What makes this time of year so wonderful? Is it time with friends and family, or people reaching deep into their pockets to find a little extra something to give back to those less fortunate? Twinkley lights, Christmas carols, or bright-eyed children who still believe in magic? No, what makes this the most wonderful time of the year is hours and hours of utterly craptastic holiday movies on TV. There are tons of them on the Hallmark Channel, ABC Family Channel, and lots of other channels that you probably don't watch unless, like me, you are a connoisseur of truly terrible television. Most of these movies walk the fine line between so crappy I can't watch them and so crappy I can't stop watching. My first of the season, "Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade," fell into the latter category.
Quick plot summary. Our heroine is a Chicago Thanksgiving parade coordinator. She's a long-time parade-loving purist who reluctantly falls for a consultant who has come to evaluate the city's parade spending. She wears quirky Mad Men-era garb, which we later find out is because she lost both of her parents and her mom's clothes were given away. She's hoping that by buying vintage she'll somehow end up scoring something of her mom's. Except she looks about 20something, so if her mom really died when she was little those clothes would have most likely been straight out of the 80's. But I'm guess a pair of skintight Jordache jeans and a Camp Beverly Hills t-shirt wouldn't have been nearly as charming. Anyway, at the beginning of the movie she is involved in a long-distance relationship with a marine biologist who doesn't appreciate her, and she has a deep, dark secret. She hasn't told him she's, gasp, afraid of boats! So so much for his plans for her to travel around the world with him while he examines otters, or whatever it was. After their breakup she gets drunk, like throwing-up-I-hope-I-didn't-do-anything-stupid-that-I-don't-remember drunk, from one glass of champagne. Fan-freaking-tastic. I can't remember what happens much after that (maybe I was drunk) except Parade Consultant Guy decides that even though it makes sense for the city of Chicago to start charging admission for the parade it goes against the spirit of the event so he recommends that it remain free to the public. He ends up dressing up as the parade's Santa and declaring his love for Quirky Vintage Parade Coordinator Girl. And scene. The best part of this was that it inspired us to go the parade for the first time, and it really was magical.
Good god, I so need to write one of these movies. Maybe it'll help us pay our mortgage, since after 13 showings we still have no renter. The only person we've turned down was a woman with three 50-lb dogs. I counted that as about six toddlers and said no way.
Anyway, back to the movies. I really do think I could write one of these. Much like romance novels, it really comes down to a simple formula.
Your hero(ine) is:
a. a young, perpetually single woman who doesn't believe in love
b. a single mom with a young child who has lost faith in Santa
c. a widower who no longer finds joy in the holiday season
d. orphans
who encounter(s):
a. a penny-pinching scrooge who wants to shut down the parade/town's landmark something-or-other
b. a lost elf who can't find her way back to the North Pole
c. a childless couple who long for children of their own
d. Tori Spelling
After they:
a. save the store
b. deliver presents to underprivileged kids before the clock strikes midnight
c. bring a soldier home on a last-minute holiday leave
d. survive being stranded in a Christmas Eve blizzard
they all live happily ever after.
Casting includes:
a. Beloved 80's TV moms (think Meredith Baxter)
b. That dude who played Randy on "Monk"
c. Melissa Joan Hart
d. Lots of other people you have never heard of
Look for my movie at 3 a.m. on a TV near you next Thanksgiving.
And P.S., if you have not seen Melissa Joan Hart and Mario Lopez in "Holiday in Handcuffs" you are totally missing out.
