Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! (2025)

Hear me out. There has been a major increase in the number of Christmas movies that we get each year. I think we can all agree on that. It's quite the busy little (Christmas) cottage industry. And Hallmark now finds themselves competing against not just other TV channels, but the likes of Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney, not to mention any of the star vehicles that end up gracing our cinemas. That means there are a lot more films out there that are a bit weak, to put it nicely, but tend to fill the screentime with snowy landscapes, hot chocolates, predictable romance, and some twinkly-eyed Santa figure, or some kind of Santa proxy. I hope we are still in agreement. I have nothing against these movies. I watch, and review, many of them. They often provide the cosy comfort that they aim to provide. But, and here's the radical part of this paragraph, I suspect that the excessive number of Christmas movies has allowed room for some features that actually feel properly good. Not just "Christmas movie" good. Not just good enough for that one evening of time-wasting as you do other studd. Properly, I could happily watch that again, good.

Maybe it's just a numbers game. More movies like this being made means more opportunities for talented people to have a go at them. Or maybe it's because we're also now at a time when the people behind the camera are so well-versed in the form that it's a lot easier for them to adapt their material into something Hallmark-approved, even while sneaking in the kind of subversive humour that would once have made such a film unsuitable for the intended viewership.

This is my way of telling you that Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! is good. Properly good. That might be down to director Jason Bourque, but it's more likely to be down to writer Russell Hainline and star Robert Buckley (who is also credited with coming up with the central story idea). Let's just say what we would say with any other film though. Everyone works together here to provide something that's a genuine delight.

Buckley plays the titular Ted Cooper, a weatherman on a local TV station. He's heading home for the holidays, much to the amusement of his colleagues. Ted has had a notoriously bad run of luck when it comes to Christmas, but he remains optimistic. Not just about Christmas. Ted is optimistic about almost everything. And he knows that he can do some good work to help his sister, Kate (Meghan Heffern), with a local charity event. He's a bit surprised to find that he might also be able to spend some quality time with Hope Miller (Kimberley Sustad) though, a doctor he had a major crush on in high school. Will misfortune continue to plague Ted, or will his positivity finally boomerang back to him?

I cannot praise Buckley highly enough for his lead performance here. Ted Cooper is just the right mix of charm, cheek, and naïveté. He's a great character to spend the runtime with, able to laugh along with others laughing at his unbelievable bad luck, but also remaining so relentlessly upbeat that most people start rooting for him to get the happiness that he deserves. Heffern is also wonderful, a typical sister who can love and be irritated by her brother in equal measure, while also ready to step in and save him from himself when things look dire. Sustad is a winning potential love interest, and she also works as an audience proxy while she continues to struggle with just how happy-go-lucky Ted is. Others worth mentioning are Brendan Penny (a smug newscaster colleague), Barbara Pollard (ex-teacher, friendly face, and head of the Sole Sisters, a female jogging group that allow Ted to join their ranks), and Reedan Elizabeth (a medical colleague who forces Hope to admit whenever she may be having some feelings).

It would seem weird to spend so much time and space going on and on about what is, in basic terms, "just another Christmas movie" to help fill the schedules, but Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! deserves it. Bourque may be slightly restricted by the obvious rules (the pacing, the planning around ad breaks, the need to keep everything suitable for all viewers), but he's helped by a screenplay that shows just how much fun it's possible to have within such parameters. I laughed at a lot of individual lines of dialogue and moments, I LOVED scanning scenes set at a Christmas party that featured people dressed up as characters from well-known Christmas movies (including Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, and, YES, Die Hard), and the predictability of the final scenes did nothing at all to ruin my enjoyment. In fact, I would have been apoplectic with rage if I hadn't been given the ending I wanted for Ted. 

I'm going to restrain myself when it comes to the final rating, but just know that I was sorely tempted to go a bit higher (which may or may not be a symptom of finding this such a blessed relief in comparison to so many other, lesser, TV movies I've already watched this holiday season). 

7/10

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Yule Love It: Pride, Prejudice And Mistletoe (2018)

Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Pride & Prejudice but I am pretty sure that this Christmas TV movie, based on a book by Melissa de la Cruz, has very little to do with it. Oh, there’s a name or two used, and you could say that there are thematic similarities in between the Christmas songs and decorations, but anyone hoping for a modern, tinsel-covered, riff on the work of Jane Austen should not be counting on this.

Lacey Chabert plays Darcy Fitzwilliam (Darcy . . . get it?), a young woman who prides herself on being good at her job, helping people invest and reap great rewards, without leaving out smaller investors. When she heads home for the holidays, she ends up helping her mother (Sherry Miller) get things organised for a charity auction that all needs to run smoothly. Darcy ends up being pushed into working alongside Luke (Brendan Penny), a man she has known since her schooldays, and someone she doesn’t always get along with. Which means the potential for romance is obviously soon in the air. But Darcy’s ex, Carl (played by Morgan David Jones), obviously still has a thing for her. And there's some scheming going on at her workplace while she is absent.

I'm not going to pretend that I was keen to see this because I have an overwhelming love of Jane Austen works, so the fact that this didn't really seem to do enough to warrant the cutesy title didn't bother me too much. I also wasn't aware of director Don McBrearty or writer Nina Weinman before this (which isn't to say that I haven't come across their work before now, McBrearty has three Christmas movies churned out THIS YEAR and Weinman has a solid-looking CV in this arena).

I watched this for one reason, and one reason only. Lacey Chabert. She's someone I have always found to be a likeable presence onscreen and her ubiquitousness throughout the festive period has become, for me, one of the staples of the season. She does well with material that, as we all know, often doesn't have too much to differentiate it from fifty other movies you could watch in the weeks leading up to Christmas Day. Penny doesn't do that bad either, while Miller and Art Hindle (who has a couple of scenes playing the father of Chabert's character) are both enjoyable enough. It's a shame that the script couldn't have done more with Jones, however, as he just pops up now and again to act like a complication when he's actually not. He's just an unnecessary presence. But make him a more desperate figure, have him scheming and twirling a fake moustache, and you could maybe have turned this whole movie into something much more enjoyable.

Once again with this type of thing, those who know what they are getting will get what they're after, to a degree. Trees, snow, Christmas tunes, Lacey Chabert. It just doesn't have any moments that are good enough to raise it up, despite all being as slick and fairly well-paced as however many other choices Hallmark will be giving us this year.

4/10

Look at THIS set, you know you want it.
Americans may want this triple-bill.