Lifetime
Lifetime delivers a real surprise with their second holiday movie of 2025, one that reunited Vivica A. Fox with director David DeCoteau, but the surprise isn’t the reunion … it’s that this movie isn’t part of their long-running ‘The Wrong…’ series. This time they’re going for a much lighter holiday feel but there are still things in this movie that are all kinds of wrong.
In The Christmas Campaign, Kayleigh Brooks (Chelsea Rose Brooks) is a driven, no-nonsense digital advertising executive who thrives on competition, while her newly hired counterpart, Darren Morgan (Austen Jaye), is a laid-back strategist with a creative flair. Their boss, Monique (Vivica A. Fox) puts them together to come up with a fun and festive spin on a holiday sales pitch for their top client, Santa’s Pajamas. Sparks fly — not only in the office but in their rivalry to nail the pitch. Kayleigh wants it all, and Alex is determined to win — no matter the cost. As they battle it out, their personal lives collide with their professional ambitions, and neither expects that the key to success might just be each other. From a Christmas Toy Drive to a family dinner full of surprises where Kayleigh introduces Darren to her parents, including the formidable Denise (Jackée Harry), the two clash and connect in a series of moments that are both funny and heartfelt. But when their competition turns into something more, will their growing feelings for each other survive the pressure?
Lifetime
Where do I begin with The Christmas Campaign? Well, it’s always interesting to see what Ms. Fox has gotten herself into with each Lifetime movie. Here, she once again plays the boss but she’s having a little more fun this time, not having to be completely overbearing or suspicious of shady goings-on. The story concerns a long-dormant client of her ad agency that suddenly has a new line of clothing to launch, Santa’s Pajamas, but she doesn’t think her senior rep can handle the job properly because she’s … female. The product is for men so Fox’s Monique believes a man with some type of social media experience can work with Kayleigh and get the job done. But Kayleigh sees it as a betrayal, a lack of confidence in her long-proven skills, and she and new guy Darren clash right from the start, to the point that she wants him removed from the project. Monique wants him on the project and she promises that if Kayleigh can work with him and deliver a successful campaign, she’ll make her the new VP. Now Kayleigh has no choice but to work with him, but even with his supposed experience with social media branding, Darren doesn’t seem to be able to back up any of his claims, his lack of specific numbers delivered by his last campaign of concern. How can someone so unprepared be expected to deliver a successful campaign?
Darren really pushes Kayleigh’s buttons when he hires sexy male models to don the gay apparel for a photo shoot, but Kayleigh feels that this is not the way to sell pajamas to the target audience — men. Darren finally does manage to show her he has some skills when he points out that men do not buy themselves pajamas — women buy their men pajamas, so if they think their men will look half as good in the pajamas as the models do, it should be a home run. Booking the models for an absurd morning talk show proves his point as the host and the women in the audience go wild. Kayleigh now has a little more trust in Darren and her attitude about working with him does a 180 (of course the promise of the VP position hanging over her head doesn’t hurt). But Kayleigh has a personal life to deal with too, namely her boyfriend Jack, who quickly becomes her ex-boyfriend, and her mother Helen. Jack is more of an annoyance the way he storms off then comes back like nothing ever happened, unaware that Kayleigh is over his tomfoolery. And while she doesn’t have a great relationship with her mother, Helen sees Darren while on a video call with her daughter and invites him to family dinner, and he is not one to say no to anyone’s mother. There is some misread actions after Darren drops Kayleigh off at her house, seeing Jack once again pop up out of nowhere. Darren only sees them hug, but he does not hear the conversation that Kayleigh is really done with Jack, but they part as friends, and that leads him to give her the cold shoulder at work. And even after the success of the campaign and Kayleigh’s promotion, Darren quietly resigns, still believing she and Jack got back together. Can she stop him before he leaves the building and reveal her true feelings for him?
Lifetime
The Christmas Campaign is mildly entertaining, perhaps more unintentionally than intended. It’s sometimes like a never-ending trainwreck that you just can’t take your eyes off of. Not because of the actors or the story, but because the production is just this side of shoddy, which is shocking considering how long David DeCoteau has been in the business. One would think he’d know how to light a scene by this point in time, but in nearly every shot involving a close-up or medium shot of a character, there is a bright, white light source shining on them, which is not seen in any wide shots. Sometimes the light is coming from where a wall is shown in the wide shot, but there is no source visible for that light to be shining so brightly on the actors. Other times the light is coming from below, making them look like they’re telling scary stories with a flashlight under their chins. I do have a background in video production and I am just stunned by how amateurish the lighting is in this movie. Speaking of amateurish … who in the heck put up and decorated the dozens of Christmas trees seen in nearly every shot of the movie? You have never seen such terrible decorating skills on display as you can see in this movie. The trees themselves are sad looking and the decorations look like someone let their cat just climb all of the tree, leaving mass destruction in their wake. And you can’t escape the trees. They’re in every scene so they eventually become a major distraction because you can’t avert your gaze to concentrate on whatever the actors are doing in the scene.
But all is not lost because at least DeCoteau has a capable cast to do their best to draw your attention away from the trees and bad lighting (I will admit there is one shot near the end of the film that is lit perfectly). Chelsea Rose Cook is fine as Kayleigh but she needs a good director to guide her performance (compare this to her work in Secert Life of the Surgeon’s Wife or Kidnapped in a Small Town). Here she has to be exasperated more than anything, but she does bring some nice moments to her scenes with Darren as the two begin to find a common ground. It is a step above her work in Eat. Pray. Lie. Vivica A. Fox can play the role of an office boss in her sleep by this point, but at least she seems to be having a little more fun than she normally does in the more dramatic, crime-driven movies. Jackée Harry is actually pretty great as Helen, a character who is a bit overbearing and intrusive, but she gets a really nice moment in the end as she tells Kayleigh how proud of her she truly is. It’s a moment that takes the character from a caricature to a human being.
Lifetime
Austen Jaye is full of swagger as Darren, but I found little appeal in the character. He’s supposed to be this brilliant branding guy but he has nothing to back up his claims except to say he was successful. You’d think someone needing to prove themselves would come with the figures to back up those claims, but the way Darren is written, Jaye’s performance almost makes him seem like a con man (now that would have put an interesting spin on the story). Where Jaye does shine are in the scenes with his grandmother, with whom he lives and takes care of. He really shows a caring side to her, but he never brings that kind of human interaction to the office. Perhaps the performance would have been more appealing if he wasn’t just a jerk to Kayleigh at work. Lorinda Hawkins Smith also does a nice job as grandma Evelyn, showing the effects of what appears to be the onset of dementia. Sometimes she’s a bit spaced out, sometimes she’s sharp as a tack. Liv Pearsall plays Kayleigh’s assistant Gemma as the comic relief of the movie and she always lights up a scene that she’s in. Vicente Perdomo, A.J. Rodney and Brandon Gillard seem to be having fun as the models, stereotypically vapid when called upon to speak about the product. But they look good, at least. Joseph Harold’s Jack is really annoying, and Kayleigh made the right decision to let him go.
Overall, The Christmas Campaign isn’t the worst collab between Fox and DeCoteau, but the actors here have to do all of the heavy lifting to make the whole production better than it ought to be. The three female leads are all pretty solid with what the script gives them, and Jaye manages to humanize his character a bit in his home life scenes, finally warming up to Kayleigh after the dinner with her parents. But those Christmas trees will haunt my dreams all holiday season.
The Christmas Campaign has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-PG.
The Christmas Campaign Trailer
Lifetime