Watched On: Netflix
Duration: 1 hour 24 minutes
Originally Aired: November 26, 2022
Directed By: Maclain Nelson
Starring: Lacey Chabert, Wes Brown and Stephen Tobolowsky
Please see IMDb for full cast and crew information.
Synopsis
Emily's manipulative boyfriend steals her apartment out from under her, only telling her when she breaks up with him & tries to kick him out. She returns home for the holidays intending to relax and get her bearings from this devastating blow, but as she pulls up her parents abandon her to go house hunting in Florida. What's worse, they left her responsible for meeting all the holiday decorating HOA requirements--with no warning! The current HOA president starts harassing her daily about the lack of decorations and manipulates her into taking over a time-consuming parade plan. It's also hinted that her parents had previously decorated but took the decorations down just to screw her over. Instead of abandoning the community of horrible humans, she stays to try and make the best of it. In the end, in true Hallmark movie fashion, she falls for the HOA jerk because she apparently can't help but fall for manipulative jerks that remind her of her parents.
Review
The synopsis I used from IMDb was submitted by a user, and it pretty much covers everything I would typically talk about in my first paragraph for these things, so I'll just let Sheepguy42's words stand, with one small correction. It's not just hinted that the parents had previously decorated for the holidays. They straight up scramble with the neighbors to undecorate before Emily arrives home, in like a backwards Christmas with the Kranks move. It was clearly done to push Emily and HOA jerk together.
So is this a Christmas movie? Emily finds herself homeless for the holidays, precipitating a visit to her parents. While staying in her childhood home, she decorates the inside and outside of the house with the help of the neighbors, participates in a neighborhood Christmas cookie contest, collects donations for the annual snowman-palooza (which she also participates in) and snowball fight, finds the replacement Santa, and is instrumental in a real Christmas "miracle." So yes, this is a Christmas movie because it includes so many elements that are needed for the real Christmas magic. But that's not surprising because it is originally a Hallmark Channel movie.
Rating
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