Stocking Stuffer 10.8 Holly & the Hot Chocolate with Josh Hurtado

Did you know that the secret ingredient for the world’s best hot chocolate is…love? That’s one of many facts we learn when we dive into QVC’s debut film venture, Holly and the Hot Chocolate! Emily is joined by special guest star Josh Hurtado, film critic for Screen Anarchy, founder of Potentate Films, and certified Christmas movie completist. Follow his work on the various socials @hatefuljosh and discover someone who watches even more of these movies than Emily!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Excuse me, mer Christmas? What are you doing tomorrow? I'm
visiting Tommy, finally meeting his parents. And how is Tommy?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
He's good, Rudy, are you excited about the hot chocolate too?

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Doesn't like hot chocolate.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I bet it's because he misses his wife, Nora. You
think that's it? I bet that's it.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, of course it's it. You're moving, does deav No? No,
my mother does not know he's moving. Yes, I've been
looking at houses at South Carolina.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
You're going to move somewhere where it doesn't snow. There's
somebody out there for you, and they're lost to.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
I crashed my car in the woods and I can't
find my phone, and I could.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
I could really use somehow. That hot dog looks awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Do you okay? She wrote down she's gonna need a
place to see.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Well, that was quick. What is your name, hun, Holly?

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (00:56):
So, Rudy tells me you are a food critaen you
should do a review of the hot chocolate Stan It's magical.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Maybe next year. I have to leave pretty early in
the morning. I met my boyfriend's parents.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
She's just somebody who broke down, so I helped her
as doing my job and be single.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Oh I'm not single.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Remember I said I was a beating my boyfriend's parents vaguely.
Not the worst town to be stuck in. People are nice.
It's really festive if you like that kind of thing,
safe under that bear that eats strangers. I mean, it's
like a line full of people who seem to actually
enjoy being in a line full of people.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
What is it about this hot chocolate that makes it
so special?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
No cup is truly enjoyed unless it's served in the
presence of love.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Welcome everyone to another stocking stuffer. This is a very
special stocking stuffer. It is a very short stock well
a short movie. It is a innovative, first time film
production from the studio that brings you things you can
buy by phone.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
We are talking about QVC's Holly and the Hot Chocolate.
And I say we because I even though this is
a nice, quick in and out movie, I need support here.
There's a lot going on. What is this movie doing.
Is it telling a love story or is it trying
to sell me hot chocolate? I don't know, can it?
Can it be both? I don't know. That's why I've
brought on with me the Big Guns. My guest today

(02:29):
is a first time guest of The Feminine Critique. It's
very exciting somebody whose work I have been reading and
following for a very long time. He is a film programmer,
a film enthusiast, a critic at screen anarchy, and the
founder at PO tent Taate Films, the one, the only
Josh Hurtado.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Welcome, Josh, Hi, thank you so much for having me on.
This is this is right up my alley. So I'm
very happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I need you to tell me how it came
up your alley, because you are someone who has I
think a very deep film experience, film knowledge. You are,
you know, kind of the authority on Indian film and
a lot of other specific films. I think you're a
big genre film guy. So at what point in your
life did you decide you have to watch nine hundred

(03:19):
Christmas movies a year?

Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know, it happened a few years ago. Some local
friends of mine. Every year they have a not a marathon,
but they have a little event where they show a
couple of TV movies to Christmas movies. We all go
over there. We have you know, drinks and snacks and

(03:41):
pizza and whatever. And the whole goal was to show
the craziest stuff that you could never imagine had ever
been made. And I sort of fell in love with that,
like the idea that for whatever reason, Christmas inspires people
to be competing insane. And and so after that happened

(04:02):
that I was watching you know, one or two of
these films every year for one night, I was like,
there's got to be more. I really no idea. This
was probably four or five years ago when I first
started like doing it on purpose, just digging into all
the all the possibilities, like all of the different crazy
things that there there are, not only you know, the

(04:25):
Hallmark and the Lifetime and the classic things that we
think of when we think of holiday films, but like
all of the you know, movies that are made for
seventy five.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Cents, you know, Vista Entertainment.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Mar Vesta or Nicely, which is a ruction company on
this one, you know, or someone who's whose daughter they
think really wants to be an actress and they're a
dentist or whatever, and so they they have enough money
to do it. You know. It's there's just so many
different avenues that these films can go down, and and
so I just became obsessed with trying to find them.

(04:58):
And then I, you know, as we are wont to
do people who are film enthusiasm film fans. Once you
find something, you start working backwards, you know, and it
could never be obscure enough, Like there could never be
like if someone else has seen the film, I feel
like I've failed, Like I feel like I should be
the only person who's ever seen like this crazy thing.

(05:18):
And then being able to share reactions to that is
just really fun.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, in a way, I think it does kind of
mirror certain like low budget subgenres of horror, because you had,
like in the late eighties to early nineties, anybody could
make a zombie film and you could sell it, and
it would be in a video store. It might be
like in the back of the shelf. It might be
one of those things that like you you know, the

(05:43):
horror nerd who comes there finally gets to the last
movie they haven't seen yet, and they end up renting it,
even after the video clerk tells them not to. But
like anybody could make it, somebody will buy it because
there's an audience for it. And then that became found
footage and then became this And there's something about that
with Christmas movies where it's sort of similar. It is
this like, look, there's an audience no matter what you do,

(06:03):
no matter how you know. It can be religious, it
can be pure romance, it can have tinges of horror,
it can have this. But if it has like Christmas
in it, there's an audience for it. And there is
still like that rhythm those you know, the list of
ten and all the things that come with it, like
you can always find music for your movie because there's

(06:24):
a lot of public domain and it's just it's a
fascinating thing just how many there are. And so let
me ask you what for you is like one of
the more unusual, rare, kind of biggest surprises, Like do
you have like a top list you go to sometimes
for it?

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I mean, there are a million films that I would
The problem is with someone with the sort of compulsion
that I've developed, is that as much as I do
find things every year that I really love and want
to watch again, there's always the compulsion of like, well,
if I watch that one, I can't watch something else
that I haven't seen yet Yep. Last year, my big

(07:02):
my big favorite was Santa Stole Our Dog.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
You mentioned that one, yes, And I don't know this one.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, it's it's another one of those that was. It's
It can't have been made for more than you know,
a few like maybe fifty thousand dollars or something, but
it stars Ed Asner as Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
And payed more than five times at least by my account.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah. Yeah, And you know, I think that the plot
was fuzzy because it wasn't really about the plot. I
think the dog ended up jumping into Santa's bag and
leaving the house or whatever, and the kids go after it.
But it's just there's a there's a sort of chaotic
energy about that film that that I just found really engaging.

(07:49):
Like there's there's really reckless use of CG throughout the thing.
There are you know, little people used as elves or
portraying elves the film, but there's also fully a c
G elves in the same THD and so there's no
consistency between which characters are were the CG elves just
sort of danced like the dancing baby and Ally mcbeale.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh god, that's my Nightmare. Yeah, so many reasons.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
There's a there's a sequence in which I can't remember
if it's car it might have been the sleigh does
a felm and Louise off a cliff like, and there's
all sorts of crazy things happening in that film that
it was just so chaotic that I couldn't stop watching it.
It was a car wreck that was just so engaging.
And last night actually I introduced some friends of mine
to I mean, I don't it's probably not terribly obscure,

(08:34):
but for me it was my first time watching it.
Last year was Mister Saint Nick, which stars Kelsey Grammer.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
As I know the one you mean, Yes, I did
not watch it. It was on my listen. I never got
around to it.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah, it's really it's it's very entertaining, and it's at
a point it was it was made in two thousand
and two, and it's it was made at a time
when you know, because Christmas movies these days that the
hallmark of lifetime, the ABC movies or whatever. They're largely
made with people who focus only on these type of.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Films, or or they rotate between this lifetime thrillers or
low budget horr.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, but back then you could your TV movies had
like actors in them, people that you knew. And so
there was Kelsey Grammer and there was Catherine Hellman who
was Mona you know, so yes, be still my Mark
and like just a whole cast of Charles Derning with
Santa Claus and that one nice. And so it's it's

(09:27):
just always exciting to find. And my list never ends,
and so I'll never get It's one of the great
things about films is that you never I'll never watch everything. Yeah,
and so there's always exciting things to discover.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, and it's exponential for Christmas movies because every year
the networks and now the like your two B's and
so on, like they just make more. Ever, Like, it's
funny when I go back to pull up a Hallmark
movie from ten years ago and I find the trailer
and it says like one of twelve new movies premiering
this season, and today I think it's like one of
forty two new movies from hearing this season.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
So yeah, you're never gonna run out.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah. I think I saw a stat when I was
looking at stuff earlier today that there were over one
hundred and fifty new Christmas movies being made by networks
this year, and I was like that, even I can't
get through that like that I last year, I somehow
managed to be in the seventies, which will not maybe
very hard again, but one hundred and forty a year,
that's it's it's an endless well of films to enjoy

(10:22):
or hate or both the same time.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Who knows, Yeah, And it's I think, I don't want
to speak for you, but I wonder if you've come
come to it to a similar way of there is
a part of me where some of these movies I
find just, oh god, they are completely formulaic. They have
no charm to them that you can see the checkboxes
being done, and yet it's entertaining to me to watch,
like with a certain viewpoint of well did it you know,

(10:47):
did the sidekick.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Have dangly earrings?

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Like?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Whatever it might be, there's entertainment in that, but I
know that no matter what, still makes people happy. But
then you find there's like the Gems, right, the ones
that are actually just good for whatever reason. They have
the right person writing it, they have the right cast,
and it's still that same story, but it works, and
then you have the ones in between, which this year
has been the place that I'm kind of most fascinated by,

(11:09):
where I can't tell now, is this a good movie?
Is this a movie where everything is working? Or am
I finally has my like armor finally chipped away enough
to where even like an okay film, if it has
enough of the right elements clicking, it's gonna get me,
I'm gonna and I'm gonna realize like, oh yeah, I

(11:30):
want these characters to get together.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
It's a it's a fascinating place to be.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
I totally get that. And there's there is something to
be said for you know, as you mentioned before, like
my forte my wheelhouses in genre films and horror films
and things like that. And so when I began this
like obsession, there was certainly a part of it that
was that was doing it with you know, a very

(11:56):
thin veneer of irony, you know, but at some point
that you know, like you said, the veneer of irony
sort of wears off and you're just in it, yeah,
you know, And and it may even be just one
one scene in a film that you're like, oh, okay, well,
the rest of the film is shit, but this one
scene was amazing. And this happened with me last maybe

(12:19):
not last night, two nights ago, when I was watching
a very merry toy store, which was just a very
run of the mill Melissa Joan Hart, you know, Mario
Lopez thing or whatever. But then they're in the middle
or toward toward the end, there's a sled race that's
completely done on green screen and it's very aggressive, and

(12:40):
I'm like, Okay, well, I don't care what anything else
happening in this movie, but this greens You have to
watch this green screen sled race, Like this is amazing,
you know. So there's five great minutes in this eighty
five minute movie, and that's enough, you know. And I
tend to look for the best in everything, yeah, and
sometimes I don't find it, but like even in a
lot of yes, there.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Is always a fashionable pea coat if nothing else, Yeah,
there's gonna be that. So let's move into the QVC's
debut film. And I think since this movie, they have
made one more that was also a holiday movie. But
I don't fully understand like the origin of why I

(13:22):
understand why any network would do a Christmas movie. Food
Network was doing them a couple years ago. I don't
know if they're doing them this year, but they were
doing them, and I was so curious when they did
it because I thought, oh, it's like, is it going
to be really obviously made for a network. Is they're
going to be like a recipe posted to the side.
Is there going to be a QR code to scan for,
you know, step by step? And so I was wondering

(13:44):
and it wasn't. It was just a typical Christmas romance
movie that happened to have a Food Network personality show
up for five minutes. So now QBC does Holly in
the Hot Chocolate. It is again sixty six minutes long,
so it is not like at Work length, but it
is a full, you know, three act story. And again

(14:06):
I'm watching it thinking, are we going to get like,
you know, if a character is wearing very fashionable clothes,
are we going to get a scan here to you know,
identify that coat or identify those earrings? And we get
none of that. The movie does have a mission, which
is ultimately to sell you hot chocolate. We can get
to that in the you know, within the plot and

(14:26):
so on, but it's really like played for it to
be a pretty straightforward Christmas movie. Let's dive into the
story of this movie, so can you, Josh, give us
kind of a synopsis of breakdown. This movie is streaming everywhere.
It's on Amazon, it's on I think Peacock on Canopy like,
so everybody out there can find it. And it's only

(14:48):
sixty six minutes long, so feel free to spoil. Walk
us through the plot of Holidy in the Hot Chocolate.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
A plot is fairly simple. I mean, you can't do
much with sixty six minutes, and they recognize that. So
essentially the plot the film begins in the town of
Pine Falls, which is trying very hard to gain the
title of best Christmas town in the country, and we

(15:14):
meet a few characters in the town. There's a sort
of Christmas market that's happening, a winter market that's happening,
and almost immediately we're introduced to the idea that this
town has the best hot chocolate in the world. And
this is where we get the shockingly I wouldn't say
subtle but non aggressive placement of the QBC personality David Vennible,

(15:38):
who is we'll talk about later, who's part of the story.
The story writing process but everyone loves this Hot Chocolate's.
Hot Chocolate's apparently the best that the world's ever seen.
We then soon meet a young girl named Stephanie who
is about to go to college and she's getting She's
trying to decorate her family home for her father for

(16:00):
she leaves, because she knows that once she leaves, he
won't bother doing it. He is a scrooge of great measure.
He does not enjoy Christmas at all.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
His name is Rudy ironic of course, but yes.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yes it's a very christmas y name, so we'll also
get to that later. So he does not care for Christmas.
She wants to make sure that he is happy because
she loves him, and she knows that leaving town is
going to leave him alone. And he's just really not
into it. The whole town is into it. The mayor,
the mayor, Mayor Steve, the nineteen year old mayor, nineteen

(16:39):
year old mayor is trying to get him involved and everything,
and he just bats it away. There's a scene in which,
very very early in the film, where he goes to
a diner and a local tells him Merry Christmas. A
local wearing a Christmas sweater, to which Rudy replies thanks,
but does not reciprocate. This causes great costernation to his

(17:01):
It's like.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
When you say bless you and somebody doesn't say thank you,
and you just feel this.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Like yes, yeah, So anyway, Rudy is. Rudy owns a
tow truck company which is also ironically named Missletwing, which
he tries later to explain has nothing to do with mistletoe,
but in any case, he owns a towing company. Meanwhile,
in the big city of Boston, we have Holly, the

(17:27):
titular Holly, who is a food critic at e Fie Magazine,
which is a high falutin magazine, who is being scolded
by her boss for positively reviewing low brow food.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Such as cheese friess.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Is cheese fries, which when she should be reviewing, you know,
higher end, higher end affair for which the magazine is
more well known or would like to be more well
known or associated with. So it's about Christmas time and
Holly's about to go and meet her boyfriend. And so

(18:04):
she's heading off to go meet her boyfriend, and on
her way there, she gets in an accident which puts
her very near the town of Pine Falls, at which
point the Toe Truck Company Missile Towing, picks her up,
brings her into town, and then you know, romance abounds

(18:26):
almost there is sort of back and forth, you know,
will they won't they? Because she does have a boyfriend.
He has helped her find an autobody shop which very
easily repairs her car, at which point he tells them
not or he tells her that it's not repaired and

(18:47):
she's have to stick around a while because he, like
he enjoys her company. Not great, not a great way
to woo.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
The initially they're told they don't have the part, so
it's going to be to wait two days for the part.
She's like, all right, we'll make the best Availa go
hang out. And then Rudy gets a phone call saying like,
oh hey, I found the part. Yeah, she can go,
and he just doesn't tell her. And something I appreciate
this movie is that everybody acknowledges that that's really messed
up and that it's essentially kidnapping.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Right. But and I the tone of.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
This movie is very interesting because it does feel very
aware of what of how kind of ridiculous these scenarios are,
but it is playing it straight and it's not kind
of talking down to it. But yes, this is completely
one of these hijink movies, and you get a lot
of these, like in the older days of Hallmark and

(19:42):
Lifetime used to have a lot of these, like oh
I lost my kind of like Overboard, right where like
if you boil the movie Overboard, which is a delightful comedy,
but when you sit back from it, you say, oh,
this is this is a dangerous thing to laugh at.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
More directly to the point, You've got Holiday in Handcuffs,
which is completely it's a kidnapping movie, but it's it's
kind of in the in the Holiday in Handcuffs mold.
So meanwhile, he tells her that she can't He doesn't
tell she can le he tells her a car can't
be fixed. Meanwhile, the mechanics says, I just walked past

(20:20):
the part like three times and didn't didn't realize it
was here. And so they go on, you know, they
enjoy the town. She keeps hearing about the hot chocolate
as a food critic, she is very interested. He makes
her a fabulous grill cheese sandwich, which apparently is the
best thing she's ever had in her life. They they

(20:42):
play in a ski ball tournament.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
It's very very seasonal ball.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, very seasonally bedazzled bar, which is fantastic, and you know,
they eventually she she tries to go back home to
meet her boyfriend. It doesn't work out, She comes back town,
they fall in love, and the film ends at that point.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, they they fall she comes back, They fall in love.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
One year later.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
I was trying to figure out exactly what happens one
year later, right, So they re Now his mother owns
a bed and breakfast that used to have a thriving restaurant,
but then his dad died, so we get a lot
of dead wives and parents in this. But with so that,
he decides he's going to reopen the bed and breakfast.
So a year later we see that he has now

(21:31):
has Holly moved to Fine Falls. Do you think she's
working remotely?

Speaker 1 (21:35):
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Like the movie doesn't give us too many details on that,
but what were your kind of thoughts there?

Speaker 3 (21:42):
So my head canon for the film is that, you know, okay,
so the restaurant was part of a bed and breakfast.
The breakfast part was a part that they were no
longer in operating, and so his mother was trying to
sell the whole The whole Raps based on his grilled
cheese prowess, convinces him to open the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
That's all you need to do is make a good
grilled cheese and you can run a restaurant.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Come on, I.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Mean there are grilled cheese restaurants across this great nation. Beast, please,
because you can have a restaurant for anything.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
And so my impression was with the the way that
Holly was dissatisfied with her job at e Fie magazine,
that it was a good lateral move for her to
come back and just quit that job and move to
Pine Falls and pine fall in love with him and

(22:33):
you know, and just live that life. I feel like that.
That was what my head said about this film.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Well, so at the very end, we see her editor
has come to eat at this restaurant, And now was
that a visiting a friend, because now it's like, oh,
my former employee who invited me out to her restaurant,
I'll come there. Was it a oh, we have moved
the magazine here where she can write in this town,

(23:01):
but then still have a relationship there, it was not clear.
They are clearly happy and that's great, and it was
hard to know how like ambitious Holly really was. Because
Holly seemed to care of all the things in the world.
What did she love most? Christmas? I think was the answer.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
So I don't know if it was like, oh, I
really wanted to be a food critic and I it
didn't work. Maybe I really wanted to be wife or
really wanted to be hostess at this restaurant, or I
just you know, I split my time.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
So I was.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Curious and was felt a little bit because there's things
about this that I enjoyed this overall, But that was
the one where I'm like, I kind of wish we
had a little bit of closure there because I feel
like everybody's happy, but I don't know what that means,
and I don't know, you know, where I should fall
on the Was this somebody getting like sucked into a
little small town and she loves it now because she's

(23:52):
been brainwashed, or was this like, oh, no, I was
able to balance my life and I can do multiple
things here and I write by myself and I you know,
I'm working on my own book.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Whatever it was it would have been nice to know
a little more there.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
I mean, I feel like with the sixty six minutes
you are going to lack a bit of clarity as
far as where the characters are going, and there is
you know, at the beginning of the film, there's there's
not really any indication of where the end of the
film will go as far as where the characters are.
So you're when you're looking at Rudy at no point
really until she tells him that his grilled cheese is great,

(24:24):
there's not really the impression that he wants to run
a restaurant. He wants his family's business to survive, but
it's not necessarily clear that he wants it to be
because he is a master chef and would like to
create and prepare food with love for the citizens of
Pine Falls. Yes, and for her, you know, her job
as a food credit feels sort of perfunctory at times

(24:44):
because you know, she's doing these these glowing reviews of
cheese fries, but then she goes to do a high falutin.
You know, what would want to assume is a menu,
a astronomy event or whatever which offers her A wrote
this down a Quai legs with a question of chives.
I found that funny, which they repeat several times, and

(25:07):
the question is answered and that they are not chives.
It is a different flavor altogether, and she doesn't seem
to be terribly satisfied with that with that career. So
who knows what she transitioned to. It's not she transitioned
into falling in love with Rudy, I think is all
that we get of her her story at that point.

(25:30):
But again, like you said, at the end of the film,
they're both smiling real big so.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, yeah, in this world that is all that matters.
So yeah, So with that being said, let's go into
the list of ten to see if this kind of
fits into all of those parameters. So now this one,
we really kind of have co leads, right, so often
her lead is a you know, female who needs to
learn something. In this case we kind of, you know,

(25:55):
the man kind of changes more than the woman. But
let's start with our female.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
We have Holly.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
One of the questions that always comes up is does
she have a Christmas theme name?

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Mean? Yeah, I mean she does, yes.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
It's kind of like in I guess I don't know
what the name is today now it's probably like Isabella
or something, but like when you were a kid, When
I was a kid, like you always had like five
Melissas in class, and like three Jared's and four Jonathan's.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Like in the world.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Of Cozy Cardigan Christmas, you always have like seven Holly's,
eight Noel's every every season. Yeah, and now Holly is
played by an actress who I thought I recognized for
more things. But the main thing I saw her in
recently was Knock at the Cabin. So, Hannah Gaffney and

(26:47):
what were your thoughts on Holly both as a character
the performance.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
I mean, I think she she did perfectly. Find it
felt like they understood the assignment, as the kids say
these days, and there's there's really honestly in the cast
there and we'll talk more about the rest of them,
but not many of them have done much of anything.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, it was surprising to me because it felt like
this was a lot of comedic actors, like more so
than like, this isn't your usual hallmark stable of people,
like there's definitely Canadians in here, like this is there's
definitely that, But it felt like, oh no, these are
all like I probably recognized most of these people from
Law and Order, right, surely I've seen them and in

(27:29):
a lot of cases no, So I guess there are
a lot of like more local. But I thought, like
Hanna Gaffney, I thought she was like genuinely funny. I
thought she had very good timing. I thought she clicked
well with everybody I thought.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
I thought, yeah, I thought she did. She did a
good job. I think that, and we'll talk more about them.
But I think the leads in general, like in the
in the main supporting cast, they they understood what they
were doing, yeah with the film, and that always works.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, especially when like you're you're not even making a
Hallmark movie, You're making a QVC movie. Like that has
to be a really weird brief for an actor to
come in and say, like, Okay, what does that mean,
Like let me make sure I'm not that I'm not
playing it too straight or not playing or not I'm

(28:13):
not missing the comedy, Like it's it's a tricky tone
to nail down when you need you to know, like
what is the goal of our movie? Is it to
tell a story or is it to sell hot chocolate?
And I feel like, yeah, the lead actors, like the
main supporting cast all like seem to have been having
a good time, and I think that.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Goes a long way for sure.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Now let's talk about the bland love interest. In this case,
we have Rudy who is probably like the most recognizable
actor in the bunch, Ryan Farrell, who it was killing
me to figure out what I'd seen him in. He's
been in a lot. I think the thing that I
probably knew him best, frum was The Deuce, which was
the HBO show And did you watch The Deuce, Spiny Chance?

Speaker 3 (28:55):
I did?

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I think what's funny is to realize, like, oh, The
Deuce had a lot of like really really awful men
in that scheme of things, like he was like maybe
number two on that list as far as being like
an absolute piece of shit. So it's very funny to
see him in this scenario of oh, he's a romantic lead.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
What do I know him from?

Speaker 3 (29:15):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Right, he does very bad things?

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah yeah, but yeah I feel like he did. He
And here's here's the thing about this film is like
he is and you said, they're kind of co leads,
so we could answer these questions like for both of them,
you know, I don't Holly would not be a bland
love interest.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
He is.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
I don't think he's necessarily bland. He's just sort of
a downer, yes, but he has a story, you know,
he and he has he has an emotional arc that
he that he goes through very quickly, very quickly, very quickly.
But yeah, I mean I'm seeing here that he was
in train Wreck. Also, I can't remember. He might have

(29:56):
been just one of like the passing boyfriends in train Wreck.
Who knows. But yeah, And like I was saying, if
we go through the rest of the castalotom, I've never
been in another film like they were in Holly in
the Hot Chocolate and they decided it wasn't for them.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
They didn't get those big QBC books, right, Yeah, And
I guess bonus points of course, he is a widow
dad who works with his hands in a more kind
of blue collar job. So and then transitions to chef,
which is also with his hands, so fitting all fitting
all the buttons there now. Number three is our setting,

(30:32):
typically either a big bad city, a charming small town,
or a magical winter wonderland kind of two out of three,
probably more one and a half out of three, right,
we don't get is it Boston is the city?

Speaker 1 (30:42):
She's in.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Boston is where her boyfriend is, at least believe I'm
not sure where she is. She might be in New
York and on the way to Boston.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
I feel like I have Philly in my head, but
I think some of this might have been filmed in
Philadelphia or outside of it, So that might be why I'm.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Thinking that that could be.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
So pine Falls is our is our town, which is
a good name for a Christmas town. You start to
run out of them pretty quickly. I just did like
a script where I wrote something Christmas related and I
realized after I was telling a friend about it. Her
friend was telling me about a movie she just watchedes like, oh, yeah,
it was in Peppermint Falls, And I realized, oh, I
thought I invented that. No, that came from another movie.

(31:19):
So you start to really run out a word. So
pine Falls good one. Would you want to live in
Pine Falls?

Speaker 3 (31:27):
I have this discussion with my wife all the time.
She would love to live in a small town. I
need culture, so that's that's a tough tough sell for me. Yep,
being far from cultures is rough. So I I don't know,
I don't think I could do it.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
I get very unnerved by a town where everybody knows
everything about you.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Right that Holly rolls into town.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
It's the next morning, and she goes to the mechanic,
and the mechanic already knows about Holly and knows, like, oh, yeah,
you and Rudy have a thing going. Everybody is saying,
Everybody is saying, what does that mean? There's only five
people in this town. How don't they even know anything's happening?
That that upsets me, Like the idea that I don't know,
I think I've I've been a you know, apartment dweller

(32:15):
for a long time. So it's that whole like, oh no,
you never like, you know, you can kind of say
hi to your neighbor, but like you don't really want
to know your You don't want them to know you.
So the idea that everybody knows like people's menstrual cycle,
probably at this point in this town, is a little
scary to me.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
With you there, all right. So number four, our dead
parents are a dead wife.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
Both we got yes, we do.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Two minutes into the movie, we get dead mom.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yeah, yep, yep. Uh huh and uh and you're uh
uh Rudy's Rudy's father's dead yep. And Rudy's wife is dead. Yes,
uh so he's just got his his lovely wacky mom,
which we'll talk a sassy sidekick. So yeah, we've we've

(33:09):
got them both. Yeah, we do.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
And I can't tell you how happy I was when
we find out pretty early on, oh, he hasn't had
hot chocolate since my mom died. That to me was
just like, oh, this movie is about hot Okay, now
I get it. We're selling hot chocolate. This all makes sense.
Now that was a made me again in a very
dark way, like, yeah, that that all tracks.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
So number five is our sassy sidekick. What have we
got here?

Speaker 3 (33:38):
So we've got we've got We've got dead his mom,
a sassy side We've got Stephanie, his daughter, the sassy sidekick.
We've got Mayor Steve Mayor Steve perhaps the sassiest of sidekicks. Yep.
Pretty much everyone in the film who is not Holly
and Rudy is at some level of sassy side Yeah,

(34:00):
pushing them together exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
They exist purely for the purpose of making this couple,
you know, officially be together.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah, exactly. And you know the one person who's well, no,
there's Steve and his daughter Stephanie are both actively trying
to make them smooch Holly because she is the outsider
here doesn't really have the sassy sidekick at per se,
except you know, the sassy psychic Stephanie kind of gloms

(34:32):
onto her as well to sort of facilitate their budding relationship.
And so, yeah, we've got we've got sassy sidekicks from
out our ears.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
How did you like Mayor Steve? Because it's I was
thinking about this, I like, this maybe is an hour
six minutes, which is a weird time for a movie
to be and on one hand, like they could have
easily bumped it up another twenty minutes if they needed to.
On the other hand, I'm like they if like it's
weird that they didn't fit it into an hour, because
I'm like, you could show if you had to shave
six minutes. I feel like you could basically shave off

(35:06):
all of may Or Steve and you have probably a
fifty eight minute movie because he has a lot of
vamping he don't, And did it work for you?

Speaker 3 (35:16):
I was fine with it. Yeah, he's he's he's pure
comic relief. He does he does really nothing substantive in
the film.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
I mean, he cuts a lot of ribbons with his
comically oversizors which.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
He and seat belts. Yes, and uh, he has the
thing that I enjoyed his performance. I could not stop
staring at his hairline, which I feel that may reflect
on me, but he had a he had a very
aggressive hairline in the film. But yeah, I mean, and

(35:49):
there's there's There's a thing about this film that we
kind of traded text on earlier, and I mentioned it
in my earlier review when I watched it from last year,
is that it feels it feels meta ish. It feels
like it's not fully there though it's not actively it's
not actively commenting on the tropes of a Christmas film.

(36:10):
It's not something like what is it a Christmas movie?
Christmas or something like that Letter to Satan Claus or
something like isn't it romantic? Like one of those films
where the characters realize what's happening to them and so
it's it's it is playing with those tropes in shockingly
creative ways in some at some points but it does

(36:35):
still like he's probably the character in the film that
is the most most clearly portraying to the audience that
they know what they're doing. You know, that they understand
that this film is not to be, you know, taken
as a straight Christmas rom com. It understands the world
that is living in. It's playing with the tropes, and

(36:56):
it's because of this one character who kind of plays
the throughout the thing.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yes, yeah, that's It's a good way of looking at it,
because even our leads are a little more self aware
than you normally have in a movie like this, Like
they acknowledge things like, wow, it's you know, you've only
been here for a day, but I think I have
feelings for you and things like that. But it is
this Steven gets to be. It's I always go back to,
this is like an airplane you have. You know, everybody's

(37:23):
playing it straight. Everybody is doing everything, and then there's Johnny, right,
and Johnny is just fluttering around in the background, and
he is giving a performance from a different not a movie,
but like from a different universe. Yeah, and you could
take it out and everything would still play like a
little more straight, But there is something about like having
that element of chaos in there that takes it to

(37:43):
a different place. And I feel like they did find
a way to do that, and it's one that I
wonder did it because I don't know enough about the
people behind this. Did it start from Okay, we're gonna
tell a basic love story, but you know, let's have
a couple of any characters. Wait a minute, I have
this friend, and I think he'd be great in this part. Wait,

(38:05):
what if the mayor is like twenty years old? Like,
I'm so curious on how they landed on that choice
for the mayor because it is not something you see
in these movies to have the mayor character be this
kid who might even be corrupt at one point, Like
you just hear like a SoundBite of him like running

(38:26):
away screaming I'm not corrupt, Like that's a choice, And
I'm so curious how they got there. Did it start
with the actor, did it start with the script? I
don't know, but it it's unusual and it's memorable and I.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Appreciate it, Yeah for sure.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, all right, So number six is our kind of villain.
Right For a long time, it was always an evil
woman that's less so these days, So it's really more
just a general villain. I think there's kind of two
candidates that fit here. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Well, I think that for me, the most obvious one
is at the very beginning of the film. It is
the editor at Effie magazine, who you know, hates cheese fries.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
She's divorced also, so divorcees.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
I mean, what are you doing here?

Speaker 3 (39:10):
And she is stoked about being divorced.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, because now she gets to salsa.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, So that was that was the one that I
that I caught. Who else were you were you thinking of?

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Well, not a woman, but kind of the villain of
the piece, right, Who is the other thing keeping our
characters apart?

Speaker 1 (39:28):
We've got Tommy the boyfriend. Yeh, I kind of love he.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
He also well, he plays this sort of a similar
tone to Steve in that he is. He is on
that dude throughout the film. He all he really wants,
well not all he really wants. All he wants at
all is this dish, this vase that he's trying to
get to his house, and that's all he can seem

(39:57):
to talk about with with Holly as she's you know,
making the arduous trek to Boston.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yep. She gets in a car accident whose first.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Question is the ok is the dish okay? And you
know in the in the end of the film, and
he proves to be a douchebage, you know, and it
all sort of all the feelings that the film has
has made us feel about Tommy through the course of
it are proven to be correct, and we all feel victorious.

(40:27):
And she is able to, you know, guilt free, break
that bond and go go back to the man that she.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Tries, the love of her life, who she's known for.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yes, naturally, for sure.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Tommy Pope is the actor who played Tommy. He's having fun.
I enjoyed him. I like the first thing he says
when he answers the phone, how are you. I'm in
a bad mood. I didn't get to work out today.
As soon as that happened, I'm like, okay, I get
what we're doing. I like it now.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Number seven is the montage.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Sometimes we have many montages, sometimes we have none and
the movie just doesn't work in this case, did you
count any montages?

Speaker 3 (41:05):
I you know, this is something that I missed. I
don't recall many, if any montages. It's not something I
was looking for.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
There they're short.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
I'd say there's two. One is I don't know at
what point in time it's happening. I'm guessing it is
the morning when there's a little bit of holly and
the Dawn and Stephanie are decorating, and we get some
music play, kind of like a Christmas word salad song
playing as they do that, and then we have the
big ski ball tournament, yeah, which is done kind of

(41:39):
montage of just lots of ski ball and you know,
there's the big ski ball champion who comes in and
has his own glove, and so it's just a lot
a lot of close ups of ski ball, which is
exactly something I've thought these Christmas movies have missed all
this time.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, for sure, for sure, all right, tournament, Yes.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Now, slapstick something that comes up quite often in these movies.
Some of the anything you.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Caught, I mean, most of the stuff with with Mayor
Steve feels slapsticky. Yeah, there's not a lot of pratfalls
or anything, but there is. You know, he he really
loves those giant scissors if they feel.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Like that's why you become mayors to have those scissors.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean a lot of
the slapstick is is not it's not physical comedy would
be more like the wordplay and the sort of you know,
the missile towing puns and things like that. But you know,
there's they don't even really have snow in this town,
as is proven by the fact that Mayor Steve has
to import or or buy a snow machine, which comes

(42:48):
in handy at the end of the true true, but no,
not a lot of slapstick.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
We get a little bit of deb being seeming a
little drunk and kind of not always being with it.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Holly sweat.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Holly is a Christmas sweater that's lighting up, and her
boss is trying to talk to her and is a
little distracted. So but yeah, nothing, we don't have this
any like meat cute. They bump into each other. I mean,
I guess she does get into a car accident is
how they meet.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
But yeah, even that's not really played for laughs. True.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
Well, I mean she's singing and then she distracted by herself.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Yeah, yeah, the GPS is going off track. But yeah,
it's not. It's not it's no buster keep, It's nothing
like that.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
So let's talk about the sage old person.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
Well, it's gonna be Deb, right.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
I think Deb is one of the sage old people.
She does give, you know, good advice.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Who else you're looking at?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Well this, I don't know how old this person is,
but I I guess I did not know this person
was famous until I thought to myself, this is a
really awkward performance. Oh this is the QVC guy. Oh yes, yes,
uh so the hot chocolate.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Concoctioner brewer. Yes, I guess that's the right word for it.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
So he's just there and the camera does like a
bit of a you know, magical sprinkle over him when
we meet him, and he has a speech about hot
chocolate and how it only tastes good in the presence
of love.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, which just I don't know if we can test that.
I feel like, yeah, like I hate drunk hot chocolate
in the past, and it.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Was just fine, Like how do you do that?

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Do you have like?

Speaker 2 (44:30):
And even the way he's like serving it, it's like, oh,
I ran out of hot chocolate because I ran out
of love. It's kind of what it feels like he's saying, right,
and like, do you taste you have?

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Like?

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Is it sort of like the movie Timer, it's like, okay,
are you meant to be together? Two of you come
up and drink the hot chocolate. Is it the best
hot chocolate you've ever drank? It's okay, then you are
not really in love. You should separate now, Like, is
that the way you test your like actual compatibility?

Speaker 3 (44:56):
I mean the hot chocolate being operating like a barbecue
joint where once you run out, the play shuts down.
Is that's a that's that's a choice? All?

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Mean it again. It allows rooting Holly to prolong their
their courtship, their courtship because you know, the movie is
Holly in the hot chocolate, and Holly doesn't get the
hot chocolate until last five minutes of the movie.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
I really wondered about it because we're you know, she's online.
I'm thinking like, oh, like, so is it going to
be that she's going to have the hot chocolate and
then decide to write an article about the hot chocolate
and that's going to save the town and all this.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
But no, we just had to wait until love for
hot chocolate. So yeah, And it.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
Seems that's also sort of interesting the way that works,
because you know, she is a writer, and so you
would think that would be the way to go. And
there's also a big fuss made the first half of
the film about how they're trying to become like the
best Christmas town or the.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
On Mornings with America.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
On Mornings with America, and it's that whole idea is
is gets the kibosh pretty quickly, like fairly early that
it's not going to be that. And so if that's
the thrust of what mayor Steve is going for, like
what else do you have?

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Right? A snow machine?

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, the snow machine, which is it's just a hose.
It's just pretty much like it's a VACU know, it's
a drive back. You know that they turn inverse.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
And that's the thing about living in Pine Falls, You're
you don't know where your taxes are going, you know,
Like I mean, I don't know. I see that there's
a ski ball tax every year and I'm not getting
anything out of it.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Now, last is Santa Claus. And unfortunately there's there's no
Santa Claus in this movie. I guess there's Christmas magic
in the hot chocolate maybe.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
But kind of, I mean, and this is a thing
that I mentioned I think at the beginning, is that
I for for me to truly engage with these films,
like magic must be present. It is there is a
requirement for me. And so the generic rom coms don't
do a whole lot for me. I'll watch them if
there's something that I feel is an interesting twist on it.

(47:00):
Like over the weekend the Lifetime Movie Network put up
a couple a lesbian and a gay rom Come and
So I watched both of those because that was that
was a novel idea.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, I think it's the first lesbian rom com that
we've had of a Christmas movie.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Which which had a baking competition, which also like that
worked for me and so and so if there's magic involved,
like I'm in and I was the magic of the
Hot Chocolate is, I mean, it's questionable, it's questionable magic.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Well, q I guess QBC can't legally claim to be
saying watching so maybe that's part of it.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Well, that's that's probably the problem with the fact they're
trying to sell this stuff. Later on it they weren't
trying to sell it. They could have said that it
was magic and it fun.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Then then it could have won an Emmy, So yes,
all right, So now we go into the bonus round
some of the other fun things that come up, And
the first is the very very high dosage of public
domain holiday songs that we get in these movies.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Did you clock any here?

Speaker 3 (47:57):
I felt like a lot of sort of generic Christmasy sounds,
but not a whole lot of recognizable music.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a deck the halls. When
she's kind of like stumbling into her office with a
Christmas tree, she's singing jingle bells. I think in the
is that how she gets into the accident or no,
she's singing we wish you a Merry Christmas, like to
herself in the car, which again is a choice, not
something I know anybody that does.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Like, I guess if the.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Song comes on the radio, then you're like, oh yeah,
I know the words.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
It's not as bad as a movie. Earlier this year I.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Watched where like they're doing karaoke to jingle bells, and
that's just there's something very like wrong about that, Like, no,
you don't need a karaoke video for the lyrics for
jingle bells. But again, be careful because if you are
singing at the top of your lungs, you might get
into an accident. So yeah, let's say now number two
is our secret family recipe or very complicated holiday cocktails.

(48:51):
We get a couple of things even before we get
to the hot chocolate. There's a few other.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Food things of note here. Anything that stuck out to you.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
I mean, there's the girl cheese sandwich that inspires inspires
Holly for sure, Like that's and then he explains the
types of cheeses that sitting there.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, that makes sense, gre and greer. It's a good combination.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, and uh, and so there was that. I don't
recall what was the other ones that you caught.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
I don't know that there was.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
A recipe, but this was probably one of those. Like
the way you have a wedding tax, you have a
Christmas tax on hot dogs, right, So it's like, can
I get too hot dogs? You mean two Christmas hot dogs? Sure,
I mean to Christmas hot dogs and.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
The Christmas ketchup and Christmas Christmas mustard.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
And I like the idea of like if I was
running a hot dog stand around the holidays, I would
like up my prices by a dollar and I would
just write the word Christmas on everything, and you know.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Now small business in danger is the next one. Number three, for.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Sure, there's the Bend and Breakfast. Breakfast is is Mama
deb is getting ready to check it. Yeah, and so
that's that's for sure. Our small business is in danger.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
And I like early on in the movie Holly when
I think it's when she's talking to her boss and
she like just very emphatically points out that she loves
local business, of course, and I get, you know again,
like I guess that's something we all say, but it
felt very much like, oh, I know a local business
she's gonna find. So yeah, it all works out in

(50:28):
Manned Now. Number four, I don't I don't even know
if this applies to this movie product place man question mark.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
I mean, it doesn't really apply unless you put it
in the context of the production company and the streaming
service and all that. Because they did sell that hot
chocolate immediately after the film was released, and so technically
it's a commercial, it's a it's a it's a product placement.
But in the in the film, it's not named it's

(50:59):
just hot chocolate, which.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Is really strange because the I guess the big secret
of the qv Sea Hot Chocolate is that it was
a collaboration with Serendipity, which is a big fancy like
dessert restaurant in New York City. The movie Serendipity with
John Cusack from I don't know, like fifteen years ago,
is like set in there and it's like become I

(51:23):
don't know that it's a chain, but like they definitely
now like ship nationwide and everything, kind of like Magdalia Bakery.
But it's weird that like that doesn't I guess it
makes sense in this movie. It wouldn't make sense to
be like, ooh, this tastes so good. What's the secret? Oh,
there's a restaurant in New York City that sends us
there like you know their ingredients. That wouldn't make sense.
But also like does this movie like did you want

(51:47):
to drink hot chocolate?

Speaker 1 (51:48):
By the end of this movie? Did you want to
drink this hot chocolate?

Speaker 3 (51:53):
I can't say that I did. Now I will say
in my own defense, I usually want to drink hot chocolate, okay,
And so so I don't think that that urge was
in any way amplified by the film. However, if I
watched it and there was if I was in a
theater watching this film and at the end of the

(52:13):
film someone said, we have this hot chocolate available in
the lobby, I would have one hundred percent gone out
there and bought the hot chocolate. Am I gonna mail order? It?
Probably not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
I think maybe now the more I'm thinking of it.
The thing that is driving me a little crazy like
hot chocolate. To me, it's kind of about the experience
of hot chocolate, right, Like it's not like ooh, I
just It's why I don't understand the idea of like
hot chocol like ice hot chocolate, because I don't want
the flavor of hot chocolate.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
That doesn't exist to me. Hot chocolate is it's the season.
I'm cold. I want to relax. I want a big mug.
I want my chocolate in there. I'm gonna put some cinnamon.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Maybe I'll put some whipped cream or marshmallow, like I'm
gonna stirt with candy cane, whatever it is. And in
this case, it's just like it's a you know, a
paper cup of like liquidy. It doesn't look thick, it
doesn't look like it's not dark hot chocolate, Like there's
no caramel swizzle, like, there's nothing going on in that
hot chocolate.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
And we don't really see anyone actively enjoying it like
it's it's it's a lot of talk about the hot
chocolate exactly, but you don't see anybody like sipping it
and taking like a like a.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Deep breath like it nodding yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Yeah, there's none of that happens.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
No, it's just everybody saying yeah, wait on lie for
a long time.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Yeah, we've been told that the hot chocolate is great,
but we have no no one actively enjoying it, which
is a strange choice. It feels like it would have
been a very easy thing to fit into the film.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Yeah, I mean a montage like this is what montages
are made for, is just to have everybody in town
sip the hot chocolate and smile at each other.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
You know, you make the movie sixty seven minutes and
you got your problem solved.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
That's true. I mean, was there a time crunch? We
will never know? Uh? Now number five is our cloying child.
I don't think we have any like actual miners in
this movie, right, there's like kids.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Anywhere, No Stephanie is the closest we have and she
is going off to college.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
She's a cool teenager like yeah, Like she's like, yeah,
I could be your step mom.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
Right, Yeah, she's a sweet kid, you know, which is
not cloying at all. I think we we dodgeable it here.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
I agree number six finding the perfect tree. I mean,
we get tree decorating, but there's no like hunting for
a tree.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Doesn't the Holly bring a tree into the office at
the beginning of the film, she does, Like how she
approach how she enters into Fie magazine is with the tree.
So I think that's probably the closest we get is
her her grappling with this giant tree that she's bringing
through the office. That's about it.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
I wonder if that was if she's carrying a real tree.
That just seems rude because no.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
There's also no no I will I will correct us
on this. Also, because Stephanie does talk to her father
about getting a real tree. Conversation does start with her,
with her describing how she'll take care of it and
she'll feed it and she'll clean up after. Yes, and
it's the whole it's a whole thing where the audience
is supposed to get that she wants a puppy or

(55:06):
a kitten or a pet of some kind, but then
Rudy makes it clear that he knows she just wants
a real Christmas tree, so they don't actually go and
look for it, but there is very vivid discussion of
the perfect tree.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
You're absolutely right, I'd forgotten that. Yeah, me too, all right,
So number seven is empty coffee cup acting a common
appearance in these kinds of movies.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
What did you see it? Would you? Would you think?

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Because obviously we have people with hat cocoa cups constantly.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
I don't think there was a lot of that because
not much of the film took place in the morning. Yeah,
it all, it's all in well, the film is almost
entirely shot in daylight, except for a couple of instances,
you know, the car crash and a couple of the
late nights things. They could show off the lights in
the in the little Christmas market, Yep, but not a lot,

(55:56):
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah, it's a good point. I think you have.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
And the lip of that is because it is QBC
selling you hot chocolate. You have a lot of scenes
of somebody pouring hot chocolate into a cup. Again, we
don't necessarily see them drinking it, but it's a lot
of like, no, see, our cups have things in them.
They have hot chocolate, which you can buy on QVC.
So yeah, and then then it goes along with the
next one, which is actor is trying to not actually

(56:19):
eat on camera. I you know, I mean there's definitely
scenes of eating. I'm trying to think if I actually
saw them, I didn't notice that they didn't eat, Like
the grilled cheese scene.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
I feel like we see or take a bite out
of it.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Yeah, I don't think there's a lot of obvious avoidance
yea of eating.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Yeah, these are professionals.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Yeah, QBC only gets.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
The best, it would seem.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Now nine is canadianisms. I guess I was Again, this
was not filmed in Canada. I think it was filmed
in Philadelphia. I feel like I clocked a Canadian accenter too,
but I didn't note anything specific.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Yet it wasn't an obvious one.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah, the lead actor is Canadian, right, and pharaohs from Alberta,
So I think you can hear it.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Yeah, but he he he he he did.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Well, Yes, I agree.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Now, Number eleven old people aggressively matchmaking the leads.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
Yeah, Deb's on it. Yeah, Debs, that's trying to make
it happen. She's really the only one of the only
old people in the film that makes any sort of impression,
and she she wants the best for her son. She's
sort of simultaneously hero and villain because not villain is

(57:36):
but you know, with her her eagerness to get rid
of the the business and sort of move on after
her her husband has died. But she's she is trying
to get them together.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Oh yeah, the I mean as soon as she understands
that this woman is named Holly, like you could see
her immediately like like filling out the photo album of
her new dog, her in law right, Like she's so
excited by that. And when when she, I guess like
leads Holly to her room and tells her no, and
again she has just met this woman all of an

(58:10):
hour ago. She has seen this woman next to her
son and been able to say like, oh, the two
of you, Yeah, you guys go together.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
You'd make good babies, Like yes, you are, You're meant
to be.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
So when she says to her, you know, call the
desk if you need anything, or if you break up
with your boyfriend right like that. Like, there's a lot
of the writing here is really funny about how it's
kind of navigating being a very like specific Christmas romance

(58:43):
that has to have a little bit of bite to
it outside of things even I guess there's like the
one other older character. There's Cheryl apparently is her name, uh,
and she like is just there occasionally with Steve, like
in the background of things, and she constantly like will
just point out the same kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
So there's sort of this like.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Little old Greek chorus floating around to point out the
fact that, like, you know, you shouldn't kidnap somebody.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
She has a boyfriend, but you know, I bet they're
not really meant.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
To be together, and like all the things that you
know in these movies like there are, there's writing around
to say it.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah all right. And then lastly, favorite fashion moment.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Oh man, I didn't see a whole lot of anything
that was super egregious and in either the great or
terrible direction, And so the only thing that was really
really stuck out to me at all you mentioned already
was the Christmas sweater that that Holly's wearing in the
office at the beginning, the the one that's lashing yep,
that her her boss just cannot focus through. I don't

(59:44):
think there's anything that I noticed anyway that was that
I either wanted to wear or wanted to burn.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
I liked Holly's last look in the movie, when she
is packing up to go. She has she's just looking
very like like business woman. She she's got kind of
high boots. She has this really attractive, like tan pea coat,
like full length without buttons, and there's something there that
you're like, oh, like, I wish I could be that
tall and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Wear those clothing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
So like, we do get eventually we get a pea coat.
It takes us, you know, all of sixteen minutes to
get there, but we do.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
I mean, I do love a pea coat. I tried.
I've been hunting for a pea coat for months. I
am a I'm a short man, and so I don't
like things that are I don't like long pea coats,
like I want like a waist length or like a
little bit more than waist length peacoat. They're tough to
find in for someone who is as small as I am,

(01:00:39):
because even what people think are short. Pea coats go
down to my knees, and so I understand it's a
bit tough.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
I have definitely been in stores and oh, I like
this coat and I try it on and I realize,
like I'm tripping on it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
And the arms.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
They don't tell you about the arms, right, Yeah, they
think that like everybody has very long arms. If you
were five to one, you do not have long arms.
Your arms are the Yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
I am a pain. I am a square like that
is my shape is I am a square? And so
it is very difficult for me to find anything off
the rack that fits me. And so, like you were saying,
if I'm trying to find a pea coat, it's just
a dress. Yeah, at that point, I'm just wearing a dress.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
I mean, I have a theory that Hallmark, like eighty
percent of its budget in general as a network, is
going to pea coats because there are so many. And
again I draw everybody's attention to Marry Scottish or very
Scottish Christmas or Mary Scottish Christmas with Lacey Sheber last
year and in that ninety minute movie, Lacy Shabert wore
nine different pea coats. I have photographic evidence of this.

(01:01:43):
In some scene she's just holding a coat, but you
can see that the coat is a completely different color
than anything she's worn in the movie. So I don't
know how they can get all of those coats. So
my advice to you would just be break into the
Hallmark costume room and see what you can find.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Yeah, I just got to get cast. Somehow we can
make that work.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
There's gotta be a way they make so many of these.
They're gun in need, they're good. People are gonna start dying,
or they're like, you can only clone these people so
many times before you run out.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
So I think there's always put on a Lisa you know,
what's that lazy shavert wig and see how far I
can get.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah, you know, she's a little woman. You could do it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
So did you have any more notes about Holly in
the Hot Chocolate?

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
So I mentioned earlier the fact that this is it's
not an aggressively meta film in that it points out
the tropes of Christmas films overtly. It sort of uses
them to not even poke fun, just to let people
know that it knows what it's doing, which is fun. Yeah,

(01:02:54):
But I think also what's interesting about the film is
that it does play with sort of inverting some of
the tropes of the Christmas films, you know, typically speaking,
what we'll see is we'll see like the business minded
woman who comes from from the big city and comes
into the small town and is then transformed by the
small town guy or whatever. And here's kind of the opposite.

(01:03:17):
It's the big city woman who is all into Christmas
going into small town and finding the man who hates Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
But he is from the small town.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
It is from the small town, and so she's doing
that sort of transformation on him, which I thought was interesting.
You know, you don't see that very often, agree, and
I think that was one of the more interesting things
that the film tried to do. And you know, all
credit apparently to Daved Venable, QC host with the Most
who whose idea this story was. He gets the story

(01:03:48):
credits and writing credit on the film because it was
his idea. So I think that was good. You know, again,
if you're going through if you're plowing through these kinds
of films like we are, they tend to especially if
be doing specifically Hallmark or Lifetime films, they are an

(01:04:09):
hour and twenty six minutes, and you're in and out
and the worst that you that you're out is an
hour in twenty six minutes. And this being an hour
and six minutes just makes it really really easy thing
to do if you're if you're trying to hit numbers
like I am, it's a it's a good way to
do that. It has some solid jokes though, you know,

(01:04:29):
the mistletowing mistletoning joke is good. The Steve with the
pine falling in love joke multiple times is good. The
giant scissors gag is good. You know, there's a lot
of a lot of quality jokes and quality gags in
the film that you don't necessarily see these kinds of
films because so many of the Hallmark and Lifetime ones

(01:04:51):
try to play it somewhat straight, and this one's not
as concerned with that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Yeah, and I think some of them just don't have
a writer off or the relationship of the writer to
the director to understand how to get some humor out,
whereas this feels very much like there's a running gag
where the mechanic has a jar of candy canes called
bad News candy canes right on his desk, because anybody

(01:05:17):
that goes through a mechanic knows, like, hey, you're gonna
fix my car, right yeah, but it's gonna take a week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Have a candy cane.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
And the joke gets repeated like three times, and it's
like a simple joke. It's pure setup, but because of
the way it's played like every time, it kind of works.
And I think that's something that you could see in
a Hallmark movie just kind of falling a little flat,
and there's a bit of like just a little more brains,
a little more sharpness in this one where it feels

(01:05:44):
like it wasn't necessarily I don't think it's ever talking
down to a Hallmark like audience, because I don't think
it's insulting them. I don't think it's saying, like, isn't
it dumb? We just met and we're falling in love.
I think it is like it toes a line in
taking everything very earnestly, but in having this like a
little wink of like, but we've got real jokes in
here too, and I found a lot of it, Like

(01:06:07):
I chuckled a lot, and I'm surprised by how funny
it really came out.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Yeah, and you know, the director has worked with comedians
like that's that's his bread and butter is you know,
if you look through his his his stuff. He's worked
with Shane Gillis, who does a lot of stand up
and he's both performed on on stage as a stand

(01:06:31):
up as well as directing stand up specials and stuff
like that. And so he I'm sure he did a
lot of work getting the script and the performances tuned
just right to hit the tone that the film's looking for.
And he did a great job with it. You know,
there's there's not like I said, it's like we both
said it. It's an hour and six minutes, so you
got to make make hay while the sunshines with its

(01:06:54):
something like this. You're you know, you're looking at a
short feature and it feels like they did a good job.
You know, he was he he wrote it along with
Menible and it works. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
John McKeever is the director.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
It's funny because I looked at his homography and I
didn't recognize anything. I guess now I see that he
had like one SNL credit, But yeah, I'm guessing he
watched a couple of Hallmark Movies, got the rhythm, got
the beats, understood what he had to do, and then
kind of brought this sort of dry humor but marries
it in this really earnest way where it's kind of

(01:07:25):
a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Yeah, same, you know, at first when I watched this
last year, it was more of a challenge than anything else,
just because it was okay, well there's a QBC movie
and someone had mentioned it or found that I read
it online or whatever, and there was an initial challenge
of like, how how do I watch this movie? Because
I don't even know what QBC Plus is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Yeah, and it wasn't streaming last It wasn't available readily
last year in like a normal place that you could find.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
He'd probably had to Oh no, I had to figure
out how to download QBC Plus just to watch this movie,
which I mean it ended up being not that difficult,
but it was. It was a thing that like I
didn't have, like you said, like this year, it's everywhere, thankfully,
and so I when I rewatched, I rewatched on on

(01:08:16):
on Prime Video. You know, it's on Peacock in all
these places. But last year. If you really had to
want to watch this movie to watch it, and you know,
I think whatever investment QBC made in this it paid
off in a good film, an interesting film, a fun
film for the QBC community and the Christmas Christmas movie community.

(01:08:42):
There's something to look forward to. You know. It's it's
not it's not a bad rewatch.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
No, and it's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Yeah yeah, yeah sure, all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Right, Well, thank you so much. If anybody wants to
learn more about you and read more of your stuff
and follow what you do, where can they find you?

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
They can find me on all of the socials they
go to under Hateful Josh, that's where you can find
me there, so X Blue Sky, Instagram, maybe those kinds
of places. If you're looking for my work with potentate films,
we are distributing theatrically the films of s. S Roachamoli

(01:09:19):
in theaters, so films like IgA and Bahubali are doing
theater rounds in small bursts. You can go to potentate
films at all those same socials, and also on letterbox,
where you can follow all of the terrible movies I
watch every year, along with a couple of bright spots.
You can find me there at Hateful Josh as well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
So what number are you at for Christmas movies this year?

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
As of now?

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
This year? I think, I'm this was twenty eight, I think,
and this I count them starting on December first, So
since December first, Okay, it is twenty I got I
got zinged with a couple before that, so I had
to count them on accident. Uh, But I try to
because I set these weird arbitrary rules for myself and

(01:10:06):
this is this is one of them. That December first
is when I start.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
I respect them.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
Well, let us hope that QBC continues to make movies,
especially if they are under seventy minutes long, because then
we can cram in even more perfect all right, well,
thank you, Josh, and Merry Christmas.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Merry Christmas.

Speaker 5 (01:10:27):
It's cocka gold outside. I'm freezing, my nose is getting redy.
I love the easy ah REFROSI and I have them.

(01:10:50):
I'm not sure that I love still. I want to come,
go go, and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):
I want to I want a hand compack with and
then the chuck plate kind of do I.

Speaker 5 (01:11:08):
Want a fine Comba coke cowardy up from plant to.

Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
To make it anymore w com seven A saucer and
body he My Puma dunk conco

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
Co co co co co co co co co