A Christmas Angel Match (2025)

While I watch many movies in December that I wouldn't watch at any other time of year, I still try to search high and low for the real gems. That's hard when it comes to the many TV movies churned out by companies wanting to supply people with some distracting cheer and warmth to play out while they wrap gifts and decorate their home. Sometimes you get something good though, whether it's a film with some unexpected laughs or a film that benefits from a stronger premise than the standard "busy professional woman is forced to spend some time in a small town, where she meets and falls for a laid-back small-town man who reminds her that there's more to life than just a career".

Meghan Ory plays an angel named Monica, a bit frustrated when she ends up forced to work alongside another angel named Michael (Benjamin Ayres). The two of them make connections between mortal human beings, and Christmas is a great time to do that, but they have a very different approach to the job. Monica is more about using classic moves to establish something deep and meaningful. Michael believes that fun is key to love. Can they work together to succeed in matching Patrick (Francesco Filice) and Daisy (Lindura)? It's vital that they do, and Gabriel (Michael Dickson) keeps reminding them of that, particularly as they seem to be struggling to get on the same wavelength.

Directed by Christie Will Wolf, someone with a whole heap of Christmas movies under their belt, and with Ory also working as a writer, as well as her work in front of the camera, this is a film that feels well-crafted and, unlike so many others, reassuringly slick. It's obviously still restricted in certain ways (the budget, the main messaging that needs to be delivered), but it's generally good fun, helped by two charming leads.

Ory is very enjoyable here, doing well to make her fastidious and set-in-her-ways character less annoying than she could be. Ayres has the easier role, the angel who enjoys watching and experiencing the human experience, and he moves through every scene with a consistently positive and fresh outlook. Filice and Lindura are less interesting, but it's fun to watch them being manipulated by our angelic match-makers, Dickson is suitably calm and smiley as Gabriel, and there are perfectly solid supporting turns from Amanda Jordan, Linda McCurdy, and S. G. Simpson.

You can tell every moment has been written to slot in between ad breaks, you can sense a familiarity in the score, and there's nothing here that moves too far away from what you'd expect. It's all elevated by a little bit of something extra though, whether that's the simple and effective depiction of heaven/angel world, the interactions between our leads, or even just the fact that it adds a couple of nice touches to explain some of the rules governing the conduct of angels. I genuinely enjoyed it, and would watch it again.

6/10

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Five Star Christmas (2020)

It's always a difficult Christmas when you head home for the holidays and find that your father has decided to turn your family home into a small b & b, without thinking about things like staff, supplies, or anything else a b & b owner may consider when formulating a business plan. Okay, it may not happen often, or at all, but it happens here in this Christmas TV movie.

Bethany Joy Lenz plays Lucy Ralston, someone as shocked as her sister (Amber, played by Grace Beedie), her brother (Will, played by Blair Penner) and his partner (Suzanne, played by Barbara Patrick), and even grandpa (Walter, played by Jay Brazeau). Robert Wisden is the father, Ted, who has had this bright idea. And there's an anonymous travel writer in the area, a woman who writes reviews that can make or break a small business. When Beth Thompson (Laura Soltis) arrives, stopping there due to a flat tyre, everyone believes her to be that writer, and so begins a comedy that has most of the family members pretending to be staff members, or other guests, as they try to get the best review possible for their father. Oh, and there's also another unexpected guest in the shape of the handsome and lovely Jake Finlay (Victor Webster).

Okay, hear me out here. I am happy to admit that I often give Christmas TV movies more leeway than most. I know the checklist, and I am happy to see the formula adhered to in a way that is cosy and comforting. Five Star Christmas is an anomaly, however, in that it hits all of the expected beats while also being a genuinely enjoyable movie. You're still not going to absolutely love it, especially if you're expecting something on par with a cinematic feature, but the comedy really works, especially in the scenes involving Will and Suzanne, who decide to promote themselves as windswept globe-trotters. Their first scenes, revelling in the chance to embody their new personas, are a lot of fun. Beyond that, you get a lot of moments in which wrong names are uttered, people are made to hide away from others who may recognise them, and the b & b is shown to treat the guests and staff just like family. Because most of them ARE family.

Director Christie Will Wolf is, as so often the case with people who helm these TV movies, a fairly experienced hand. She knows what shots are required, and she gets them all done. You have the snow-tinged glow throughout, and that particularly paradoxical warming cold that infuses the best of these films. Writer Alfonso H. Moreno has a lot of TV episodes to his credit, but he does a really good job here, making the whole situation far less cringe-inducing than it could have been. The third act needs to tie up the plot strands, and you get some romance (of course), but it feels earned after the fun of the first hour.

Lenz is easy to like in the lead role, striking a great balance between level-headed organiser and someone with a major emotional investment in the outcome, and Webster is a decent, safe, male. Wisden and Soltis have some nice scenes together, and I think you should already know how much I enjoyed the performances from Penner and Patrick. Beedie brings a nice energy, the younger sister not really sure of what she wants to do with her life, but gradually finding out more about herself in the midst of the madness, and Brazeau and Paula Shaw are both great fun (the latter playing a grandma who embraces her new role with gusto).

Whenever I review these Christmas movies, I always remind people that they are being reviewed AS Christmas movies. That still applies here. But I still think this is also, at times, something that stands out from the crowd by being more enjoyable than most, in a way that isn't just checking all of the festive film boxes.

6/10

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Becoming Santa (2015)

Not to be confused with the documentary from 2011, this is a fun TV movie that covers familiar ground (don't they all?) but does so with a lot of fun to offset the usual overdose of sweetness.

Laura Bell Bundy stars as Holly Claus, a lovely woman with a surname that hasn't made her boyfriend/fiance (Connor, played by Jesse Hutch) wonder more about her parents. In fact, he remains comically oblivious when they finally go to meet Mr & Mrs Claus (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter, respectively), despite them both looking pretty much exactly as you'd expect THE Mr & Mrs Claus to look. It eventually becomes clear that the man who marries Holly is expected to take over the family business, which looks set to be disastrous as Connor attempts to pass a number of tests without realising their significance. He also has to contend with a pesky ex-boyfriend on the scene (Jack Frost, played by Tony Cavalero).

Written by Barbara Kymlicka (who has a number of these things under her belt) and directed by Christie Will Wolf (who also has decent back catalogue in this field, including at least one other working from a script by Kymlicka), Becoming Santa is a very good dollop of Christmas cheer. Yes, it's worth reminding readers once again that I judge Christmas TV movies a lot more generously than I judge many other films, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that a few good Christmas TV movies manage to be genuinely good. Like this one.

It has everything you want from a Christmas film - Santa, elves, romance, toys, reindeer, magic, cookies - and it also has very enjoyable performances from all of the leads. Bundy and Hutch make an appealing couple, Gross is effective enough as Santa, Baxter is very good, and Cavalero is just the right mix of amusing and dastardly in the role of Jack Frost.

Highlights include the trials to become Santa, the sneaky undermining from Jack Frost, the naivete of Connor, and the pleasant sprinkling of magic throughout that keeps this firmly in the realm of easygoing Christmas fantasy family fare (not to be confused with the Christmas fantasy non-family fare that can be found just by searching for the likes of "Santa's sexy little helper", for example - so I have heard *ahem*).

I would certainly rewatch this one, even without being forced into it, and I will look forward to anything else that stars Bundy and Hutch (who seems to relish this kind of role more than bing stuck in some dire Steven Seagal vehicle), who both make for some of the most appealing leads I have seen in the holiday TV movie season this year.

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

7/10