Hallmark Channel
As we all know, Christmas is December 25. But this year December 25 is also the start of Hanukkah, so Hallmark is giving some space to the Festival of Lights with its latest holiday film, Leah’s Perfect Gift, starring Emily Arlook as a young Jewish woman, Leah, in a relationship with a non-Jewish young man, Graham (Evan Roderick). While Leah loves everything about Hanukkah, she is also intrigued by Christmas and all the trappings that come with it. Dating for nearly a year, Leah invites Graham to her parents’ home to celebrate Hanukkah, and he is welcomed with open arms, immediately put to work grating potatoes for latkes. Evan seems totally at home with Leah’s friends and family and that encourages her about the future of their relationship.
Meeting up with Graham’s sister Maddie for lunch, Graham thinks it would be a great idea for Leah to spend Christmas with his family. Even though she’ll miss Christmas Day dinner at Egg Foo Yum with her family, she eagerly accepts the invitation but there are red flags popping up on the drive from New York to Connecticut, and even more when they arrive at the Westwood residence. Mother Barbara greets Leah by shoving a box of ornaments into her arms, and hands everyone a list of things to be done leading up to Christmas. It’s a bit overwhelming for Leah, but she’s still excited by the festivities … except Barbara has a penchant for perfection — or her idea of perfection — that dims much of Leah’s new Christmas spirit. Things go from bad to worse when she mistakes ‘fancy dress’ for dinner as ‘fancy Christmas sweater’ (well, ugly Christmas sweater that lights up), learns that Barbara’s idea of the Christmas holiday involves little and badly cooked food, and commits the unforgivable sin of beating Barbara in a gingerbread house decorating contest (no one told her it was a contest), and then did her worst in a snowman building event to allow Barbara to win … but it wasn’t a contest this time so her snowman just brought down the displays from the Westwoods and their friends, the Hempsteads, whose daughter is also Graham’s ex (and who owns a business that Leah visited and accidentally destroyed two vases priced at $150 each). Starving and no longer enjoying this version of Christmas, Leah sneaks away for some food while everyone else goes to bed (at 7:30 PM!), and tries to gather her strength for the Christmas Eve gift exchange, which further makes Leah feel like an outcast (really, Graham, a food gift basket?!). But is what Leah thought was going to be a perfect introduction to a real family Christmas ruined, or does Evan have something up his sleeve?
After almost two months of Christmas movies, Hallmark gives us a cross-cultural holiday film and, boy, do they go out of their way to make the Christmas-celebrating family look like complete jerks. Leah is totally excited to learn more about her boyfriend’s Christmas traditions, but instead of warning her about what a control freak his mother is, he just lets her flounder (like, he could have told her to dress for dinner, or that the gingerbread house game was an actual contest that his mother always wins regardless). At one point when she calls her friend Sarah to give her the lowdown and Sarah asks if she wants her to come pick up Leah, Leah should have said yes. But she stays and not only does she have to endure Barbara’s mania and plain bad attitude, so do we. Barbara is written as such a bleep — and Graham knows full well how she behaves at Christmas so he should have never brought Leah just yet — that sitting through the movie is as much of a test of patience for the viewer as it is for Leah. Her lists, her ‘my way or the highway’ style of tree decorating, her overbearing attitude would test anyone’s patience, but sadly her family just enables the bad behavior and then gives Leah a ‘whoops, we forgot to tell you she’s crazy’ look and shoulder shrug. It’s not funny, it’s just mean-spirited. Barbara Niven does manage to play the role perfectly, but her sudden revelation to Leah as to how she really feels about her comes completely out of nowhere because up to that point she just treated Leah like a nuisance in her home (and really, really seemed like she wanted to push Graham back into Julia’s arms). The movie is really a hard slog solely because of how the Barbara character is written. The redemption at the end for the entire Westwood family is welcome, but not enough to take the bad taste out of one’s mouth after the previous hour and 15 minutes.
Emily Arlook is wonderful as Leah, happily embracing the two cultures, showing us Leah’s fortitude in dealing with Barbara as well as the uncertainty and hurt she begins to feel towards Graham. Every time he tries to smooth things over and assure her his mother isn’t the monster she seems to be, he just flubs it all up again the next day. Arlook’s vulnerability makes you want to yell at her to run, run far away from Graham and his family and never look back, so she gets major props for her performance. Evan Roderick is fine as Graham but the way the character is written is a bit all over the place, and he never really seems to have much chemistry with Arlook (which makes her uncertainty about Graham feel valid). Sidney Quesnelle is also good as sister Maddie, having a much better connection with Leah even though she also falls into some ‘that’s just mom being mom’ behaviour. Poor Christopher Shyer’s Mr. Westwood seems to be a bit of a boob, and also a bit ‘whipped’ by Barbara, almost having an emotional breakdown when Leah’s gingerbread house is obviously better than Barbara’s but terrified to declare Leah the winner (Barbara condescendingly and begrudgingly says Leah has the best house so she is the winner, and gives a sarcastic round of applause). Barry W. Levy and Robyn Ross are terrific as Leah’s parents, much more warm and jolly than the Westwoods. Maia Beresford as Julia, the ex, is also written in the same vein as Barbara, apparently purposely glomming on to Evan, rubbing their past relationship in Leah’s face, and then having a sudden ‘I’m sorry I was such a jerk’ moment. Julia is just as unbearable as Barbara, so it’s no wonder they’re such close compatriots.
It’s nice that Hallmark is acknowledging Hanukkah with its ‘Countdown to Christmas’ films (and there is another one coming), but this one completely loses the joy of Christmas with some truly terrible characters. Emily Arlook is the movie’s shining star and she deserves all the credit for making you not want to change the channel.
Leah’s Perfect Gift has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is rated TV-G. The film is streaming on Peacock and On Demand.
Preview – Leah’s Perfect Gift
Hallmark Channel
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