's just there. He is, if anything, not sassy. He
(19:52):
is kind of the more like straight man in this scenario.
But hey, it's something and I will take it. So
number six is there evil woman character. Sometimes the you know,
it's the villain role. Sometimes it's a bad businessman, but
often it's an evil woman. And again, this is something
where we have seen a shift. These movies used to
(20:12):
almost always have either like The Big Bad Boss Lady
or The Love If It was a poor little rich boy,
like his girlfriend fiance was like a mean rich girl
and she had to kind of get taken down a
few pegs. They've moved away from that, which I appreciate
even though like I like a dumb, villainous woman, but
also like it's unhealthy to have that in these movies,
(20:33):
so in this case we don't. We have a little
bit of tension with Kat's boss, Yolanda, who Kath is
like terrified of, and Yolanda seems to like make a
lot of mistakes and Kath will never correct her, and
you kind of find out there's a reason because Yolanda
gave her a job when she really needed one, so
she feels like she owes it. But then like you know,
(20:54):
at some point, Kath says to Yolanda, like I'm gonna
stand up for myself, and Yolanda's like, all right, cool,
and that's that. So as much conflict as we get
in these movies, people don't expect, I don't know, like
a Serbian film here number seven montage my favorite thing.
I love a montage. It's the laziest way to tell
a story. And I appreciate the way to save energy.
(21:15):
This one surprisingly doesn't have many We open with a
lot of Christmas decoration and it feels like, Okay, I
know what I'm getting. I'm gonna get a lot more
scenes like this down the line, and we really don't.
There's a moment that feels like it should have been
a montage where Beth Barbara god darn it goes to
(21:35):
like help. One of the volunteer activities is they have
to make like turkey sandwiches for the I guess I
want to say homeless shelter, but I don't know if
they actually say that, And it's like they're gonna have
a race and they have everything ready to as symbol,
and you think you know what you're getting and you
just don't like it just instead is like a scene.
And then suddenly you turn around and Beth Barbara, I'm
(21:56):
just gonna call our Beth from now on. Beth has
made like fifty sandwiches and cath Is eaten once much
and that's that. And you're like, that could have been
done as a montage. You could have saved some dialogue.
But I don't know. I don't make these movies. Number
eight Slapstick, So we have quite a few moments of
this in this movie. Really on Barb and Cath fight
(22:17):
over salt and they make they spill salt, which I
guess is bad lucks. So maybe that's the thing. There
is a kind of kind of funny I'm gonna say,
like a little bit like I didn't laugh, but I chuckled,
maybe I smiled, maybe I cracked a little little grin
when the scene I mentioned where when Kath is trying
to like emasculate Shane in front of Lauren. They go
(22:39):
to get a Christmas tree and Kath is like, all right, Hane,
wrap it up for us, and Shane has clearly never
done this before, so it's him like lassowing the tree
with twine and honestly got kind of cute. Then he
has to catch a rat, which again is you know,
this isn't like Buster Keaton antics here, folks, but you
(23:00):
know it's fine. And this is where I wrote in
my notes this actor I did not get his name.
He has he is the asylum version of Jonathan Groff,
but not in a bad way, and I stand by that. Later,
at one point we get Barbon Cath trying to break
into when the other committee member who is playing Santa
is like locked himself in Santa's workshop because he can't
(23:21):
go face kids. Barbon Cath are trying to break in,
and Barb does this like very impressive stunt where she
sort of like jumps through the window and it cuts
to a stunt woman rolling over again. I looked at
that and like, huh okay, there's like a little bit
of comic sensibility here, which I appreciate. Number nine, sage
older person. Boy, is that confusing, because what do we
do here? What do we do Our old people in
(23:43):
this movie are kind of not sage because they're making
the mistakes. Dad right, or Barb's husband does seem to
occasionally have good things to say, So I guess we'll
get it there. And then Santa Claus. Number ten. Sometimes
our sage older person is Santa Claus. That is the
best case scenario when it's an old man who gives
advice and then he like winks at the camera and
he realized, oh my god, it's Santa. Not the case here,
(24:04):
we do have a Santa Claus again, afore mentioned existential
crisis of Santa Claus. And then we along with that
we get a round of everybody talking about like when
they ask Santa for a gift and didn't get it
for Christmas, and yes, that will come back. Now. The
bonus rounds all the little things that come up. The
first thing, of course, is the absurdly unlimited use of
(24:25):
public domain holiday songs. It is amazing how many versions
of these songs you can get in a movie. We
get the ones to look out for, typically are deck
the Halls, jingle Bells, Silent Night, Good King, Wenchelas Noel
like all the ones that are you know, not all
I want for Christmas is you those kind of songs.
(24:47):
In this case, we open with the very upbeat jingle bells.
We get some karaoke of Christmas carols, which is fine
except it's it's really weird to have a karaoke machine
that is reading the lyrics to jingle bells. It just
that just seems like something you don't have to do,
(25:08):
but who am I to judge. The other thing, we
get some nutcracker music, of course, and karaoke up on
a house top. Carolers are singing jolly old, said Nicholas Oh.
At one point, the town has an event where it's
the Christmas Carol trolley, which is I don't know if
(25:30):
this is like a real Sophie's choice here. If you
dropped me in this little town of Brooklyn and said, hey, Emily,
we're gonna do some activities tonight, and I'm like, okay, great.
Does that mean they say, well, you have a choice
of two. You could go ride to the Christmas Carol
trolley and seeing Christmas Carols with a bunch of strangers,
(25:53):
or option B, you could go to the local theater
production of a Christmas Carol. Okay, I'll take that one,
and then you find out it's improv and then you
just you understand why people leave small towns now. Also,
I will give credit because when you have like a
Christmas Carol also public domain, so it's kind of like, oh,
crossing a different kind of line there. So I appreciate
(26:15):
that A number two food, all right, food, Typically these
movies breaks down into a secret family recipe and or
a needlessly complicated holiday cocktail. This case, right off the bat,
Barb's husband makes her a jolly jewel. I don't know
what it is, but it's garnished with a candy cane.
A look kind of disgusting they drink eggnog. Later, there's
(26:36):
talk of a turkey sepper sandwich, which Barb is like,
that sounds like it's like somebody like picked up a
snail from the ground and shoved it in her mouth.
Who doesn't like a turkey like super sandwich. I don't know, Barb.
Apparently Number three, small business in Danger Chain's theater, seems
to be on the verge of closing because he's a
very bad businessman. Also maybe because he's doing improv in
(26:58):
a small town when you don't need to do improv.
I did not catch any product placement. Number five is
the Cloying Child, which we did not have. I don't
think there was anybody under eighteen in this movie, and
I am happy for that. Number six finding the Perfect Tree,
we do get that, well, I mean it's not like
the whole like, no, it's not Christmas until we find
the tree. We just get a scene of them chopping
(27:19):
for the tree. Empty coffee cup acting okay, this is
as we know. My favorite thing about these movies is
how none of these actors have ever held an empty
cup of coffee in front of the mirror to simulate,
like how to show that it has weight. When it
does not have weight and it's clearly empty. There are
(27:40):
some like egregious cases of this. This movie does something
pretty smart, which is it has Lauren and Chane are
like walking around with coffee cups, but it's like the
line is did this hit your hot cocoa fix? Like
are you satisfied with your drink? As if to say,
we have already drank what was in here. So that's
(28:00):
a good way to get around it, like oh, we're
just still looking for a garbage can to throw our
cups in, so it you know, it's not quite as obvious.
And then at one point we do when the eggnog scene,
like Dad definitely was drinking that eggnog although now and
then the other part of this is actors trying really
hard not to eat on camera, because again in these movies,
you have a lot of food. You have a lot
of uh scenes of baking and hilarity, and there is
(28:24):
a Christmas cookie thing running through it. And at one
point Chaine brings Lauren some Christmas cookies and like they
both go to eat them, and I swear this had
to be some kind of like you know, the way
we know that like a lot of directors like to
like really fuck with their cast and like make them
(28:45):
do things on camera that they don't want to do.
This scene feels like that director is standing behind the
camera holding a flamethrower and threatening and saying, you will
take a bite of that fucking cookie or I will
burn you both because they both like Cary to like
make a little like grimace before they bite into the cookie.
And they do bite in the cookie. We do have
eating in this movie, but you can tell they hated it,
(29:08):
and I don't know why. It makes me really happy
because I don't know I have problems. Number nine canadianisms
or obvious tells that the movie was not filmed on location.
All I can say is the actress playing Lauren, who
is very charming I thought to define job is also
definitely from our neighbor up north. Just definitely strong Canadian accent,
(29:32):
So there is that. I think Shane had one too,
but hers I could catch a little more. Number ten
our warm weather watch. Do we have proof that this
was not filmed during the during winter? We just I
mean to have again a lot of sometimes they have
gloves on and sometimes they don't, and they all seem
to have unbuttoned coats. Sure, that's fine, But I think
the main way you can tell this was not filmed
in winter is like how pretty the snow looks, because
(29:55):
there is a scene where you have trees and you
have like the house is covered snow, and there is
no way if that is real in any any manner
of speaking. Number eleven, which has become one that like
the last two years, i'd say really picked up was
old people aggressively matchmaking our leads, sometimes to the point
where like it felt a little uncomfortable. This entire movie
(30:18):
premise is built on two older people doing everything they
can to get their kids to fuck and then realizing,
oh no, but I don't want to share a grand
kid with you, So now I don't want that to happen.
But again it happens. It's fine, and then we close
with kind of our fashion watch. These movies are made cheaply,
(30:39):
but they have learned the formula for costume design, and
again I have not. I would love to find some
interviews with the costume designers on these movies, because there
is clearly with limited means. None of these movies are
made with a lot of time or money. But yet
there must be a big bank of pea coats and
a very clear color that somebody is standing there and saying, Okay,
(31:02):
if she's in red, he's got to be in green.
And if she's in blue, then we have to put
some white in and you will notice it. And I
think on this movie it was actually funny, is how
it seems to deliberately take the character of Calf and
not put her in Christmas colors. Here and there Carolyn
Ray is wearing like a you know, a Santa sweater,
but for the most part, even then, she'll have like
(31:23):
a pink scarf, or she has like a big crocheted
white outfit with big blue flower rosettes on there. And
it just seems very deliberate, and I'm curious about that choice.
Is it just kind of, oh, Carolin Ray is kind
of like that fun person, so we want to tap
into that, or was there like something else going on there.
In terms of some of my favorite costumes in this
(31:46):
I would say Lauren has a very nice white pea
coat with like very like classic like gold kind of
military buttons. The only problem is when I see characters
in like white outerwear, I just think they're dirty. Tomorrow
you buy it in the morning. By the time you
walk out the store, you have brushed yourself on a
tree on a subway TiAl, and now you have a
(32:08):
disgusting mark on your beautiful white coat. So it just
seems very impractical. And then I will make a comment
for the we have a jingle ball in this movie,
Always Happy when we have a ball, And there's just
like a nice little formal party at the Chamber of Commerce.
And in this case, Barbara shows up looking fucking fabulous.
(32:29):
Beth Roderick is a very attractive woman. She has like
a very specific elegance about her, and you know, she
has perfectly white hair, and she's you know, very kind
of almost like model dimensions where she's very tall and slim.
But she has this like beautiful, sort of not quite
forest green satin dress with a black velvet shrug and
(32:53):
this gold kind of like big but not tacky petal necklace.
And it is absolutely stunned. And if I could only
dream of looking like Beth Broderick in thirty years, then
I would be happy to wear such a thing. So
that was Halliday mismatch. Do I recommend Halliday mismatch? This
is always a very weird answer to provide for a
(33:19):
for any of these movies, because there's different categories of recommending.
Every now and then we will get a movie that's
like this was great, this was actually a movie, This
was delightful, and I will try to remember a few
of them along the way. Last year we had a
Mystic Christmas and three Wise Men and a baby We're
both like really cute and lovely and fun and this.
(33:41):
Then there's the other case of like, well for a
Hallmark movie, for a cozy Cardigan Christmas movie, it's fine.
I think you're you know if you watch these movies
or not. And I find it funny that there are
people who listen thank you who don't actually watch the movies,
which is just a just warms my heart. I guess
you like hearing me. But there's the whole like, Okay,
(34:02):
if I went to my in laws for the holidays
and we needed something in the background, like could I
put this on? Will it make me mad? Will it
charm everybody? Is it really coying? Like? What is it?
And that's usually where I kind of frame my review
of the movie is will you rarely will I ever
(34:22):
say yeah, sit down and record this and watch it.
It's more, Hey, if you want to watch some of
these or if you want somebod these on in the background,
is this one good enough for that? And I think
this one is. You have very good comedic talent in
Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray. They've worked together a long time.
They know what they're doing. This movie feels very like
(34:43):
sometimes these again, you can really see the speed of
filming on them, and this one doesn't. Like everybody's chemistry works.
Lauren and Shane click there. It's a lot. I feel
like this kind of movie would have been the case
where you cut to the young people and you're like,
oh god, we're back to these people. And these two
actors are great. I won't be surprised to see them
(35:03):
show up more. I think they have a lot of charm.
This is it's pretty, it's harmless. There's you know you
have again, this like just pleasant acceptance of yeah, we
have a gay character in this movie and that's great.
So it's it's a nice start to the season. I
think I say that in a pit of despair. I
(35:25):
don't know yet when I will drop the episode because
it's the weird year of timing and such, but it's
you know, it's been a rough month as many of you,
hopefully hopefully. If not, then we'll probably agree with. And
these are movies that I think, at their core are
designed to just make you a little bit relaxed, a
(35:50):
little bit pleased, to put you in a good mood,
to make you walk away saying, well that was nice.
Oh cute people they fell in love. Oh that looked pretty.
I like that pea coat. And on that front, I
think this one succeeds. So that's Holiday Mismatch. I will
be back again with a guest star. Uh many guest stars,
I hope, although this season is going to be tough
because it's very busy, but we will see. So with that,
(36:14):
pour yourself a jolly jewel, mix it up with that
candy cane, and then don't take a sip of it
on camera.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
So my friend Matthew Broderick joins me to sing a
fud for Turkies. The bird right here and if the
time of year this res up, he has made it clear.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Deep fry, deep fry.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
The book says I should deep fry.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
If it says I should deep fry, deep fried, deep
FRYE it's sublime.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
It is that your deep Rye. I stand by the plant.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Game ride Backwood when ryany Rost and I stand back
the Bryant's the rack with twine. You know I told
your Stampatty your mind all least twenty feet stamback.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Stampay right way, Sambord.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
You gotta do it right because it could at night.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
But if it all goes well.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
It's died my deep by every time.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Then I try deep. It'slime, so I'll give it a try.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Deep Ry, I stand by the plant.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Sam Brody, who
Weird. We mean best of headbands for you. No, I'm
not wearing this now. Don't be so uptight. There's a
new woman on the Christmas committee. She is such a
(00:25):
piece of work. He is so cute. I found your
dream girl.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Two kids, unlucky in love. This is going to be fun.
I'm two meddling mothers. This is my mother, Barbara.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Lauren is your Oh no Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Holiday mismatch only on Hallmark Channel.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oh hello, and welcome to side Quest season ten point
one of stocking Stuffers of the Feminine Critique. I'm Emily
without me today is Christine, who will be here soon.
But some of you know, if you have not listened
to this podcast in the past year, then perhaps you
(01:07):
have no idea what's going on. And I am sorry.
I'm sorry for so many things in this world right now,
but in part one of those things I apologize for
is the season of stocking Stuffers, which are a series
of episodes, typically shorter than are usually episodes, where I,
typically with the subsistence of a guest, tackle one of
(01:31):
these movies. And you heard the Travelers, so you know
what I mean by these movies. We are talking Hallmark
Lifetime Marvista, whatever it might be, but not the Great
Family Network because fuck them. But anything else that does
this thing? Where come it used to be December, but
then it became November and now it's like October first,
(01:52):
where these networks and Hallmark certainly pioneered it, many others
picked up a slack just correctly. Guess that what a
large chunk of the population of America. Certainly I don't
know about the rest of the world, and if these
are popular there, I'd love to know more. Actually, now
that I say that, but everybody likes to I guess
not think during this time, which I understand. The holidays
(02:14):
are busy, you're stress. It's the end of year. So
even if you're not celebrating the traditional December holidays, you
might have end of year budget things to think about.
Whatever it might be. This form of entertainment, which I
call the cozy Cardigan Christmas movie, it has certain templates
that it hits, certain tropes that it has to have,
(02:35):
and at the end of the day, you know, there's
a very little conflict for ninety minutes or two hours.
Once you're adding commercials, often for Daisy sour cream. We
will get to it, but at the end of the day,
you have consumed a candy cane, nothing significant, nothing that
is going to challenge your worldview but makes you feel
good or distracts you, or whatever it might be. I
(02:57):
started doing this ten years ago, which I can't believe.
I am saying that I've done ten years worth of
these things, and it came in part because I started
kind of catching these movies somehow. I don't exactly remember
how I ever decided to sit down and watch them,
and I could kind of couldn't contain how much I
had to say about them because they are so empty,
(03:19):
and yet in their emptiness, they'rein lives maybe a lot
of truth. I don't know. I'm getting very deep, but
it's been ten years of doing these I feel like
I should have more reason other than just I don't know.
I like to kind of identify the tropes and see
how many public domain Christmas movie songs you can cram
in eighty seven minutes of film, and the answer is
usually quite a bit. But the way these episodes go
(03:41):
is I will usually be joined by a guest and
Christine will be on one, but it will also be
a lot of special celebrity guest stars, just like I
was doing my own Christmas special. What a world. We
will take one of these movies. You will hear the
trailer for it. I will tell you where to find it.
This was a Hallmark of twenty twenty four, so it's
going to be findable on the Hallmark network. A lot
(04:01):
of these are going to Peacock, so if you have Peacock,
you can probably find them too. I won't always do
once from this year. I'll I like to dig around
find what's you know, kind of in the bottom barrel
of Hulu and so on. It's really fun if we
find some from the late nineties where they hadn't quite
figured out that this was the thing they could do,
but you could see always see bones of things. Anyway,
(04:21):
these are movies that are rarely good. Sometimes they are
Sometimes they they're funny, they're charming, sometimes there's chemistry or
they actually do have a little bit of something to
say the but that's like not really why we watch them.
We watch them just to kind of I don't know,
pull these things, and it's fascinating, and I'd like, I'm
(04:41):
clearly not the only one interested in this phenomenon, because
otherwise others wouldn't join me for it, and these movies
wouldn't be popular. But the first movie of the year
I usually like to do alone just because it kind
of sets the stage. It lets me kind of orient
my brain back into this world and let's talk about
this world. This world. And when I say that, I
(05:03):
mean the Cozy Cardigan universe. There are different presentations of it.
Sometimes there's fantasy elements. Sometimes it is just make it
as quick as you can in eight days and try
to spend as little money as possible. You will see
minor celebrities. Sometimes it is retirees who kind of come
in to do a couple of scenes one day. Sometimes
(05:23):
it's you know, fresh young faces just off the CW
network or whatever network is happening. Now. I'm old, guys,
I don't know what's cool anymore. These movies are not cool,
but yet a lot of people watch them. And I
always kind of make a statement here to say I
don't It's okay if you don't want to listen to
these episodes and you just want to wait for Christine
(05:45):
to come back and us to talk about movies in
a more intelligent manner. I won't be offended. Don't worry
about it. But if you like this stuff, then join me,
won't you for this journey down In today's case, Holiday Mismatch.
So we are going to dive into this movie. And
the way I structure this is I kind of give
a quick blood synopsis. I will go through the ten
(06:07):
things that we kind of have to have in these
movies and then all the little bonuses that come up
along the way. So Holiday is Match twenty twenty four
from Hallmark Network. This is directed by Caroline Librish Libershe.
Something that is notable for a lot of these movies
is that there are often women behind the camera, many
many female screenwriters, female directors. Hallmark has always been very
(06:32):
forward about being a kind of you know, a network
that has its mass appeal to women and Lifetime the
same way, but also hires a lot of women. So
that's nice to see. There is a scandal, and I
don't know how true it is of where supposedly there's
a Hallmark casting director who's like saying they need to
hire younger female leads and Lasha Shaber, who is my age,
(06:54):
is getting too old for this stuff. So we're gonna
keep a watch on that. See where it goes as
of now, I have a hard time believing Hallmark is
ready to ditch it's, you know, the face of its
Christmas movies. But I could be wrong, and they could
be yet another terrible company making terrible decisions because they
hate women, which I don't know if you know this,
but so it does a lot of this country. Anyway,
(07:16):
I digress. Holiday Mismatch, let's talk about it. I should
mention Caroline Lebershet Librish. I don't know, but I'm gonna
say Labour Shae because it sounds funner. Director has something
that is often true of many of these movies. Is
a fun game to play is how many Christmas movies
today have the directors made and how many lifetime thrillers
(07:40):
have they made? So Libershet some of her credits include
Sweet as Maple Syrup, Farmers Seeking Love, and Fuck Mary
Kill So right away, I do want to make a
point that Holiday Mismatch is both a typical Hallmark movie,
but it does, from a structural point of view, do
something very different. There is a romance. It is two
(08:01):
unlikely people who wants a control freak and one's a
free spirit, and they fall in love. However, that's not
really what the movie is about. Instead, the stars of
this movie are Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray Raya. I've
never been sure you know these names. You have seen
these women in many a thing, including together on Sabrina
the Teenage Witch. And yes, they take a while to
(08:24):
get there. It's I think it is like the last
joke of the movie is a somewhat of a Sabrina
the Teenage Witch joke. So hang in there, guys, and
you will get there, So don't worry about that. But
we don't usually, you know, orientate our Hallmark movies around
the older leads, right, those are our supporting characters, our
(08:44):
sage old person number nine. But in this case, our
leads are two older women, and Barbara Beth Roderick is
a kind of uptight accountant and she has just retired.
She's married, she has an adult son, and immediately she's
one of those people who when they retire they need
projects because they are, you know, like to be busy
(09:04):
and do tasks and complete things very type A. And
Kath on the other side, which is really annoying to say,
so I'll probably stumble over that a lot. But Kath
works for the Chamber of Commerce, and you know, does
all of the events and kind of handles the committees
and such. And she have a little whackado. She's Caroline
ray Raya, so you kind of know, you know, she's
(09:24):
gonna wear big earrings and you know, kind of always
have like silly sweaters on. And Beth, I'm saying Beth,
what I really mean is Beth Broughtreck, who's playing the
character of Barbara. Thank you. Barbara decides to volunteer for
the Chamber of Commerce to kind of just keep herself busy.
Immediately gets there and is like, oh, this shit is
not organized. I can fix it, because Cath is kind
(09:45):
of a basket cave. But Kath knows what she's doing.
She's just organized about it. These two women, Oil and
Water don't like each other, and the one thing they
have in common is that both of them have children
who are single and and both of these mothers really
want their child to find somebody, and they find a
(10:06):
dating app for parents to try to find somebody for
their children. I guess it's a thing. I don't know.
It's probably not a thing. Oh, it probably is a thing.
I don't know. I haven't dated in a long time,
and what do you know, they end up without realizing it,
like setting up a date for It's Cat's daughter Lauren
and twist. Even though kath is the free spirit, her
(10:26):
daughter Lauren is the control free and Barbara's son Shane twists.
Barbara's uptid and her son Shane is kind of the
like actor, director, artist of the town. So they set
them up without realizing who's who. These two are both like, mom, Mom,
(10:47):
I don't want you to set me up with someone.
This is weird, but fine, I'll just do this so
I can get you off my back. They meet, they
have a date, they like kind of both agree like, look,
I hate that our mothers are doing this. Hey, I
have an idea. How about we pretend that we're dating
to keep our parents off our back for the holidays
and then we can go our separate ways and guys,
(11:08):
I plot twist. I don't know if you're if you
could possibly see this coming, But it turns out Shane
and Lauren actually really like each other, and you know what,
they kind of fall in love, which of course is
annoying to the moms who are like no, no, no no.
The whole point of this is that I don't want
you dating somebody whose mother I just met and don't
(11:28):
like fair enough. So it's a little you know, it's
that kind of thing. So then the mothers try to
break them up. There's other minor conflicts where Lauren has
a big she's an architect and partner in firm and
has a big presentation. And Shane owns a theater but
he's thinking of selling the theater because he's like really
bad at everything other than cough cough, improv. We'll get there,
(11:54):
but okay, no, I gotta jump ahead to this. Imagine
a local like your little local theater is doing her
Christmas cal Great. I love a Christmas Carol, right, it's nice.
Every couple of years you go see a stage production
of Christmas Carol and everybody's happy. You get there, You
sit down and the narrator like you're gonzo, but like
in human form, in like knock off Jonathan grofth form,
(12:14):
because this guy is like Jonathan Groff but not he
comes out and instead of being like Marley was dead
to begin with, says Okay, I need a suggestion from
the audience, because it's like improv Christmas Carol. Nothing has
ever been made better with improv. I'm sorry anyway, Shane's
the worst. He's actually not that bad, except the fact
(12:35):
that he does run an improv Christmas Carol him and Lauren.
Lauren of course helps him figure out what he can
do with the building and how to get a chamber
of commerce grant again, conflict of interest. Maybe separately, Barbara
and Kath like argue, but they kind of come to
respect each other. Barbara convinces Kath she should stand up
(12:58):
to her boss, and Kath and everything's fine, and in
the end everybody is happy, and surprisingly that's how these
movies tend to end. But now we get to the
fun part, which is going through the things that these
movies all have, and this one has not surprisingly nine
out of ten of the musks and then all of
the bonuses pretty much. So the first thing is our
(13:20):
female in female lead in need of a lesson, And
this does do a bit of a twist obviously, because
we have kind of three women, and of course they
all need to learn lessons of different types. But you know,
cav needs to learn to stand up for herself, Barbara
needs to learn to let go a little bit, and
Lauren needs to learn to let love in. This is
(13:40):
what happens in these movies. No Christmas themed names. We
do give bonus points for that. I say that as
if I keep score. I don't actually keep score. But
often we have Holly's and Noel's and that kind of
thing we don't in this case. Number two is our
bland love interest, which typically breaks down into poor little
rich boy or widowed dad who works with his hands,
(14:01):
maybe as a kid, has his heart broken from his
wife who died. There's never talk of divorce. Every now
and then there is. We're getting a little more progressive,
but you know, kind of like a man's man in
this case. We have a bit of a twist on that.
So Shane is again not the man. He is an actor,
he is creative. We see early on that he is
(14:23):
not handsy at our handy handsy because he's on handsy
either that we saw, but we don't know what goes
on behind closed doors. But he is not the guy
to fix things. Lauren kind of is, so you know,
there's kind of a twist on that. And we even
get a scene where when kath is trying to break
them up and Barbara has kind of given her some
notes on Shaine Cath figures like ooh, I can make
(14:45):
Shane look bad by like showing like what not a
man he is. So again it sounds more toxic than
it is in the context of this movie. It's not.
But of course there's that other part of this of
do they speak to a bigger truth and are they
really forcing stereotypes? Of course they are, but this one
honestly was kind of okay. So Shane, and again we've
(15:08):
talked about how he is also doing improv when he
should not be. And law I mentioned Lauren as our
other you know, is she the bland love interest? Is
she a lead? She's not really the lead, but she's
sort of the central person that has to fall in love. Yeah,
type a just like Barbara. Oddly enough, and she does
(15:29):
even get to say the line you know, I am
a perfectionist, So just in case you don't get that,
she's that type of person. Something rare in this movie
because normally the romance is very chaste. Maybe we will
get the start of a kiss at the very end
of the movie. And these are the kind of movies
that if you've watched anything on Lifetime or network TV movies,
(15:51):
there's no time for a coda. There's no time for
like a credit sequence. So when characters like get together
to kiss, it just immediately, Like the credits take up
three quarters of the screen. You can actually read any
of the credits. This one does a rare thing where
it actually lets our characters kiss, like halfway through the film.
It's wild, guys. I don't know. I think times are changing.
We'll see I mean, none of the country. But you know.
Number three is our setting, which I always list here
(16:13):
because it breaks down into one of three things. Is
it a big bad city. Is it a magical winter wonderland.
Those are rare, they're more expensive to make, but they're
my favorite, but we don't get them often. Or is
it a charming small town ding ding Ding, charming small town,
cheapest of film. And and this town is called Brooklane.
(16:33):
And it's very annoying because of course you're trying to
figure out did they just not want to say Brooklyn? No, Brooklane?
And it's hard to say anyway, Cass, why is this
movie challenging me so much? Is the first one of
the season. It's supposed to be a warm up anyway.
Number four dead parents or dead wife usually dead parents.
It's like a given that we get dead parents. Guys.
(16:55):
I don't know if I am cursing myself for this season,
but how did I pick a premier movie that did
not have dead parents? Everybody's alive, even you wonder, Okay,
Well Barbara's husband shows up, you know here and there.
Well Kat's husband doesn't. Did he die? No, he left
what he left the family, And it's part of the
(17:17):
story because it's like when Lauren became a perfectionist. And
I don't know what to do with this. It's a
little unsettling because I would rather have dead parents than
a movie than a dead be dad. It's weird. Will continue,
just keep that note. I don't know. We're going to
see if this tracks or not. Number five is our
sasy sidekick, often a best friend, assistant, coworker, sometimes a
(17:43):
sister character. Some things we always look for is that
usually the sassy sidekick, especially if the movie is like
from a focusing on a woman. If it's a female
sassy sidekick, she can never be as attractive as a lead.
She will never dress as well as the lead. She
will often wear like gigantic dangling earrings in part to
(18:03):
maybe like underplay her own good looks, because again, we
need a very clear trajectory to know who we need
to pay attention to falling in love, so it can
confuse things if our sassy sidekick is too attractive. In
the case of Halidy mismatch, it's kind of it's tough
to say, well, who's the sidekick, because both Barbara and
(18:24):
Cath are sort of like normally they would be kind
of that, especially Kath who wears gigantic earrings, who wears
like the ugliest sweaters and not even just Christmas sweaters,
like she's wearing like a lot of pink, and it's
very strange. But I guess we can't. They're the leads.
I can't. I can't call them. So instead we have
a couple of others. We've got the two kind of
(18:44):
other men on the community of Chamber of Commerce, and
they're both kind of like, I don't know, they have
their moments, they're just getting to be goofy. One of
them ends up being Santa Claus and has like an
existential crisis about it. So I guess that's kind of
sassy and not sassy but kind of nice to have.
And certainly the sidekick role is be Beth. I keep
(19:05):
saying that Barbara as Beth Broderick has two sons, so Shane,
who we obviously were focusing on, and then she has
another son who shows up a few times, and that
son is gay, and the movie makes mention of his husband,
and never a thing. It's just treated the way it
would be if oh, this is my other son and
his wife and it's like Hollmark. Obviously it's amazing. How
(19:30):
I don't want to say how quick, because in many
ways this is not quick at all, Like it's I
don't want to give credit to a network for coming
around to a gay relationship in twenty twenty four, especially
when they did some pretty shitty things over the last
couple of years. But it is nice, refreshing to see
it's just there. He is, if anything, not sassy. He
(19:52):
is kind of the more like straight man in this scenario.
But hey, it's something and I will take it. So
number six is there evil woman character. Sometimes the you know,
it's the villain role. Sometimes it's a bad businessman, but
often it's an evil woman. And again, this is something
where we have seen a shift. These movies used to
(20:12):
almost always have either like The Big Bad Boss Lady
or The Love If It was a poor little rich boy,
like his girlfriend fiance was like a mean rich girl
and she had to kind of get taken down a
few pegs. They've moved away from that, which I appreciate
even though like I like a dumb, villainous woman, but
also like it's unhealthy to have that in these movies,
(20:33):
so in this case we don't. We have a little
bit of tension with Kat's boss, Yolanda, who Kath is
like terrified of, and Yolanda seems to like make a
lot of mistakes and Kath will never correct her, and
you kind of find out there's a reason because Yolanda
gave her a job when she really needed one, so
she feels like she owes it. But then like you know,
(20:54):
at some point, Kath says to Yolanda, like I'm gonna
stand up for myself, and Yolanda's like, all right, cool,
and that's that. So as much conflict as we get
in these movies, people don't expect, I don't know, like
a Serbian film here number seven montage my favorite thing.
I love a montage. It's the laziest way to tell
a story. And I appreciate the way to save energy.
(21:15):
This one surprisingly doesn't have many We open with a
lot of Christmas decoration and it feels like, Okay, I
know what I'm getting. I'm gonna get a lot more
scenes like this down the line, and we really don't.
There's a moment that feels like it should have been
a montage where Beth Barbara god darn it goes to
(21:35):
like help. One of the volunteer activities is they have
to make like turkey sandwiches for the I guess I
want to say homeless shelter, but I don't know if
they actually say that, And it's like they're gonna have
a race and they have everything ready to as symbol,
and you think you know what you're getting and you
just don't like it just instead is like a scene.
And then suddenly you turn around and Beth Barbara, I'm
(21:56):
just gonna call our Beth from now on. Beth has
made like fifty sandwiches and cath Is eaten once much
and that's that. And you're like, that could have been
done as a montage. You could have saved some dialogue.
But I don't know. I don't make these movies. Number
eight Slapstick, So we have quite a few moments of
this in this movie. Really on Barb and Cath fight
(22:17):
over salt and they make they spill salt, which I
guess is bad lucks. So maybe that's the thing. There
is a kind of kind of funny I'm gonna say,
like a little bit like I didn't laugh, but I chuckled,
maybe I smiled, maybe I cracked a little little grin
when the scene I mentioned where when Kath is trying
to like emasculate Shane in front of Lauren. They go
(22:39):
to get a Christmas tree and Kath is like, all right, Hane,
wrap it up for us, and Shane has clearly never
done this before, so it's him like lassowing the tree
with twine and honestly got kind of cute. Then he
has to catch a rat, which again is you know,
this isn't like Buster Keaton antics here, folks, but you
(23:00):
know it's fine. And this is where I wrote in
my notes this actor I did not get his name.
He has he is the asylum version of Jonathan Groff,
but not in a bad way, and I stand by that. Later,
at one point we get Barbon Cath trying to break
into when the other committee member who is playing Santa
is like locked himself in Santa's workshop because he can't
(23:21):
go face kids. Barbon Cath are trying to break in,
and Barb does this like very impressive stunt where she
sort of like jumps through the window and it cuts
to a stunt woman rolling over again. I looked at
that and like, huh okay, there's like a little bit
of comic sensibility here, which I appreciate. Number nine, sage
older person. Boy, is that confusing, because what do we
do here? What do we do Our old people in
(23:43):
this movie are kind of not sage because they're making
the mistakes. Dad right, or Barb's husband does seem to
occasionally have good things to say, So I guess we'll
get it there. And then Santa Claus. Number ten. Sometimes
our sage older person is Santa Claus. That is the
best case scenario when it's an old man who gives
advice and then he like winks at the camera and
he realized, oh my god, it's Santa. Not the case here,
(24:04):
we do have a Santa Claus again, afore mentioned existential
crisis of Santa Claus. And then we along with that
we get a round of everybody talking about like when
they ask Santa for a gift and didn't get it
for Christmas, and yes, that will come back. Now. The
bonus rounds all the little things that come up. The
first thing, of course, is the absurdly unlimited use of
(24:25):
public domain holiday songs. It is amazing how many versions
of these songs you can get in a movie. We
get the ones to look out for, typically are deck
the Halls, jingle Bells, Silent Night, Good King, Wenchelas Noel
like all the ones that are you know, not all
I want for Christmas is you those kind of songs.
(24:47):
In this case, we open with the very upbeat jingle bells.
We get some karaoke of Christmas carols, which is fine
except it's it's really weird to have a karaoke machine
that is reading the lyrics to jingle bells. It just
that just seems like something you don't have to do,
(25:08):
but who am I to judge. The other thing, we
get some nutcracker music, of course, and karaoke up on
a house top. Carolers are singing jolly old, said Nicholas Oh.
At one point, the town has an event where it's
the Christmas Carol trolley, which is I don't know if
(25:30):
this is like a real Sophie's choice here. If you
dropped me in this little town of Brooklyn and said, hey, Emily,
we're gonna do some activities tonight, and I'm like, okay, great.
Does that mean they say, well, you have a choice
of two. You could go ride to the Christmas Carol
trolley and seeing Christmas Carols with a bunch of strangers,
(25:53):
or option B, you could go to the local theater
production of a Christmas Carol. Okay, I'll take that one,
and then you find out it's improv and then you
just you understand why people leave small towns now. Also,
I will give credit because when you have like a
Christmas Carol also public domain, so it's kind of like, oh,
crossing a different kind of line there. So I appreciate
(26:15):
that A number two food, all right, food, Typically these
movies breaks down into a secret family recipe and or
a needlessly complicated holiday cocktail. This case, right off the bat,
Barb's husband makes her a jolly jewel. I don't know
what it is, but it's garnished with a candy cane.
A look kind of disgusting they drink eggnog. Later, there's
(26:36):
talk of a turkey sepper sandwich, which Barb is like,
that sounds like it's like somebody like picked up a
snail from the ground and shoved it in her mouth.
Who doesn't like a turkey like super sandwich. I don't know, Barb.
Apparently Number three, small business in Danger Chain's theater, seems
to be on the verge of closing because he's a
very bad businessman. Also maybe because he's doing improv in
(26:58):
a small town when you don't need to do improv.
I did not catch any product placement. Number five is
the Cloying Child, which we did not have. I don't
think there was anybody under eighteen in this movie, and
I am happy for that. Number six finding the Perfect Tree,
we do get that, well, I mean it's not like
the whole like, no, it's not Christmas until we find
the tree. We just get a scene of them chopping
(27:19):
for the tree. Empty coffee cup acting okay, this is
as we know. My favorite thing about these movies is
how none of these actors have ever held an empty
cup of coffee in front of the mirror to simulate,
like how to show that it has weight. When it
does not have weight and it's clearly empty. There are
(27:40):
some like egregious cases of this. This movie does something
pretty smart, which is it has Lauren and Chane are
like walking around with coffee cups, but it's like the
line is did this hit your hot cocoa fix? Like
are you satisfied with your drink? As if to say,
we have already drank what was in here. So that's
(28:00):
a good way to get around it, like oh, we're
just still looking for a garbage can to throw our
cups in, so it you know, it's not quite as obvious.
And then at one point we do when the eggnog scene,
like Dad definitely was drinking that eggnog although now and
then the other part of this is actors trying really
hard not to eat on camera, because again in these movies,
you have a lot of food. You have a lot
of uh scenes of baking and hilarity, and there is
(28:24):
a Christmas cookie thing running through it. And at one
point Chaine brings Lauren some Christmas cookies and like they
both go to eat them, and I swear this had
to be some kind of like you know, the way
we know that like a lot of directors like to
like really fuck with their cast and like make them
(28:45):
do things on camera that they don't want to do.
This scene feels like that director is standing behind the
camera holding a flamethrower and threatening and saying, you will
take a bite of that fucking cookie or I will
burn you both because they both like Cary to like
make a little like grimace before they bite into the cookie.
And they do bite in the cookie. We do have
eating in this movie, but you can tell they hated it,
(29:08):
and I don't know why. It makes me really happy
because I don't know I have problems. Number nine canadianisms
or obvious tells that the movie was not filmed on location.
All I can say is the actress playing Lauren, who
is very charming I thought to define job is also
definitely from our neighbor up north. Just definitely strong Canadian accent,
(29:32):
So there is that. I think Shane had one too,
but hers I could catch a little more. Number ten
our warm weather watch. Do we have proof that this
was not filmed during the during winter? We just I
mean to have again a lot of sometimes they have
gloves on and sometimes they don't, and they all seem
to have unbuttoned coats. Sure, that's fine, But I think
the main way you can tell this was not filmed
in winter is like how pretty the snow looks, because
(29:55):
there is a scene where you have trees and you
have like the house is covered snow, and there is
no way if that is real in any any manner
of speaking. Number eleven, which has become one that like
the last two years, i'd say really picked up was
old people aggressively matchmaking our leads, sometimes to the point
where like it felt a little uncomfortable. This entire movie
(30:18):
premise is built on two older people doing everything they
can to get their kids to fuck and then realizing,
oh no, but I don't want to share a grand
kid with you, So now I don't want that to happen.
But again it happens. It's fine, and then we close
with kind of our fashion watch. These movies are made cheaply,
(30:39):
but they have learned the formula for costume design, and
again I have not. I would love to find some
interviews with the costume designers on these movies, because there
is clearly with limited means. None of these movies are
made with a lot of time or money. But yet
there must be a big bank of pea coats and
a very clear color that somebody is standing there and saying, Okay,
(31:02):
if she's in red, he's got to be in green.
And if she's in blue, then we have to put
some white in and you will notice it. And I
think on this movie it was actually funny, is how
it seems to deliberately take the character of Calf and
not put her in Christmas colors. Here and there Carolyn
Ray is wearing like a you know, a Santa sweater,
but for the most part, even then, she'll have like
(31:23):
a pink scarf, or she has like a big crocheted
white outfit with big blue flower rosettes on there. And
it just seems very deliberate, and I'm curious about that choice.
Is it just kind of, oh, Carolin Ray is kind
of like that fun person, so we want to tap
into that, or was there like something else going on there.
In terms of some of my favorite costumes in this
(31:46):
I would say Lauren has a very nice white pea
coat with like very like classic like gold kind of
military buttons. The only problem is when I see characters
in like white outerwear, I just think they're dirty. Tomorrow
you buy it in the morning. By the time you
walk out the store, you have brushed yourself on a
tree on a subway TiAl, and now you have a
(32:08):
disgusting mark on your beautiful white coat. So it just
seems very impractical. And then I will make a comment
for the we have a jingle ball in this movie,
Always Happy when we have a ball, And there's just
like a nice little formal party at the Chamber of Commerce.
And in this case, Barbara shows up looking fucking fabulous.
(32:29):
Beth Roderick is a very attractive woman. She has like
a very specific elegance about her, and you know, she
has perfectly white hair, and she's you know, very kind
of almost like model dimensions where she's very tall and slim.
But she has this like beautiful, sort of not quite
forest green satin dress with a black velvet shrug and
(32:53):
this gold kind of like big but not tacky petal necklace.
And it is absolutely stunned. And if I could only
dream of looking like Beth Broderick in thirty years, then
I would be happy to wear such a thing. So
that was Halliday mismatch. Do I recommend Halliday mismatch? This
is always a very weird answer to provide for a
(33:19):
for any of these movies, because there's different categories of recommending.
Every now and then we will get a movie that's
like this was great, this was actually a movie, This
was delightful, and I will try to remember a few
of them along the way. Last year we had a
Mystic Christmas and three Wise Men and a baby We're
both like really cute and lovely and fun and this.
(33:41):
Then there's the other case of like, well for a
Hallmark movie, for a cozy Cardigan Christmas movie, it's fine.
I think you're you know if you watch these movies
or not. And I find it funny that there are
people who listen thank you who don't actually watch the movies,
which is just a just warms my heart. I guess
you like hearing me. But there's the whole like, Okay,
(34:02):
if I went to my in laws for the holidays
and we needed something in the background, like could I
put this on? Will it make me mad? Will it
charm everybody? Is it really coying? Like? What is it?
And that's usually where I kind of frame my review
of the movie is will you rarely will I ever
(34:22):
say yeah, sit down and record this and watch it.
It's more, Hey, if you want to watch some of
these or if you want somebod these on in the background,
is this one good enough for that? And I think
this one is. You have very good comedic talent in
Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray. They've worked together a long time.
They know what they're doing. This movie feels very like
(34:43):
sometimes these again, you can really see the speed of
filming on them, and this one doesn't. Like everybody's chemistry works.
Lauren and Shane click there. It's a lot. I feel
like this kind of movie would have been the case
where you cut to the young people and you're like,
oh god, we're back to these people. And these two
actors are great. I won't be surprised to see them
(35:03):
show up more. I think they have a lot of charm.
This is it's pretty, it's harmless. There's you know you
have again, this like just pleasant acceptance of yeah, we
have a gay character in this movie and that's great.
So it's it's a nice start to the season. I
think I say that in a pit of despair. I
(35:25):
don't know yet when I will drop the episode because
it's the weird year of timing and such, but it's
you know, it's been a rough month as many of you,
hopefully hopefully. If not, then we'll probably agree with. And
these are movies that I think, at their core are
designed to just make you a little bit relaxed, a
(35:50):
little bit pleased, to put you in a good mood,
to make you walk away saying, well that was nice.
Oh cute people they fell in love. Oh that looked pretty.
I like that pea coat. And on that front, I
think this one succeeds. So that's Holiday Mismatch. I will
be back again with a guest star. Uh many guest stars,
I hope, although this season is going to be tough
because it's very busy, but we will see. So with that,
(36:14):
pour yourself a jolly jewel, mix it up with that
candy cane, and then don't take a sip of it
on camera.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
So my friend Matthew Broderick joins me to sing a
fud for Turkies. The bird right here and if the
time of year this res up, he has made it clear.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Deep fry, deep fry.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
The book says I should deep fry.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
If it says I should deep fry, deep fried, deep
FRYE it's sublime.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
It is that your deep Rye. I stand by the plant.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Game ride Backwood when ryany Rost and I stand back
the Bryant's the rack with twine. You know I told
your Stampatty your mind all least twenty feet stamback.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Stampay right way, Sambord.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
You gotta do it right because it could at night.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
But if it all goes well.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
It's died my deep by every time.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Then I try deep. It'slime, so I'll give it a try.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Deep Ry, I stand by the plant.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Sam Brody, who
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