Hallmark Channel
As any Hallmark fan knows, the network has a reliable stable of stars, male and female, to fill out their weekly TV movie offerings, appearing in multiple films per year. It’s a comfort to the fans to see familiar faces, but it’s also a real treat when a new face shows up on the network and that is the case with the latest ‘Countdown to Christmas’ feature, Confessions of a Christmas Letter — a title that is much more dramatic than the movie — which stars Angela Kinsey, best known for her work on The Office and Haters Back Off.
Kinsey stars as Settie Rose, a woman who is desperate to have her family’s annual holiday letter added to the Holiday Letter Hall of Fame at the local post office. Unfortunately Settie has more of a penchant for ‘word salad’ than prose (according to her The Office co-star Brian Baumgartner in a cameo as the postmaster), and she’s also going up against her nemesis and neighbor Sue, who has won every year (and who is related to the postmaster so it’s more than a little shady). Settie feels like giving up, but this year is the 20th anniversary so she’ll give it one last shot … except she finally acknowledges that it’s true she cannot put pen to paper and produce a coherent thought, let alone an entire letter. So she comes up with a crazy plan to hire the author of her favor novel to write her letter. It turns out the author, Juan (Alec Santos), is suffering from writers block and when Settie contacts his uncle and grandfather, they accept her offer hoping a change of scenery will get his creative juices flowing again.
Not thrilled about traveling to the cold north of Connecticut, Juan reluctantly accepts the offer (because it’s paid and if he doesn’t produce something soon his publisher will ask for the advance back … and it’s already been spent) and flies north, sharing a ride with a young woman named Lily. When they arrive at her destination, the driver informs Juan this is his destination as well, and when Lily and Juan get out of the car, Settie immediately thinks he is Lily’s new Italian boyfriend. When she realizes it’s Juan, she is ecstatic but Sue comes snooping around and they keep up the ruse that Juan is Lily’s boyfriend … make that fiance. Sue knows Lily’s penchant for attracting and rejecting men, so she’s gives them a week at best. Juan slowly begins to acclimate himself into the Rose family, begins to learn about them so he can compose a letter, but he also begins to see Lily as more than just a friend and fake girlfriend. There is romance bubbling, and Juan is also beginning to feel his own creative juices begin to flow again. But Sue finds some of Juan’s new novel ideas and believes some kind of South of the Border mob is on its way to get him and cause havoc in the neighborhood, but Settie’s family has caused their own havoc by taking all of their banned (by Sue) Christmas decorations out of the shed and creating a Christmas wonderland in the neighborhood. But will Juan be able to finish Settie’s letter in time? Will Juan and Lily fall deeper in love? Or will the whole experience actually unlock Settie’s creativity to write her own award winning letter?
Confessions of a Christmas Letter is a delightful addition to the Hallmark Christmas movie canon. What really sets this one apart is the addition of Kinsey to the Hallmark family, and not populating the movie with a lot of familiar faces. True, some of the cast have appeared in other Hallmark projects, but they aren’t faces you see every third movie, so it makes the movie feel fresh. Kinsey is always a delight and has some wonderful comic timing, and her performance here in a pretty outlandish situation still feels absolutely authentic. The way she interacts with the actors playing her family feels real, and she can say so much with just the tilt of her head or a side-eye glance. She just brings joy to the movie and we can only hope Hallmark will have some other projects for her down the road.
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Alec Santos, who only has a handful of Hallmark projects under his belt, is also terrific as Juan, often befuddled by the family dynamic and the rivalry Settie has with Sue (and he eventually comes to see that Sue is a difficult woman when she unknowingly insults his novel which Settie had selected for their book club). But he makes his integrating into the Rose family feel completely natural, and his relationship with Lily also has a natural progression. Santos keeps Juan very level-headed in his situation, he has a charming personality, and he’s very attractive. It’s not hard to see why Settie begins to consider him a part of the family. Both performances of Kinsey and Santos make this a very winning holiday film.
Lillian Doucet-Roche is also very good as Lily, always game to play along with whatever wild situation her mother has concocted, but also being completely down-to-earth and willing to help Juan naviagate some of the holiday madness that consumes her mother. Her chemistry with Santos also makes it very easy to believe Lily and Juan could fall in love during the two weeks he’s supposed to be with the Rose family. Colleen Wheeler is terrific as Sue. She is a character you love to hate, but you can’t hate on her too much because Wheeler knows exactly how to make some of Sue’s more bitter comments humorous, either through her delivery of the lines or her expressions when delivering them. Sue could have been an awful character, but Wheeler at least knows how to make us laugh so she doesn’t bring the whole thing down. Barbara Pollard and Garry Chalk as Settie’s live-in parents are also excellent, with Pollard having some real laugh-out-loud moments, and Fred Ewanuick is fun as Settie’s put-upon husband who just has to go with the flow. Jake Foy, as son Jack (with Jeff Avenue as his husband Bradley), doesn’t get a lot to do because Jack does not want to be included in his mother’s letters (mainly because she invents things for him that get him trapped into doing them for real, like teaching a potter class), but when he does decide to come back to help stick it to Sue, he’s all in.
The teleplay by Jennifer Smith and Kate Smith is full of holiday warmth and snarky humor, with relationships that feel real and, unusual for a Hallmark movie, the romantic relationship between Juan and Lily is not the main focus. In fact, by the end of the movie they haven’t even truly committed to each other. Juan could very easily return home with his uncle and abuelo after Christmas. That was a surprising and refreshing turn of events. Director Heather Hawthorn Doyle reigns in the silliness of the story to make it believable, fills the movie with the true warmth of a loving family (no matter how dysfunctional they may be), and gets wonderful performances from her cast. Confessions of a Christmas Letter is successful because it fits right in with the Hallmark brand, but also feels different and unexpected, all in a very good way. This one brings viewers pure holiday joy.
Confessions of a Christmas Letter 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 – Confessions of a Christmas Letter
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