Hallmark Mystery
After becoming immersed in the Hallmark Channel’s ‘Countdown to Christmas’ movies, we’re going to change the channel to Hallmark Mystery as they kick off their ‘Miracles of Christmas’ series of films. Now when one thinks of a ‘mystery’, there is usually some kind of crime or nefarious scheme or deed that someone has perpetrated and someone else needs to investigate and solve. Christmas Under the Lights isn’t that at all … and we’re not sure why it’s on the Hallmark Mystery channel to begin with. Is the mystery ‘will the two mismatched people who are obviously attracted to each other finally realize it was meant to be?’
Christmas Under the Lights stars Heather Hemmens as Emily, a successful event planner in Los Angeles originally from a small Washington State town a couple of hours from Seattle. Her brother Nick (Antonio Cayonne) is still at their childhood home, now running the animal rescue/farm that was founded by their mother who passed away the previous year. Emily has been avoiding returning home first because of her mother’s illness and now just because it’s too hard to return knowing she isn’t there. But she gets an urgent call from Nick asking her to come help with the annual Christmas festival their mother organized every year because everything is just too overwhelming for him to handle alone. She reluctantly agrees, and as she speeds up the driveway she nearly runs over Luke (Marco Grazzini), who has been staying at the farm following his divorce, helping out in exchange for the room. Emily and Luke get off to a frosty start, but when she realizes he is a well-known artist, she makes nice and asks him to create something special for the festival while she works on pulling everything together. Creativity can’t be rushed, not even with a two-week deadline, but things begin to heat up to the point that Emily tries to push Luke into renting an artist’s space in Seattle. Luke is scared to even consider something like that, but he’s even more concerned that Emily has made it clear that she has to return to Los Angeles for her career (seeming to forget that Seattle is just a couple of hours away, and a major city with large companies that need event planners). But can Luke take the next step for himself, and convince Emily to stay, or will fate make or an offer she can’t refuse?
Christmas Under the Lights is a pleasant enough holiday romance but it’s a little slow. The story takes its sweet time moving the romance along, stopping occasionally to allow Emily to have a flashback to her childhood (and the last time she saw her mother), while continually insisting to Luke her life is in Los Angeles when anyone watching could clearly tell her Seattle can offer her similar opportunities especially if she wants to quit working for someone else and start her own business (if she tried that in L.A., her former employer would almost certainly do whatever they could to make sure she did not succeed). So for frustratingly dramatic purposes, she has to keep focused on the City of Angels.
Where the film is successful is in its casting. Even though this is the first time I’ve seen Heather Hemmens, she is a Hallmark family member and she manages to make Emily not insufferable with her focus on work. She actually gets to give Emily some layers that stem from the loss of her mother to her fears of not fulfilling her career dreams, forfeiting any romantic connections that come her way. The way she warms up to Luke feels natural and, perhaps this is the ‘mystery’ part of why the movie is on this channel, she really makes us wonder what she will do in the end. Hemmens also has some nice chemistry with Marco Grazzini. Grazzini tries to play Luke as aloof upon first encounter with Emily, but he does a really good job of letting us see what Luke is feeling through his expressions and body language. It doesn’t hurt that he has a smile that could melt the coldest heart, so it’s not hard to see why Emily falls for him. Grazzini also has several Hallmark movies under his belt, and the powers that be did a good job of casting these two. They really make it work.
There is also some good support from Sharon Taylor as Emily’s mother Melody (the two share a scene that is a real gut-punch if you’ve lost your own mother), Antonio Cayonne as Nick — even if he just seems to push all the responsibility for the festival on Emily, and Hilary Jardine as Taylor, Emily’s childhood friend who lives vicariously through Emily but would love nothing more for her to consider Luke as a romantic partner and to stay in their home town.
Lucie Guest directs the film with skill, doing some nice transitions between the past and present scenes, but the story itself by Russell Hainline and Beverly Wood just lacks a bit of oomph. It really is left up to the director and actors to make us care about Emily’s decisions, and they do their jobs well. Christmas Under the Lights fits into the ‘just fine’ category of Hallmark movies. Worth a look if it happens to be on while you’re changing channels, but it won’t be the end of the world if you miss it.
Christmas Under the Lights has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is rated TV-G. The film is available On Demand and is streaming on Peacock.
Preview – Christmas Under the Lights
Hallmark Mystery
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