Christmas In Evergreen (2017)

Ashley Williams may not be a name familiar to many movie viewers, but she is probably know to those who enjoy Christmas TV movies. She's appeared in a good number of them, including Snow, Snow 2: Brain Freeze, and Christmas In The City. None of those movies were actually very good, yet all of them managed to benefit from the presence of Williams in a main role. They were completely passable, disposable, entertainment.

Christmas In Evergreen is also completely passable, disposable, entertainment. It's directed by Alex Zamm (who has a filmography made up of child-friendly films and other Christmas movies, including Snow and A Christmas Prince, which may well be the jewel in his crown - no pun intended) and written by Rick Garman, a man responsible for at least a dozen more films in this vein. In fact, checking out the filmography of Garman on Letterboxd is akin to viewing that list titled "Christmas movie posters with white heterosexual couples wearing red and green". Go ahead and check it out for yourself. I'll still be here when you come back.

The plot here revolves around a snowglobe that may well make your wish come true, which is handy when circumstances conspire to stop Allie Shaw (Williams) from leaving her smalltown home of Evergreen to spend Christmas with her long-distance boyfriend, Spencer (Marcus Rosner). Nobody really wants Allie to leave, she's beloved by pretty much everyone in the community, and she becomes even more valued when she helps Ryan (Teddy Sears) and his young daughter, Zoe (Jaeda Lily Miller), both of whom end up stuck in Evergreen on their way to an atypical Christmas holiday in Florida. Zoe wouldn't mind if they actually ended up spending Christmas in Evergreen, especially when Allie is so nice to them.

Williams has the perfect onscreen personality for this type of thing. She can seem cheery and kind without becoming too annoying, she is cute and wholesome, and she manages to stay enthusiastic for events unfolding around her without seeming too childish. Rosner has to play the man that we know isn’t right for our leading lady, but it’s nice that the script doesn’t make him an irredeemable asshole. He’s just focused on his career path, which requires him to keep his life in the big city. Sears is the standard bland and harmless male lead, although his dialogue is often punctuated by a slightly creepy laugh that is always disproportionate to anything said that may seem amusing, and Miller is the young girl who spends a lot of time pleading to make her Christmas everything she wants it to be. Holly Robinson Peete is the woman trying to organise the local Christmas festival, with all of the stress that entails, Chris Cope is a mayor who resents losing our lead to the lure of the big city, and Barbara Niven is  the mother of the character played by Williams, as well as someone underlining the potential power of the snowglobe.

If you like this kind of stuff at this time of year, as I think we all know I do, this is distinctly average, but enjoyable enough. It helps if you like Williams onscreen, and everyone watching this should be able to call out every plot point at least three scenes before they actually happen. But you can say that about most of these movies.

I appreciate anyone who decided to read through this full review. Especially as I can end almost exactly where I began, by summarising this as completely passable, disposable, entertainment.

5/10

P.S. Here is a huge list of every Christmas movie I have ever reviewed, either here or over at Flickfeast.

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A Christmas Prince (2017)

Written by Nathan Atkins, from a story he worked on with Karen Schaler, and directed by Alex Zamm, A Christmas Prince is mildly enjoyable seasonal fare that benefits from a few welcome faces filling out the cast, including Rose McIver in the lead role. It also seems to be the next in a series of films from Zamm that mixes seasonal romance with Royals and non-Royals (he has previously given us A Royal Christmas and Crown For Christmas).

McIver plays Amber, a young woman who spends her workdays editing and reworking magazine articles for little or no thanks. That may change when she is tasked with a sudden, quite substantial, assignment. She has to travel to a fictional country (I didn't note it down, but it's one of those movie countries that feels like America or the UK, but isn't, but is full of English-speaking, white people) and get the scoop on an alleged playboy Prince (Richard, played by Ben Lamb). That might prove difficult for most journalists on the case, but things become surprisingly easy when she is mistaken for the new tutor to young Princess Emily (Honor Kneafsey) and finds herself able to work on her story from a privileged insider position.

Despite the fact that it took me a good ten minutes to realise that McIver is the actress I have enjoyed recently while I watched episodes of iZombie, I was enjoying A Christmas Prince from the very beginning because of her presence. When my memory finally made the connection I started to warm to the whole thing even more, safe in the knowledge that this wasn't someone I was able to tolerate. No, this was someone I really liked. Which is a good thing, because the rest of the leads prove to be more of a mixed bag. Lamb does fine in his role, I suppose, but his character is exactly as you think he will be, and doesn't necessarily tally with the playboy image that is being reported. Kneafsey has to alternate between being a young bossyboots and being quite sweet, with the bossiness overdone initially, making her quite difficult to warm to. Alice Krige is fine as the Queen, Sarah Douglas is the stern head of the staff, essentially, and Theo Devaney and Emma Louise Saunders are fairly enjoyable as the "baddies".

Despite the lack of major surprises in the plotting, the script does at least make the expected beats and obstacles a bit more interesting than they could have been. The third act tries admirably to keep things tense, and the fact that viewers should be rooting for McIver means that it doesn't all feel too silly as she takes part in a standard "race against time" finale. Zamm does what needs to be done, no more and no less - we get lovely shots of snow-covered scenery, we get fun shining from the faces of people engaging in snowball fights, we get a number of "dawning realisation" reaction shots, and it's all paced well, and with plenty of ornaments and Christmas trimmings in almost every scene. Like so many films of this kind, you wouldn't really consider it for viewing at any other time of year, which is absolutely fine. It's not made for those other times. It is made for now, made for Christmas, and it works very well in that regard.

6/10

Here is a large selection of Christmas movies to enjoy.
And American elves can pick the same set up here.

Jingle All The Way 2 (2014)

Daniel Whitney seems to have done quite well for himself in the guise of Larry The Cable Guy, a character so popular that he gets credited with the roles that Whitney performs in most of his movie appearances. Because Whitney is actually playing Larry PLAYING whichever character he's been designated in whichever movie he's been chosen for.

So the biggest problem I had with Jingle All The Way 2 was Larry, the kind of comedy character created specifically to appeal to a large section of America. Some will identify with him, some will laugh AT him, and many will laugh WITH him. Yet he's not the kind of comic creation that we appreciate here in the UK. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

But here's the rub. The biggest problem is also the biggest plus point for the movie. When not going for the laughs, there's a big, albeit misguided at times, heart beating in the chest of that big ol' American boy. And that big heart, let me tell you now, helps this movie edge slightly ahead of the film that precedes it. Despite the very basic core element being the same, a father after the latest must-have toy for his child, this film does a better job of clarifying that it's actually about parental love as opposed to materialism.

Larry plays . . . . . . . . Larry, a dad who wants to treat his daughter (Noel, played by Kennedi Clements) how she deserves to be treated at Christmas. It's especially important this year, due to the fact that Noel now has a step-dad (Victor, played by Brian Stepanek) who can afford to buy her anything she might possibly want. Well, she seems to want a talking bear toy. Larry is determined to get her one. Upon hearing of this, however, Victor is equally determined to stop Larry from achieving this goal. And so begins a frustrating time for Larry as he resorts to increasingly desperate measures in order to get his hands on something that he thinks his daughter wants more than anything else in the world.

Whitney/Larry is good enough in the main role here. Okay, his humour isn't my thing, but the sweet centre is hard not to warm to, especially in the context of a Christmas movie. Clements is equally sweet, in fact a bit sweeter, as the little girl perplexed by the actions of the adults around her. Stepanek is given the role of bad guy, and plays his part well, while Eric Breker is his right hand man, the one charged with getting those toy bears cleared from every shelf, and he's suitably stealthy and shady, for the most part. Anthony Carelli (AKA Santino Marella), Kirsten Robek and Rachel Hayward, among others, also do just fine in their roles.

The script by Stephen Mazur (and some other uncredited contributors, apparently) is a bit clumsy and uneven, with a number of the gags not really playing out as well as they could, and a finale that feels a bit rushed, but the direction from Alex Zamm, and the constant work put in by that bloody character I also class as a major problem, is enough to keep the whole thing ticking over pleasantly enough.

It doesn't quite do enough for me to call it a good movie, but this is at least decent enough entertainment for anyone who saw the first movie and is also a fan of Larry The Cable Guy.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Jingle-All-Way-Larry-Cable/dp/B00OGT2UFE/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1418320059&sr=1-3&keywords=jingle+all+the+way

You know how you can show your appreciation for bloggers? If you share and share then every additional reader helps. Connect through Google or Blogger or any way you can, and rest easy in the knowledge that you've made little ol' me a very happy man.

And/or you could also buy my e-book, that has almost every review I've written over the past 5 years. It's very reasonably priced for the sheer amount of content. It may not be Larry The Cable Guy approved, but it's not too bad, honest.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.

Snow (2004)

Tom Cavanagh and Ashley Williams star in this pleasant enough Christmas fantasy film that almost rises above the level of average, thanks to the two likeable leads, but doesn't quite make it.

Cavanagh plays Nick Snowden, a man best known to children everywhere as Santa Claus. Nick has to make an unplanned journey when one of his reindeer is spotted by an unscrupulous hunter (Patrick Fabian), tranquilised and taken away to a city zoo. He needs to get the reindeer back for obvious reasons but he also just wants it out of the way from prying eyes as it's not quite learned how to fly yet but should be getting to that stage at any moment. Nick ends up enlisting the help of animal keeper Sandy Brooks (Ashley Williams) but he can only tell her so much. Who would believe that he's really Santa Claus and who would believe that he can use mirrors to travel between the North Pole and anywhere in the world? Well, maybe young Hector (Bobb'e J. Thompson) would but not many others.

Directed by Alex Zamm and written by Rich Burns, Snow is a decent little slice of family entertainment. Okay, so it does enough throughout to keep reminding you that it's a TV movie but it's better than a hundred other uninspired and unimaginative TV movies that have been churned out to fill schedules at this most wonderful time of year.

Tom Cavanagh may seem a bit bland to some people. Oh, alright, he IS quite bland, there's no denying it but I still like him nonetheless (mainly because I used to catch occasional episodes of Ed and then I also enjoyed his character popping up in Scrubs). Ashley Williams brightens up the screen so the movie is lifted slightly whenever she's involved, which is quite a lot, and Patrick Fabian is a fun "baddie". Bobb'e J. Thompson, despite his ridiculously apostrophised name, is good fun as the young smartass who has his heart in the right place.

There are plenty of snowy moments, some cute reindeer, fun with Santa making sure that nobody thinks he's Santa and at least one scene reminiscent of Ernest Saves Christmas ensuring that it's not all bad.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Tom-Cavanagh/dp/B001BAWKRE/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1355481332&sr=1-3&keywords=snow